Kaikesta huolimatta / No matter what

Sandgrains

2012-01-23T14:03:00.005+02:00

The above are sandgrains at a magnification of over 250 times real life. Our Creator clearly loves beauty :). The photographer's name is Dr. Gary Greenberg and this link will take you to see more of his extraordinary photos.
The Church of Finland has a FB page and my colleague Minna had chosen this Psalm text to accompany a link to Daily Mail where three of the photos by Dr. Greenberg were introduced:

How precious to me are your thoughts, God!

How vast is the sum of them!
Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand—
when I awake, I am still with you.
Ps. 139: 17-18

Amen. :)

Strive, persevere, never give up

2012-01-16T11:50:00.001+02:00

In the face of all the challenges we face today, is my optimism about the future of humanity idealistic? Perhaps it is. Is it unrealistic? Certainly not. To remain indifferent to the challenges we face is indefensible. If the goal is noble, whether or not it is realized within our lifetime is largely irrelevant. What we must do therefore is to strive and persevere and never give up.

Dalai Lama, on his official Facebook page, Friday Jan 13, 2012

Strive.

Persevere.

Never - ever - give up.

I was listening to an interview on the radio today. The person being interviewed was a Finnish yogi, who is apparently quite widely known, in fact, to the extent that he has been asked to teach yoga in India. The person who was interviewing him asked him the reason for this since one would, of course, assume it be the other way round.

What he said was that as it happens his personality and being a Finn go very well together with yoga. His quiet, somewhat intrevert personality is something people expect from a yogi. A humble guy. He did not take credit for anything although he is widely respected and tends to draw crowds of people to his classes. He just found it a little funny that he fits so well to the preconceived perseption of what a yogi should be like.

I remember a similar comment about us Finns from an Orthodox nun, a Finn herself. She commented about Finns that "Finns are natural hesychasts". Finns are naturally quiet and drawn to peaceful and quite places. This is probably somewhat true, too. Although making such a statement is, of course, rather a generalisation.

When asked what are the most important things in life from his perspective the yogi's response was health and then came the part that really got me thinking, he said: "I think it is important that when we make decisions we stick to them." He went on to talk about how we seem to lead lives of indesicion and that it seems to be that freedom is seen to mean freedom to change one's mind as often as one wants. What constitutes a good life from his perspective is that you make decisions, stick to them and begin to get more depth into the life precicely because you do not change you mind all the time. I like that.

Quite soon after I had been ordained minister I was asked to talk to the students at Turku Christian Institute (Turun kristillinen opisto). I could talk about anything I wanted and I chose to talk about commitment. Of course I did I had just made a whopper of a commitment myself. Now, almost ten years later I can still remember how I felt and I can still remember the words I said because they are as true now as they were then. Except that, I do forget sometimes.

The thing is, choosing is something exclusive. You choose this and, thus, this and this and this - and this - are no longer available for you to choose. The secret is, though, and I still find it remarkable, that when you do choose you find yourself breathing more easy. And you start to see all the openess that has been hidden into the choice you have made. Exclusiveness is more often than we think more inclusive than we could possibly imagine. This is why I whole heartedly agree with the yogi.

We cannot jump from one place to the other and keep on jumping untill we drop. It is not good for us or the world around us and it will not get us anywhere. We have make choices. We have to think and pray and make choices. We need to take responsibility and strive to achieve those things we value worth doing so. And I agree with Dalai Lama we may not see them come true but if something is truly right and truly Godly then it should not matter in the least.

God close to you

2012-01-10T10:57:00.000+02:00

With the beginning of the new year come the tasks of writing a comprhensive report about the year that has past and collecting the infromation needed for different statistics that will be done by the church. This is why it is only now that I am back here and want to wish all of you Happy New Year 2012!

May this new year be filled with God's love, may hope lead us and trust abound. Be blessed.

Heaven cannot hold Him

2011-12-21T14:58:00.001+02:00

Soon, soon, so very soon it is the birthday of our Savior. May you be blessed as you prepare for Christmas.

2011-12-15T11:10:00.003+02:00

Hope this'll bring a smile to your face. At home we have a nativity poster my daughter filled with stickers of sheep, camels, magi and so on. It's a busy one and I love it. I love the sheep on top of the roof and everyhting else. I love that my daughter does not have a preconceived idea of how things should look and created her own version. And that she looks at the poster everyday.

John

2011-12-13T10:48:00.000+02:00

I had a really hard time writing this sermon. Not because the subject was difficult, but because - for some reason - I found it really hard to find a point that would carry through the sermon. I now know what it should have been but that's a wee bit to late now. Sermons really are hard work sometimes even though it is work I enjoy.

Mainly, I think, my lack of being able to stick to a point was quite simply due to the fact that I am quite tired and I found myself not concentrating as well as I should have. This is not to say that you should pity me (but you may of course if you'd like :)) it's just to say that sometimes your pastor is not quite as awful at preaching as you think but has just had a tireing week or month or two.

But, oh dear, this really is not a good sermon. Sigh! Be blessed, though, and I do hope that at least something in this text will bless you. After all there are quite a few parts that come straight from the Bible :).

To be honest I have never been a fan of John the Baptist. It’s the eating grasshoppers and living in the desert thing, I think. And the way he was killed although it is hardly fair to blame him about it. But still, locusts?! Yack.

However, the Bible with the words of Jesus and as a result the church tells us that he was more important than any of the other prophets. As I started thinking about it I realized I did not quite understand prophets in the first place, and I am quite embarrassed about it,.

As always when I have to admit that I do not understand or get something I came to realize something quite obvious. That’s Holy Spirit working for you, I think. You see, it is in fact probably obvious to everyone else but of course there had to be prophets. Who in their right mind believes the very first person who tells them something utterly new? We had to be prepared, by the prophets. There was no other way, of course there wasn’t. Silly me.

In a long line of prophets preparing the way for the Messiah John was the last. He was the one the prophet Isaiah was talking about, when he said,

"In the desert someone is shouting,

`Get the road ready for the Lord!

Make a straight path for him.' "

And, incidentally I’ve always been a fan of Isaiah.

“Get the road ready for the Lord! Make a straight path for him.” “I wonder what that means?” that’s what Ruth would say if she were telling us the story today. “Get the road ready for the Lord! Make a straight path for him.” How do you do that?

Be ready, I guess. And not only ready but prepared. But how does one prepare for the Lord? How does one make a straight path for him to take? That is today's question. The question I would like you to take with you to bonder about.

The people who followed John, his disciples, asked the same question. How do we prepare for the arrival of the Messiah? Not unlike the teaching of Jesus would be, John told them, "If you have two coats, give one to someone who doesn't have any. If you have food, share it with someone else."

When tax collectors came to be baptized, they asked John, "Teacher, what should we do?" and John told them, "Don't make people pay more than they owe." And then when some soldiers asked him, "And what about us? What do we have to do?" John told them, "Don't force people to pay money to make you leave them alone. Be satisfied with your pay."

This was rather practical advice. This was not complex theology at all. Treat others better than you have been. Be generous. In other words, love each other like you love yourselves or yet another way, start behaving like you should have in the first place.

Contrary to present day since we have 2000 years worth of teaching based on the idea of generosity John’s simple teaching was so novel and unlike any other teaching that it was radical. As a result, tells the Book of Luke, people became excited and wondered, "Could John be the Messiah?"

John’s response was this: "I am just baptizing with water. But someone more powerful is going to come, and I am not good enough even to untie his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.”

The Book of John expresses the same sentiment in today’s Gospel reading. “No one can do anything unless God in heaven allows it. You surely remember how I told you that I am not the Messiah. I am only the one sent ahead of him. . . Jesus must become more important, while I become less important.”

When Jesus then had started to preach John's followers told John everything that was being said about Jesus. John sent two of them to ask the Lord, "Are you the one we should be looking for? Or must we wait for someone else?"

When these messengers came to Jesus, they said, "John the Baptist sent us to ask, `Are you the one we should be looking for? Or are we supposed to wait for someone else?' "

Jesus was healing many people who were sick or in pain or troubled by – as the Bible puts it - evil spirits, and he was giving sight to many who were blind. He said to the messengers sent by John, "Go and tell John what you have seen and heard. Blind people are now able to see, and the lame can walk. People who have leprosy are being healed, and the deaf can now hear. The dead are raised to life, and the poor are hearing the good news. God will bless everyone who doesn't reject me because of what I do."

That would be a “yes” then, right? As a result the disciples left John to join Jesus but interestingly John did not. Their division of labour seems to have been quite clear for them, except, of course, when Jesus left Galilee and went to the Jordan River to be baptized by John. John kept objecting and said, "I ought to be baptized by you. Why have you come to me?" To which Jesus answered, "For now this is how it should be, because we must do all that God wants us to do."

Then John agreed. I like that. I like that he knew that it should be the other way round. I like that he needed to hear the Lord’s words to understand and agree. I like that he did not automatically just do what he was told but needed to be guided to understanding God’s plan.

And so Jesus was baptized. As soon as he came out of the water, the sky opened, and he saw the Spirit of God coming down on him like a dove. Then a voice from heaven said, "This is my own dear Son, and I am pleased with him."

These words I repeated already last week.“This is my own dear Son, and I am pleased with him.” Jesus and everyone heard them that day but they were present equally strongly the night he was born. They were there when Mary was told about her pregnancy, and when Joseph was told about Mary’s pregnancy. And they were the reason the prophet lived in the desert preparing for the arrival of the Messiah.

God’s love to His Son is so deep it cannot be put to words but his love to us is even greater. We believe in a trinitarian God. God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit (or Holy Ghost). Yet, I cannot but think in terms of parenthood, too. The only way the Son could go through what he did was absolute knowledge of God’s love; Absolute trust in Him; Absolute love to Him. The only reason John would live a life of a hermit and a prophet was the very same love.

The Christmas story is a love story. It is a love story of Mary and Joseph but it is also a love story between God and all human kind.

No force

2011-12-05T10:35:00.001+02:00

Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered, ‘The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, “Look, here it is!” or “There it is!” For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.’

Of course it is, since Jesus was standing right in front of the Pharisees. The story of Christmas and not only of Christmas but of the entire salvation story went very differently from what the pharisees or, indeed, us would have expected. No one came with a huge army to put things straight. Angels appeared, yes, but not to fight but to praise. No force was used. None.

It all started with a young woman and her fiancé and a baby. In Nazareth, Bethlehem, Egypt and Nazareth again. Nothing else. It continued through the baby’s childhood, early years working as a carpenter to a time of teaching and then the tragedy of his execution. No force – from God’s part, that is.

As I look around me I keep being surprised by Christian religious fanaticism because it is in such contradiction to the whole story of Christ’s life, death and resurrection. How can the meekness and gentleness of God’s plan, God’s love, lead to manipulation and to the use of force?

As I was reading today’s passage and the first part I chose to preach on I was and keep being struck with the smallness of things. Our theme sounds so grand, our King arrives in Glory, but all I see is this one man arriving with a donkey; Praised by the people around him, certainly, but at the end of the day just a guy riding on a donkey. No entourage of important people following nor an army behind him. Just him and some disciples. This was not a man with cloud, not from the perspective of the world at least.

And then I listen to the answer to the words to the Pharisees expecting to hear about a grand plan to make them almost like kings themselves, expecting to have a special place once the kingdom had arrived, once the Messiah had taken over, since had not they served God better and more diligently than anyone else? Instead they are told that a) the kingdom is already here, b) you can’t see it and c) it is among them.

The story almost, nay, reads like a riddle. What is it that is here among you and yet you cannot see it? And the gospel is a riddle in a way. God’s presence is not obvious. God’s nature seems to be to not show off, to not toot His own horn. That is why those little moments when the angels fill the sky praising God’s glory and when His voice is heard saying: “This is my son with whom I am well pleased”, are in fact extremely rare in the Bible. And all the more precious for us since they show us the other side of things, the side we cannot see, the side that is behind a veil, hiding the miracle; the miracle of God’s kingdom being so close we can touch it.

We might not be able to see it, we might not be able to say it is here or there, although I would be inclined to say it is right here where we come to worship God together as a congregation, but it is among us; whatever that means. It is a secret, it should be a secret and it will remain a secret. For me that is exactly how it has to be. It is enough to know that it IS - among us. Amen.

The Christmas Story by St Paul's

2011-12-01T14:39:00.001+02:00

This is a very sweet version :).

Lift up your heads, O gates

2011-11-29T08:30:00.001+02:00

The earth is the Lord’s and all that fills it, the compass of the world and all who dwell therein.
    For he has founded it upon the seas and set it firm upon the rivers of the deep.
‘Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord, or who can rise up in his holy place?’
    ‘Those who have clean hands and a pure heart,
who have not lifted up their soul to an idol, nor sworn an oath to a lie;
    ‘They shall receive a blessing from the Lord, a just reward from the God of their salvation.’
Such is the company of those who seek him, of those who seek your face, O God of Jacob.
    Lift up your heads, O gates;be lifted up, you everlasting doors;
and the King of glory shall come in.
    ‘Who is the King of glory?’ ‘The Lord, strong and mighty,the Lord who is mighty in battle.’
Lift up your heads, O gates; be lifted up, you everlasting doors;
    and the King of glory shall come in.
‘Who is this King of glory?’ ‘The Lord of hosts,he is the King of glory.’
Psalm 24

Hoosianna is The Hymn for 1st Advent :). The lyrics are in English :

Hosanna, son of David, / who comes in the name of the Lord. / Blest be the Son of David, / Hosanna in the highest! / Hosanna, Hosanna, Hosanna, / Hosanna, / blest be the Son of David. / Hosanna in the highest!

The Art of Being Alert

2011-11-15T09:47:00.001+02:00

It took a while for my body to heal but I am now back to work and all is fine - except that I have a cold, but that will sort itself out in due course :).

Here is last Sunday's sermon. It took a detour in the beginning to talk a bit more about fear, though. I wanted to be clear about how important it is to figure out for yourself whether you are making decisions from a place of fear or from a place of love, which is where God resides.

Last Sunday's reading came from the Gospel of Mark:

So watch out and be ready! You don't know when the time will come. It is like what happens when a man goes away for a while and places his servants in charge of everything. He tells each of them what to do, and he orders the guard to keep alert. So be alert! You don't know when the master of the house will come back. It could be in the evening or at midnight or before dawn or in the morning. But if he comes suddenly, don't let him find you asleep. I tell everyone just what I have told you. Be alert!

“Be alert!” As in be nervous, apprehensive, scared and stressed out?

Well, no, I don’t think so. I think it goes like this; be alert as in: do what has been given for you to do, know that what you do matters greatly, remember that you answer to someone higher than you and remember that you are loved more than you can even understand.

One of the many hard things to learn about living a truly Christian life is that fear does not come from God. This applies not only to the big things in life such as worrying about a loved one’s health and or safety or for ones’ own, for that matter, or about global warming, economical melt down, natural disasters or wars. It also – and equally - applies to the small everyday causes of worry and stress. Fear does not come from God.

When Jesus calls us to be alert He does not imply that if you are not you will be punished although that thought easily comes to mind when reading today’s passage. But I really do not think that is how it is.

I think Jesus calls us to be alert like a – and this may sound a little odd but bear with me – He calls us to be alert like when visiting a museum or an art show or listening to a concert or walking around in a beautiful forest or seaside.

We are called to be alert so that we won’t miss anything: so that we won’t miss any part of the amazing plan God has.

I am not saying that there aren’t very good reasons to be afraid. Neither am I saying that fearing the very many things we fear is a sin. Although, there we run to the question of weather we are talking about emotions or an attitude.

Emotions are exactly what they are, they are neither good or bad. However, what results from them is what determines things. So, to be afraid of darkness or of pain or of the very many other things we can be afraid of is in no way a sin. But I leave it to you to bonder about, is having a distrusting, apprehensive and fearful attitude something that might in fact be against what God wants? A sin, therefore. Is it not trust, faith and courage God calls us to have?

The other side to the story about the servant is that Jesus calls us to be alert so that when we are needed we will realize it, and act. As Christians we are called to bless those around us with both how we are and how we act. We are called to take care of those in need, to help, to protect, to give unconditionally and to serve. We are, simply put, called to love with the love God loves us.

Christian love, God’s love is not a passive kind of love, a fuzzy lovely feeling, but a love that sometimes demands us to raise our voice for those whose voices are not otherwise heard, a love that demands us to set boundaries but also to set free. It is a challenging kind of love; the kind of love that changes the world.

Henry Nouwen wrote this in his book The return of the Prodigal Son:

“People who have come know the joy of God do not deny the darkness, but they choose not to live in it. They claim that the light that shines in the darkness can be trusted more than the darkness itself and that a little bit of light can dispel a lot of darkness.”

He then continues to say that what we as Christians do is to seek that light and share it with one another. To seek God is in my mind quite simply what being alert is all about.

Blogging and surgery

2011-09-27T09:07:00.000+03:00

Come tomorrow morning my husband and child will be taking me to the Raisio hospital to be operated and I am then going to be away from work for a month or so. Scary - not being away from work - but the operation :).

As a result I am not going to be updating these pages for a little while. Not that it makes much of a difference to these past months, though, and I do apologize for that.

This fall started with an extraordinary amount of work and updating this blog has had to give way for the different tasks I have had to perform. I like blogging, though, and I will do my best - once I get back to work - to make sure that these pages get new input and updates.

One of ther reasons this feels important is that on occasion people say that they checked my blog before emailing me and asking if I could precide at their wedding. I am pleased that - as it is important to have at least some idea of the person you're asking to be there for a very special day - this blog has helped, too.

For now, though, I'm off for a while.

Be very blessed and my God's love surround you in every way.

Keith Battarbee's sermon on 9/11 2011

2011-09-12T10:27:00.000+03:00

Sermon for Awareness Sunday 2011-09-11

+ In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Amen

______________________

Ten years ago, on this date – the 9th of September 2001 – four civilian airliners were hijacked for use as piloted firebombs, against targets in New York and Washington DC.

And today has been designated by many churches in the English-speaking countries as Awareness Sunday: an opportunity to remember the victims of violence, the conflicts that underlie it, and to pray for peace and reconciliation.

How can we react and respond, as Christians, to events such as 9/11?

______________________

Responding to another terrible September, 72 years ago, – the outbreak of the Second World War – the poet W H Auden wrote one of his most powerful poems, 1st September 1939:

Waves of anger and fear / Circulate over the bright / And darkened lands of the earth, / … /

The unmentionable odour of death / Offends the September night.

In this poem, Auden recognizes that we do need to try to understand such events:

Accurate scholarship can / Unearth the whole offence /…/ That has driven a culture mad …

but that on one level, the answer is very simple: What all schoolchildren learn: / Those to whom evil is done / Do evil in return.

______________________

And 9/11 was, truly, evil: a deliberate plan to inflict maximum hurt, targeting high-profile and mainly civilian populations.

In military terms, it was a brilliant plan, very efficiently and effectively implemented.

The fundamental idea was not new, though; nor was it the worst firebomb attack in human history. 9/11 was way smaller than the firebombing, during the Second World War, of Hamburg, Pforzheim, Dresden, and Tokyo – let alone the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And it should humble us to remember that all of those attacks were carried out by the Western Allies. Evil is not only done by ‘others’ to ‘us; it is also, all too often, done by us to others.

But our reaction to those wartime events, even when we are horrified at them, tends to be more ‘apologetic’, so to speak. As one RAF pilot said about a particularly coldblooded operation he had taken part in: “Horrible thing, but we were told to do it and we did it. That's war."

So why was 9/11 different? Perhaps, above all, because it was so unexpected. Both literally, and metaphorically, the 9/11 attacks came ‘out of a blue sky’. In wartime, people know that terrible things will happen. No one, outside al-Qa’ida, knew about 9/11 in advance, at all. The victims didn’t know that they were at war. And so, it hurt.

______________________

And Auden was right: evil in one direction generates evil in return.

9/11 was an instance of what he meant when he said “those to whom evil is done”; for it was a response by al-Qa’ida to what they see as a prolonged attack by the capitalist West on their values and their societies.

And in retaliation, the invasion of Iraq, – which had played no part in planning 9/11 – was against international law, and was justified by deliberate lies about ‘weapons of mass destruction’. It was, in fact, another example of precisely the kinds of action that al-Qa’ida is a response to. And the resulting, on-going conflict in Iraq has so far led to the deaths of over 4000 American military – significantly more than the total death count on 9/11, which is around 3000 – and to the appalling figure of over 100 000 Iraqi civilians killed.

The cycle of evil is maintained.

______________________

But: we can also respond to evil with good.

During the past week, my wife and I have watched some of the many documentaries that have been produced to mark the tenth anniversary of 9/11; and we were tremendously impressed, in particular, by two that focused on the medical personnel and the firefighters of New York. 343 firefighters died at Ground Zero, and 34 paramedics, and one priest. These men and women we can well describe as martyrs, not all them necessarily in a Christian sense, but certainly in a humanitarian perspective: for they were acting out the basic principle of human solidarity, not human revenge, in face of terrible danger: love in action.

And as Christians, our response to the memory of 9/11 must not and cannot be a desire for revenge. Revenge is an all too understandable response to hurt: but it is neither Christian nor humane, and it merely leads to an on-going cycle of hurt and destruction.

______________________

As we confront the profound differences that exist between us in our world – in our social and cultural values, in our economic systems, and in our religious and spiritual and secular beliefs – we need, we really need, to recognize and follow three fundamental principles: solidarity, respect, and integrity:

solidarity, as we recognize and respond generously to our fellow humans’ needs – for example, at this time, in the Horn of Africa;

respect, as we acknowledge that however profoundly we hold our own views and beliefs, the beliefs of others are also held legitimately and profoundly, including those views and beliefs which we find very difficult to understand or approve of;

but always maintaining our integrity, – that is to say, even while we respect the difference of others, we do not abandon or ‘fudge’ on the essentials of our own beliefs and values.

And as Christians, that means – and must always mean – that above all else, we are called to respond to, and act out, the love of Christ. And I would suggest that here, in Turku Cathedral International Congregation, we have a special and specific calling in this respect. We are an International congregation: we come from many different countries. And although in our worship we are Lutheran and Anglican, we are also, in our membership, emphatically an ecumenical body of Christians: we come from many different Christian churches.

And we are called to act out, in our lives and in this world, today and always, the same Gospel that underlies the ending of Auden’s poem:

We must love one another or die. // Defenceless under the night / Our world in stupor lies; / Yet, dotted everywhere, / Ironic points of light / Flash out wherever the Just / Exchange their messages: / May I, composed like them / Of Eros and of dust, / Beleaguered by the same / Negation and despair, / Show an affirming flame.

______________________

And so we come to the end of another, naive sermon telling us to ‘be good’.

But is it easy? Heck no. + And so may God the Father, our Creator; God the Son, Jesus our Redeemer; and God the Spirit, our Comforter and guide, strengthen us in the power of the divine Love. Amen

Ps. The photo above was placed by Keith in the niche above the altar, and used on the flyer for the service. It shows Fr Mychal Judge OFM, Chaplain to the New York Fire Department whose body is being carried away by firefighters. This link tells a little bit more about him.

Thank you Keith for offering to preach and for pointing me to the materials available for congregations who wanted to respond to the tragedy of 9/11 by holding an Awareness Sunday service yesterday. And thank you for not only talking about 9/11.

Time is eternity

2011-09-08T12:31:00.000+03:00

A passage by Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933)

American Author and Clergyman

Time is too short for those who wait
Too swift for those who fear.
Too long for those who grieve,
Too short for those who rejoice.
But for those who love, time is eternity.

Seminar on Christianity, Judaism and Islam

2011-08-30T08:51:00.004+03:00

Just in case someone out there is interested :). I'd love to participate myself but I'm likely to be on sick leave right about then.

Turku and Kaarina Parish Union Bulletin 24.8.2011

Seminar on Literacy for Three Religions

Finland is awakening to a multicultural society as it finds itself face-to-face with people from different religious and cultural backgrounds. At the same time, knowledge of one’s cultural and religious roots is becoming increasingly important.

In order to dispel prejudice and avert clashes, it is essential to become familiar with the three key elements

of European culture: Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Religious literacy and interreligious dialogue are

needed.

An international seminar on Religion and cultural heritage – the Children of Abraham will be held at the Turku Christian Institute on the 12-13 October. It examines the three faiths of the Children of Abraham in Finland today and their effect on Finnish culture. The seminar is part of the official Turku 2011 European

Capital of Culture program. As international guests for the seminar, Professor Joyce Burkhalter from Emory University in Atlanta has been invited to cover religion from the perspective of gender. Also invited is Rimke van der Veer, an expert on Imam training from Holland.

The seminar is designed for all those who come into contact with a diverse range of religions and cultures,

either through work or daily situations. Multicultural schools will be discussed at the seminar, which also

comprises part of a PhD. program for various Universities.

The English language seminar is organised by the Turku and Kaarina Parish Union, The Finnish Ecumenical

Council, the University of Turku, University of Helsinki and Åbo Akademi University, The Turku Christian

Institute, The Finnish Cultural Awareness Society, The Turku Archdiocese, The Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Mission and the Turku 2011 foundation.

The price of the seminar is 130€ (including meals and board) and 75€ (including meals). For additional

information and registration please contact Jaana Rantala by 30.9: Tel. +35840 3417285, e-mail

jaana.rantala@evl.fi

FURTHER INFORMATION AND A DETAILED PROGRAM

Jaana Rantala +35840 3417285

http://www.turku2011.fi/

http://www.taivaallistakulttuuria.fi/

Meditation from the Night of the Arts

2011-08-22T12:34:00.002+03:00

We seek to practice inner quiet, that we may be open to the Presence of God, and receptive of the Divine Word and Sacrament.

Come, Light of our lives.
Come, Generous Spirit.
Come, Voice in the silence.
Come, to our poverty.
By the glory of your creation around us, by the wind of your Spirit in this place,
by the power of your love within us, inspire and renew us,
that we may trust your living word
and rejoice in your living presence
now and always. Amen.

This beautiful prayer comes from The Grail Liturgies by Jonathan Robinson. My lovely colleague Father Peter :) gave me this hint. The whole liturgy is absolutely lovely and I used some of its prayers as a part of the Taizé Mass we had on the Night of the Arts. I apologize for not remembering to acknowledge Mr. Robinson so I am doing it here and now. The whole liturgy can be found here.

London burning

2011-08-09T10:48:00.004+03:00

A Prayer for London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Bristol and all other areas affected by the rioting of the past days (adapted from a prayer written by the clergy in Cumbria)

O God, Creator of us all,
in your Son, Jesus you have walked the way of darkness and death,
you send your Spirit of healing and truth to all in need.

We pray for those injured or bereaved by inexplicable violence.
Protect those who are most vulnerable,

and comfort all who have lost their homes and businesses, schools and kindergartens.

May your gracious compassion surround and uphold them.
We pray for all individuals and communities whose lives have been changed by these riots.
May your sustaining love be present in all expressions of support offered and help received.

We give thanks for the commitment and dedication of the emergency services.
And pray that they may be given the strength they need to serve others.

We give thanks for the resilience and courage of all who work to achieve peace once more.
And pray that the bonds of community care and concern may hold fast at this time

Lord, in your mercy
Hear our prayer
And let our cry come unto you
Amen.

God bless all of UK.

May you have a blessed Midsummer

2011-06-23T12:29:00.001+03:00

Creator God
who breathed this world into being,
who is discernible within
the harmony of nature,
the perfection of a butterfly's wing,
the grandeur of a mountain range,
the soaring eagle and humming bird,
thank you for this world
which you have created.

Thank you for summer sun,
which reminds us
that your creative breath
is still alive and active.

Thank you for the warmth of your love,
sustaining this world,
your garden.

by John Birch at Faith and Worship - Prayers and Resources

Sermon by Keith Battarbee

2011-06-13T08:59:00.000+03:00

Here is yesterday's sermon. I publish it with Keith's permission, he was our preacher yesterday :). Thank you Keith!

2nd Reading Acts 2: 1–13 (The congregation were asked to stand, as this reading from Acts is every bit as important as any reading from the Gospels!]

On the day of Pentecost all the Lord's followers were together in one place. Suddenly there was a noise from heaven like the sound of a mighty wind! It filled the house where they were meeting. Then they saw what looked like fiery tongues moving in all directions, and a tongue came and settled on each person there. The Holy Spirit took control of everyone, and they began speaking whatever languages the Spirit let them speak. Many religious Jews from every country in the world were living in Jerusalem. And when they heard this noise, a crowd gathered. But they were surprised, because they were hearing everything in their own languages. They were excited and amazed, and said:

“Don't all these who are speaking come from Galilee? Then why can we hear them speaking our own languages? Some of us are from Parthia, Media, and Elam. Others are from Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, Libya near Cyrene, Rome, Crete, and Arabia. Some of us were born Jews, and others of us have joined the Jewish religion. Yet we can all hear them using our own languages to tell the wonderful things God has done.”

Everyone was excited and confused, and they kept on asking each other: "What does all this mean?"

Others made fun of the Lord's followers and said, "They are drunk."

But Peter stood with the eleven apostles and spoke in a loud and clear voice to the crowd:

“Friends and everyone else living in Jerusalem, listen carefully to what I have to say! You are wrong to suggest that these people are drunk. After all, it is only nine o'clock in the morning. But this is what God had the prophet Joel say:

"When the last days come, I will give my Spirit to everyone. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your young men will see visions, and your old men will have dreams.

In those days I will give my Spirit to my servants, both men and women, and they will prophesy. I will work miracles in the sky above and wonders on the earth below.

Pentecost is the last chapter in the Incarnation Story

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TCIC [Turku Cathedral International Congregation] is a ‘liturgical’ church,

in contrast to many ‘evangelical’ churches

such as – especially relevant today! – the Pentecostalist churches;

and it is a ‘calendrical’ church, where we ‘map’ the whole narrative of Jesus’ life, the Incarnation Story, onto the church year.

Today is the ‘last chapter’ in that story: the final climax of Easter.

______________________

This Pentecost story is a tricky or puzzling narrative: this baffling experience of languages fusing together, as it were: everyone could understand what the disciples were telling them: language barriers were eliminated;

but surely that’s a very relevant model for our congregation, coming as we do from so many countries, from many different Christian backgrounds and traditions, and speaking so many different languages!

______________________

But then, the Incarnation Story as a whole is a difficult narrative: for example, like some modern novels, it plays tricks on the readers: makes you think you’ve come to the end, but then you haven’t.

When Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the donkey, that must have seemed to many of his disciples like the beginning of the glorious end they had been waiting for: the entry of the King into the Holy City, the salvation of Israel …

but then it turned out very differently: he was betrayed and arrested and tried and sentenced and executed: and that seemed like the end, a terrible one;

but then it turned out very differently: he returned – the grave couldn’t hold him – and that seemed like a different kind of end: baffling, but full of a new kind of hope;

but then, having come back and overcome death, he went away again: so that was another, baffling end;

but no, then comes Pentecost: yet another, very different kind of ending, not ‘about’ Jesus himself any more, but about us: in fact not so much an ending, but a beginning: the birth of the Church; so Pentecost is in a way the ‘birthday of the Church’

______________________

In her sermon last week, Pastor Mia commented on how difficult it is to talk about the Holy Spirit. Yes, it is. In mainstream Christian belief, we speak of God as a Trinity of three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Part of the problem is the fact that the word person, or persona, has shifted in meaning a lot. In the language of the NT, it’s actually the word for ‘face’. But for two of those Persons of the Trinity, it’s relatively easy to put a face on them – even if that may be a misleading way of thinking about the Father, since it leads to all those images of God as ‘an old man with a beard’. And of course Jesus had a face: he4 was a human being! But what face can you put on the Holy Spirit?

In church art, we don’t usually use a faced image at all for the Spirit: we use other kinds of symbols, symbols which we find in the Bible: a wind, that moved over the face of the waters; or breath (that’s what the Greek word for the Spirit actually means) that came into the dry bones in Ezekiel’s vision; or light: when Moses had talked with God, on Mt Sinai or then later in the Tent of Meeting, his face ‘shone’; or the dove which came down on Jesus at his baptism; or fire; which is what we have in today’s story. And red, today’s liturgical colour, is the colour of fire.

______________________

But when we talk about God having, as it were, three ‘faces’, what this is trying to describe (among other things) is that God interacts with us in three distinct ways.

As the Father, God is the Creator of our universe, the Ground of all Being as it was described by the German theologian Paul Tillich: the unimaginably powerful source of all energy and all matter and all cosmic order. (Not very adequately described, then, as an ‘old man with a beard’.)

As the Son, God is this incomprehensible power taking human form, being born as a baby and growing up as a man and dying a terrible death on the Cross, through which death we are offered atonement and forgiveness …

and as the Spirit: God is like an energy, which can interact with us and radically change our lives.

______________________

This action of the Spirit is what we call ‘mercy’, or more precisely, ‘grace’.

In many languages, there is just one word for both of these ideas: armo, nåd, Gnade, Latin gratia … but in English (and perhaps in some other languages) we have two words. ‘Mercy’ is forgiveness for what we have done that was wrong. But ‘grace’ is the promise of God’s direct and personal interaction with each and every one of us, if we will allow God into our hearts. And we can do that, in part, by following what Jesus says in today’s Gospel reading: If you love me, you will do what I have said, and my Father will love you; … and I will ask the Father to send you the Holy Spirit who will help you and always be with you.

Note that it isn’t imposed on us. The disciples weren’t struck by lightning: they had said Yes to Jesus, Yes to God; and God responds at Pentecost by pouring the divine Yes into them.

______________________

And it isn’t necessarily as dramatic as that first Christian Pentecost. I don’t think I know anyone who has personally been touched by tongues of fire, or who has experienced ‘speaking in tongues’. But in another sense – in the context of this our liturgical celebration of Pentecost, as an international, ecumenical, multilingual congregation – we do speak in tongues: and we even have, in our liturgy, one place where we are encouraged to do so: where we all join together to say the prayer that our Lord Jesus himself taught his disciples: the Lord’s Prayer, the ‘Our Father’. And so I would like to invite you all, especially today, when we come to that point, to join together boldly in saying our shared Christian prayer loud and strong in your own language. Don’t be pressured into the English, just because our liturgy is otherwise in English. In fact I will pray not in English but in the Greek, the oldest version that we have. Let us come before the Lord in all our rich many-tongued variety to ask for – and say Yes to – his blessing and the gift of his grace.

______________________

Let me close with a prayer to the Holy Spirit which I like very much: a prayer which highlights how interactive the action of the Spirit is: for it is all about not just the action of God, but our own assent to that action: saying Yes to God, every day of our lives.

Spirit of God, shine in our hearts:

show us, and help us to see;

speak to us, and help us to hear;

teach us, and help us to understand;

guide us, and help us to listen;

lead us, and help us to follow.

We ask this in the Name of Jesus our risen Lord: Amen.

Sermon by Keith Battarbee

A prayer from the early 18th century

2011-06-08T11:01:00.000+03:00

I came across this as I am preparing the service for Sunday and absolutely loved it. The language is a little funny in its complexity but the feeling in this prayer is not only delightful but also very touching. Hope you enjoy it, too.

Prayer of St. Alphonsus Liguori to the Holy Spirit

Most Holy Spirit,
the Paraclete, Father of the poor,
Comforter of the afflicted,
Light of hearts, Sanctifier of souls;
behold me prostrate in Thy presence.

I adore Thee with profoundest homage:
I bless Thee a thousand times
and with the Seraphim who stand before Thy throne,
I also say: "Holy, holy, holy."

I firmly believe that Thou art eternal,
consubstantial with the Father and the Divine Son.

I hope in Thy goodness
that Thou wilt deign to save and sanctify my soul.

I love Thee, O Divine Love,
with all my affections
above all the things of this world,
because Thou art Infinite Goodness,
alone worthy of all love.

And since in my ingratitude and blindness
to Thy holy inspirations,
I have so often offended Thee by my sins,
with tears in my eyes
I beg Thy pardon a thousand times,
and am more sorry for having offended Thee,
the Sovereign Good, than for any other evil.

I offer Thee this most cold heart of mine,
and I pray Thee
to pierce it with a ray of Thy light,
and with a spark of Thy fire,
which shall melt the hard ice of my iniquities.

Thou who didst fill the soul
of the most holy Mary with immense graces,
and didst inflame the hearts of the Apostles
with holy zeal, inflame, I beseech Thee,
my heart also with Thy love.

Thou art the Divine Spirit:
give me courage against all evil spirits.

Thou art Fire:
enkindle in me Thy love.

Thou art Light:
enlighten my mind with the knowledge of eternal things.

Thou art the Dove:
give me innocence of life.

Thou art the gentle Breeze:
disperse the storms of my passions.

Thou art the Tongue:
teach me how to bless Thee always.

Thou art the Cloud:
shelter me under the shadow of Thy protection.

And lastly, Thou art the Giver of all heavenly gifts:
animate me, I beseech Thee, with Thy grace;
sanctify me with Thy charity;
enlighten me with Thy wisdom;
adopt me by Thy goodness as Thy son,
and save me in Thy infinite mercy;
so that I may ever bless Thee, praise Thee, and love Thee;
first during this life on earth,
and then in heaven for all eternity. Amen.

Alphonsus Liguori (1696-1787)

Cantate!

2011-05-18T10:34:00.000+03:00

The theme for this coming Sunday is Cantate, sing, and we will. We'll incorporate Taizé songs to the service and instead of a sermon we will listen to the readings, sing and meditate.

6-1

2011-05-16T10:25:00.000+03:00

6-1, good people, 6-1! Finland won the world championship in ice hockey yesterday evening, yay! After 16 years and for the second time ever :). I have greeted everyone saying "6-1!" this morning. As you can tell I am really excited.

That being said, I know that not all are into sports and even if they are they are not necessarily into ice hockey. I, on the other hand, started figure skating at the age of six and continued skating untill I turned 15. I love ice. I love skating. And lets be honest, I did kind'a appreciate the good looking ice hockey players who usually came to the ice after our time was over. Hence, I have a deep rooted appreciation of ice hockey. When it is played well it is highly entertaining. Moreover the lion team was really, really good this year and they richly deserve this win.

Just wanted to express my joy here, too, in addition to FB. In about a few days I might have something more to say on the subject, or then, not. Maybe it is ok not to overanalyze things and just be glad :). Here's what a friend had written a little before the game started. I whole heartedly agree.

Mother's Day sermon

2011-05-10T12:51:00.002+03:00

This one was a hard one to write. When you know that there will be people who have not been able to have children or who have lost their child you cannot just write a sermon to celebrate motherhood without aknowledging the pain and loss there is. I don't know if I managed what I wanted which was to try to offer a new perspective.

It was in fact something new I realized about God when writing this. To me the fact that God is a Parent and the fact that this really means that parenthood is something inherent in us was and is a new way of looking at our calling as Christians and at life itself.

This was and is important to me and my hope is that it was and is to at least some who heard or now read this sermon, too.

Jesus and Peter

When Jesus and his disciples had finished eating, he asked, "Simon son of John, do you love me more than the others do?"] Simon Peter answered, "Yes, Lord, you know I do!"

"Then feed my lambs," Jesus said.

Jesus asked a second time, "Simon son of John, do you love me?"

Peter answered, "Yes, Lord, you know I love you!"

"Then take care of my sheep," Jesus told him.

Jesus asked a third time, "Simon son of John, do you love me?"

Peter was hurt because Jesus had asked him three times if he loved him. So he told Jesus, "Lord, you know everything. You know I love you."

Jesus replied, "Feed my sheep. I tell you for certain that when you were a young man, you dressed yourself and went wherever you wanted to go. But when you are old, you will hold out your hands. Then others will wrap your belt around you and lead you where you don't want to go."

Jesus said this to tell how Peter would die and bring honor to God. Then he said to Peter, "Follow me!"

Today is Mother’s Day in many countries including Finland; something my mother always really disliked. If I remember right it had something to do with the fact that she was a mother every day of the year and she didn’t like the idea that the other 364 days then would not count for anything. As she sadly passed away already 12 years ago I can’t check with her about details of her reasoning but I think this is how it went and I understand her point of view.

I did, however, ignore her complaints and gave her presents and a card anyway. Because the thing is that, from my perspective – and I am now a mom myself - Mother’s Day really is not about mothers and neither is Father’s Day about fathers. I think it is about children. And I think that this is how it should be and that it is a really good thing, too.

I think it is important to teach children about the joy of giving and the joy of doing something nice for another person. With very small children it is understandable that it starts with their parents or caretakers how ever the case may be.

My daughter is now three and just starting to understand about gifts and cards. Mainly from the point of view wanting to have them but a couple of times I have gotten to see the timid joy and pride on the face of her when she presents someone else or me with her gift. And that moment is precious beyond words.

I would not want to change those moments for anything in the world. I want her to have that feeling. I want her to always want to be a giver. I want her to realize just how wonderful it is to make another person smile and happy. I want that for all children in the world. In fact, I want that for everyone in the world.

But I understand - better than you might think - how a Mother’s day like many other days that emphasize family can bring hurt. When you haven’t children even though you dearly wanted to have them, when your own childhood has been something that scarred you and you just want to forget everything that had to do with your family, when you have lost your child or children Mother’s day and Father’s Day can bring such great sadness with them.

The solution could be to not to celebrate them but, I think, these days bring such joy to the mothers, grandmothers and great grandmothers - and fathers - of the world that it would be a pity. Also, the thing is, that even in the midst of my grief for loosing my mother I personally did want there to be a Mother’s day. I wanted to go pick flowers for her and to take them to her grave. I wanted to be reminded. I wanted to show my respect, love and thankfulness for her and I was thankful for a day when this was and is done by all here in Finland and in many other parts of the world, too.

Having said that, I do also think there is a need for us to find other ways of looking at celebrating Mother’s Day. As Christians we have a Heavenly Parent, we have God. We are used to talking about Him as the Father, this is how Jesus referred to Him, but God is first and foremost a Parent. He is as much maternal as he is paternal. He created women and men to be like Him. A mother is as much the image of God as a father is. Neither is more than the other and neither is more than all those who are not parents. The point is quite simply that God’s parenthood is expressed both in feminine and masculine forms and in all of us.

This service is Mother’s Day service and we are called today especially to thank God for His parenthood. In addition, we are certainly also called to thank God for our mothers and grandmothers and their mothers. Without them we would not be here.

But we are also called to thank God for each and everyone of those women - and men - who have been mothers to others by giving nourishment, love, affection, protection, aid and their time irrespective of what their marital status is or of being a parent or not.

Parenthood is God’s quality and therefore, because He created us to be like Him, it is our quality. Weather we have children or will ever have children is in fact not a prerequisite to having the job. Parenthood is our calling as is. It doesn’t mean we all have to love babies, wipe bums, endure sleepless nights or anything of the sort. What it does mean is that we are called to give expression to parenthood in our relationship to the world surrounding us. By that I mean taking responsibility like God, a parent, does, setting boundaries, loving unconditionally, helping those in need and encouraging others.

This is what I think Jesus clearly calls Peter to do in today’s reading. “Feed my lambs, take care of my sheep, feed my sheep.” In other words, be the father of my followers, be the shepherd of my flock.

This sentiment still echoes in the practice of those churches where priests are called Father or even Mother. Admittedly, you’ll always make me giggle if you refer to me as Mother Mia but that’s just me. I can’t help it but Abba’s song Mamma Mia starts ringing in my head.

The fact is that Jesus knew that the church would need leaders. The church would need people who take responsibility and who would be willing to sacrifice a lot - or in Peter’s case everything since he lost his life, too, because of being a Christian, because of being a follower of Christ.

As we grow as Christians God gently leads us to parenthood. It can express itself it a multitude of ways and have nothing to do with children or even necessarily with people but I am certain that this calling is for everyone.

Parenthood in every sense is a tough job, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise even though Peter’s fate is thankfully today quite unlikely – but it is also a rewarding one filled with joy and blessings. And here is my question for you to bonder: What do you think, how does God call you today to parenthood?

Let us pray:

Gracious God,

we thank you for adopting us into your family through the miracle of your grace, and for calling us to be brothers and sisters to each other.

Today, loving God, we pray for our mothers:

• who cared for us when we were helpless

• who comforted us when we were hurt

• whose love and care we often took for granted.

Today we pray for:

• those who are grieving the loss of their mother,

• those who never knew their biological mother, and now yearn for her

• those who have experienced the wonder of an adopted mother's love

• the families separated by war or conflict.

• Lord, give them special blessings.

Keep us united with you and with each other, so that we can be and become all that we are meant to be. Amen.

The news today

2011-05-02T14:08:00.000+03:00

A man is dead. Not a good man but a man who lead others to acts of terror and terrorism all over the world. A bad man. And yet how much better are those who hunted him down and killed him?

I quoted Martin Luther King Jr. whose thoughs I greatly admire in FB. This is the quote:

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.

Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence,

and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction ...

The chain reaction of evil — hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars —

must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation. 1963

He has also said this:

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

I understand hating the dead man. I do. I understand wanting to destroy him, to kill him. But I don't agree. I don't. Not because I am any better myself. If anyone were to touch my loved ones I'd want them punished. I'd want them dead. And yet, to take another person's life, is just wrong. Everything in me says so.

And it isn't just that. What now? The group is not going to go "poof" and disapppear. Now there's a martyr of the highest rank, their leader. Now if ever they will want revenge and destruction. And what will happen after that? More violence.

In a real sense, all life is interrelated. All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.

Entered into our world

2011-05-01T19:11:00.000+03:00

This is today's sermon.

Jesus Appears to Seven Disciples

Jesus later appeared to his disciples along the shore of Lake Tiberias. Simon Peter, Thomas the Twin, Nathanael from Cana in Galilee, and the brothers James and John, were there, together with two other disciples. Simon Peter said, "I'm going fishing!" The others said, "We will go with you." They went out in their boat. But they didn't catch a thing that night.

Early the next morning Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples did not realize who he was. Jesus shouted, "Friends, have you caught anything?" "No!" they answered.

So he told them, "Let your net down on the right side of your boat, and you will catch some fish."

They did, and the net was so full of fish that they could not drag it up into the boat.

Jesus' favorite disciple told Peter, "It's the Lord!" When Simon heard that it was the Lord, he put on the clothes that he had taken off while he was working. Then he jumped into the water. The boat was only about a hundred yards from shore. So the other disciples stayed in the boat and dragged in the net full of fish.

When the disciples got out of the boat, they saw some bread and a charcoal fire with fish on it. Jesus told his disciples, "Bring some of the fish you just caught." Simon Peter got back into the boat and dragged the net to shore. In it were one hundred fifty-three large fish, but still the net did not rip.

Jesus said, "Come and eat!" But none of the disciples dared ask who he was. They knew he was the Lord. Jesus took the bread in his hands and gave some of it to his disciples. He did the same with the fish. This was the third time that Jesus appeared to his disciples after he was raised from death.

The Gospel reading of today comes from the last chapter of the Gospel of John. Here the writer of the Gospel has moved on from the wonder and awe of Jesus’ resurrection to encounters in which the disciples are brought to faith in the risen Lord and to the story of today.

The story starts with disciples who have returned to Galilee. You get the feeling that the disciples are sort of just sitting around, unsure of what to do until Peter decides that he wants go fishing and the others tag along; Probably happy to have something useful to do.

Some see this act as "aimless activity undertaken in desperation" and others even as abandoning the Lord and returning to their former life. Others think they went fishing simply because they needed to eat.

The point is, I think, that Peter and the others are doing what is right in their own eyes. The disciples do not know what to do, so they do that which is necessary, and in taking this initiative they put themselves in a place where Christ meets them.

Experienced Christians will say this to you; when we are uncertain what to do we should simply do the next thing that comes our way, in other words our duty, and God will guide.

The essential point being, I think, that you DO something.

Many of us when we are uncertain get mentally paralyzed. We seem unable to do anything if we cannot be sure it is what we should be doing. This applies as much to our everyday life as to our spiritual life – which of course, in fact, are the same thing, but I’ll return to that in a little bit.

In our spiritual life what often happens is that in our eagerness to do God’s will (or if we’re honest in our eagerness to be perfect) we fall into the trap of trying to elevate ourselves to where we cannot go nor should try to get to.

Jesus entered into our world. Entered into our world. This is how our God is. Jesus came to be with us in exactly where we are. God comes after us! Not in a scary way but to rescue us. To help us. To bring us home. God came and comes after us. To where we are. This is why there really is no difference between our everyday life and spiritual life. All that is, is part of the spiritual.

Therefore it so often feels that to be in God’s presence really only is about opening our eyes and seeing Him here right beside us.

My point then? Life is beautiful, mysterious and holy just as it is. We are beautiful, mysterious and holy as we are. And both life and we are beautiful, mysterious and holy because we are made by and resemble our Creator, God.

We are called to become present in our lives because it is in the present we encounter God. This is the mystery of God who became flesh.

To do ones duty, to do the next thing does not necessarily mean immediate change to our uncertainty, though. That night on the lake the disciples catch nothing. They have done what they thought was the right thing but experience utter failure.

It is only in the early morning when the turning point comes like the dawning of spiritual light.

Jesus is described as simply standing there on the beach, without a description of his arrival on the spot. The disciples are not able to recognize Jesus at first. In especially John’s Gospel this repeatedly comes up. There was something different about Jesus' body. The writer stresses both the continuity and discontinuity of Jesus' body.

After asking the disciples weather they have caught any fish and getting the response “No.” Jesus tells them to let their net down on the right side of their boat. Although they have not recognized Jesus yet the disciples do not take this as an idle suggestion of a bystander but do in fact follow His orders. And, when they obey, the amount of fish is so great the disciples cannot get the net into the boat because it is so heavy.

When God provides He provides in abundance. At the wedding in Cana the amount of wine was extraordinary and the same applies to the amount of bread and fish at the feeding of the five thousand. And in all these God is again right smack in the middle of life as it is.

Many commentators see these fish as symbolic of the missionary work of the disciples, similar to Jesus' original call, "Come, follow me . . . and I will make you fishers of men" which is incidentally missing from John’s Gospel. The symbolism may be there but the primary point seems to be Jesus' lordship. And then also the fact that only by being obedient to him our labour will truly be fruitful.

Earlier, Mary recognized Jesus when he called her name, and the disciples recognized him through his wounds. Now he is recognized through the abundance of the fish.

This time it is the Beloved Disciple who discerns the identity of the stranger on the shore. If it had been Peter there’s good reason to suspect he would have thrown himself into the sea straight away.

The landing is told from the point of view of the Beloved Disciple and the other five disciples. What the disciples notice as they step ashore is a charcoal fire with bread and fish already prepared. The Lord has breakfast ready for them.

I do not know about you, but this touches me very deeply. It takes a long time to burn wood to the point of charcoal since just getting ready made charcoal to reach a heat one desires takes time. It is so touching to think that Jesus had been there - possibly hours - preparing this fire and food for His discipels. And it isn’t just that. It is that He had cooked! Since I am a woman I have to say there is just something about a man who cooks. Seriously, though, the truly touching part is the fact that He cared and cares and knew that the disciples would be starving after working hard all night. He knew and He knows.

Taking care of our bodies, making sure we eat and rest enough is not a secondary thing. It is equally important as prayer and worship. We are not to think our bodies as being less important. This is what incarnation teaches us and this is what Jesus keeps on teaching His disciples after His resurrection.

After inviting them to come and eat, Jesus himself comes to the fire. He took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish. This description echoes his action at the feeding of the five thousand. It answers the unasked questions of the disciples. The master serves them.

John concludes the story by saying, This was now the third time Jesus appeared to his disciples after he was raised from the dead. If you’d go back to your Bible and check you would notice that this is in fact the fourth appearance recounted by John. However, it seems, John is counting appearances to the disciples as a group, which would not include Jesus' appearance to Mary Magdalene which is one of the four encounters.

Some important characteristics of God manifest themselves in this reading: His lordship, his servanthood, his character as gracious giver of abundance and his love. Jesus meets his disciples at a point of failure and reveals himself as the Lord of all creation who cares for them.

Fellowship at breakfast ties in with the feeding of the five thousand but it of course also brings echoes of the Eucharist. This early morning breakfast at the beach embodies a central aspect of what Eucharist is about - communion with the risen Lord in the midst of his people. And I wish I had realized this sooner but would it not have been the best way to celebrate this Sunday to go early in the morning to Ruissalo and have communion together by the sea shore?

Happy Easter!

2011-04-23T20:00:00.001+03:00

Photo from http://www.christianphotos.net/

Christ is risen!

May this Easter be filled with

love,

joy

and happiness

for you all.

I know this is a bit early but within an hour I head off to the church and will be back around 4 a.m. from midnight mass and the meal following it and I really wanted this entry to be there ready and waiting when midnight comes :).

The OT reading for Holy Week's Wednesday

2011-04-20T10:48:00.000+03:00

Isaiah 49:1-6 (Contemporary English Version)

The Work of the LORD's Servant

1 Everyone, listen,
even you foreign nations
across the sea.

The LORD chose me
and gave me a name
before I was born.

2 He made my words pierce
like a sharp sword
or a pointed arrow;
he kept me safely hidden
in the palm of his hand.

3 The LORD said to me,
"Israel, you are my servant;
and because of you
I will be highly honored."

4 I said to myself,
"I'm completely worn out;
my time has been wasted.
But I did it for the LORD God,
and he will reward me."

5 Even before I was born,
the LORD God chose me
to serve him and to lead back
the people of Israel.
So the LORD has honored me
and made me strong.

6 Now the LORD says to me,
"It isn't enough for you
to be merely my servant.
You must do more than lead back
survivors from the tribes of Israel.
I have placed you here as a light
for other nations;
you must take my saving power
to everyone on earth."

Vaalien jälkeen

2011-04-19T12:30:00.000+03:00

Tommi Himberg kirjoitti blogiinsa selviytymisoppaan vaalien jälkeen. Kannattaa lukea. Se löytyy täältä.

"Female Ministry; or, Woman's Right to Preach the Gospel"

2011-04-05T13:26:00.000+03:00

"In short, "there is no end to the errors in faith and practice which have resulted from taking isolated passages, wrested from their proper connections, or the light thrown upon them by other Scriptures, and applying them to sustain a favourite theory." Judging from the blessed results which have almost invariably followed the ministrations of women in the cause of Christ, we fear it will be found, in the great day of account, that a mistaken and unjustifiable application of the passage, "Let your women keep silence in the Churches," has resulted in more loss to the Church, evil to the world, and dishonour to God, than any of the errors we have already referred to.

And feeling, as we have long felt, that this is a subject of vast importance to the interests of Christ's kingdom and the glory of God, we would most earnestly commend its consideration to those who have influence in the Churches. We think it a matter worthy of their consideration whether God intended woman to bury her talents and influence as she now does? And whether the circumscribed sphere of woman's religious labours may not have something to do with the comparative non-success of the gospel in these latter days. "

Catherine Mumford Booth.

Catherine Booth, along with her husband William Booth, founded the Salvation Army in England in 1865. The article this quote comes from was originally published in London in 1859 under the title Female Teaching and republished in 1861. An edited less confrontational version was published 1870 under the title Female Ministry, which is the version that is the source for the quote. You can read the whole article here.

The thing that saddens me is that we seem to not have come particularily far when it comes to the reasoning behind opposition to women as pastors or leaders of any sort within Christian churches. Other - huge - steps have of course come about but we seem to be stuck when it comes to theology and the logic with which the Bible is being interpreted.

I personally love the fact that the Bible is so multilayered and incommensurable :). God is, too. And humans, as well. Preaching might on occasion be easier if the Bible were simpler and less contradictory but as it is, it isn't, and I do not, for that matter, think it is so by mistake.

Incommensurability and understanding the Bible

2011-03-30T13:37:00.002+03:00

The following is from: The Inclusive God, Reclaiming Theology for an Inclusive Church by Steven Shakespere & Hugh Rayment-Pickard, Canterbury Press 2006.

The Inclusive Bible

"What people tend to mean when they say 'You don't take scripture seriously' is 'I don't agree with you'." (p 14)

"A useful word in contemporary philosophical theology is 'incommensurability', meaning the inability to reduce a complex structure, or complex ideas, down to a single substance or simple components. As serious readers of the Bible, we should notice and respect the incommensurability of scripture. For example; the methodology of the New Testament is theological pluralism: we are offered four separate Gospels and a host of other texts, all written for different audiences. The very structure of the New Testament reveals a theological practice which values differences: differences in voice, inflection, genre and interpretation. If we are to respect scripture properly, we must take these differences seriously and understand what the richness and complexity of this assembly of texts is revealing to us. (p 14-15)

"The proper response to the incommensurability of scripture is what we could call 'hermeneutic humility', by which we mean that all interpretation of scripture is provisional and is made in the knowledge that many other, equally serious, interpretations are possible. Indeed, since the reading of scripture is always made from the point of view of readers located in different times and cultures, the ongoing interpretation of the bilbical texts is necessarily open-ended. When we reach an understanding of scripture we must realize another person may already have, or is about to have, an interpretation that does not fit with ours. This pluralism of texts and interpretations is, of course, blindingly obvious. But nevertheless the Church has still struggled to acknowledge it." p 15

"The reduction of scriptural truth to a set of doctrinal propositions is an act of vandalism on the biblical tests. Although this approach is very often held up as the mark of those who take the Bible 'seriously', it is in fact the work of those who take dogma seriously and are prepared to do whatever it takes to press scripture into the service of a particular church's doctrines. We only need to survey the history of the Christian denominations to see that those who claim to be taking scripture 'seriously' can reach quite different conclusions." p 15

"The Bible is a multi-document archive that cannot be reduced to a single theological message - although the churches have certainly tried hard enough down the ages to bring about such a reduction. All the while, scripture has remained stubbornly incommensurable..." p 16

"...the Church is a community in discussion about its classic texts and persons. This discussion is already well underway and has 2,000 years of wisdom, and error, under its belt. But it is not over. The conversations and arguments about the essence of Christianity are still a work continually in progress." p 17

Amen

2011-02-15T11:08:00.000+02:00

When in doubt pull out the commentary. Last Sunday's readings were pretty dramatic and I seldom end a sermon with "amen" but with this one it felt like the thing to do :).

As is the case with every sermon this is just one way of responding to the readings but I do hope and pray it's content wasn't annoyingly obvious. I myself ended up enjoying studying the subject very much :).

“D.A. Carson, a New Testament scholar, begins his commentary on Matthew 24 with the following words: "Few chapters of the Bible have called forth more disagreement among interpreters than Matthew 24 and its parallels in Mark 13 and Luke 21.”

No wonder why; earthquakes, wars, starvation, running to the hills for safety and so on. Those of us who have seen our fair share of movies can vividly imagine what Jesus is describing and all of it is extremely frightening.

Then thing is, though, that if you look at the history of humankind - our own time included - what Jesus describes has happened time and time again and things far worse than them. There hasn’t been any shortage of people who claim to have secret knowledge. False prophets of all kinds have always been around. Not perhaps that many claiming to be Messiah but others, yes.

Now, the temple Jesus was talking about - the one He loved and the one which was at the same time the ultimate symbol of religious power - was destroyed the year 70. It was renowned for its beauty even throughout the Roman world; Israel had traditionally viewed the temple as invincible. Jesus, however, here tells it isn’t and it wasn’t.

Jesus prophecy of the destruction of the temple is the background for the rest of the chapter. For the first it must have come as a shock to the disciples that what they thought to be invincible and what was extremely important for the Jewish nation would be destroyed. For the second they were waiting for Jesus to make His move and declare Himself as the Messiah. They were yet to grasp the kind of kingship Jesus was headed to and they were expecting Him to become a great ruler who will free the land from the oppression of Rome.

As a result, two things get mixed up here: the answer to the question of what will happen when the day comes and the temple will be destroyed and then the answer to the second question of Jesus’ coming. The problem and source of confusion was that the disciples thought that these were going to follow each other They were hoping to be given information, a sign, only they would know so that when Jesus would make His move they’d be ready. They probably thought that Jesus would then and there take the mantle of messiahship and inaugurate the kingdom of God in all its power. For them the destruction of the Temple would have been the same as the end of the world.

It’s good to remember that Jesus is responding to the questions of the disciples rather than instigating a discussion about the days to come. He had started to tell them about what was about to happen to Him and the questions of the disciples are follow-up to this; except that they go in a way too far ahead. Because the disciples do not understand that Jesus’s kingship is not the kind they are expecting they do not really understand what they are discussing. And yet Jesus tries to explain and to warn.

In case you noticed and wondered about why Sabbath was mentioned it has to do with the fact that Jews were not allowed to take long walks during Sabbath and even at a time of war or when attacked they would not run to the hills for safety for fear of being condemned by religious authorities.

Much of the reading today has to do with the destruction of the temple and does not in other words refer to the entire world or Jesus’ second coming. I made that mistake when I first read today’s passage (out of context). The result boarderlined the absurd. I could not help but wonder just how it would help anyone if the entire world started running to the hills on the day Jesus comes back. I have read my Bible through and I ought to have known better but alas, I wasn’t thinking.

In actual fact, people probably did run to the hills when Jerusalem was invaded the year 70. People ran for safety like all people of all ages have when faced with danger. Like we will if there ever is a similar situation in our lives – and I do pray there won’t be one.

But the second coming part then. If you continue reading chapter 24 you will come to this verse: “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father."

Accepting this point clears up a lot of confusion about chapter 24. It tells us that Jesus was not meaning to prophesy about the specific time of "the end" or of his return, since he himself did not know when it would be. Matthew 24 was to be a lesson in spiritual awareness, not awareness of world events nor a "when" prophecy. To repeat, Jesus could not have been prophesying about when "the end" would happen. He didn’t know when it would occur.

This seems to be a difficult lesson to learn. After Jesus’ resurrection, the disciples still pressed Him on the matter. They asked: "Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?" (Acts 1:6). Again, Jesus told them: "It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority".

Despite Jesus' clear teaching, many throughout the centuries have repeated the mistake of the apostles. Many have made calculations of all sorts about when "the end" comes, and have almost always said it would be "very soon" with the unfortunate end result of people panicking and making sometimes just plain absurd and sadly, on occasion, tragic decisions.

Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed. Future times were characterized by violent persecution of Christ’s followers and terrible tribulation in Judea but what we cannot and should not forget is that it is from this the church – the now worldwide Christian church we belong to - was born. It is incredibly sad that the response of human kind to God’s love has been filled with so much violence. Weather there will be more of it we cannot know but with the words of the same D.A. Carson I mentioned in the beginning our calling is to: “Live responsibly, faithfully, compassionately, and courageously while the Master is away." That’s all we can do, but in itself it is plenty. And, remember that you, each and every one, are first and foremost beloved by God. There is nothing to be afraid of.

Amen.

It was a dark and stormy night

2011-01-31T10:12:00.000+02:00

Yesterday's service was a family service. Hence the sermon. Writing a sermon that would, God willing, speak to all age groups is really hard but it is also very interesting. What you try to do is to find a way to put into a simple sentence something of real essence and importance. Wheater I succeeded you are the ones to judge but what I find especially rewarding is the prosess of trying to get there.

I think that the way I write sermons to grown ups has started to be affected by this process and in a good way. I don't, at all, want to oversimplify anything but I do think that the gospel, the good news, is something also a child is able to grasp especially once we get down to the very core of things such as the fact that God is love. In fact, more often than not children seem to get things better than us adults :).

It had been a long, long day of teaching people. Jesus was tired and he knew his disciples were tired, too. So he sent his disciples to go on ahead of him to the other side of the Sea of Galilee by boat. After that he sent the people who had been listening to him all day home, too.

Even though Jesus was tired he didn’t leave yet but instead he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone.

The boat, where Peter and all the other disciples were, was already a long way from land. It was being pounded by the waves because the wind was blowing against it. Everyone was tired and some could even sleep but all knew that the winds were heavy and they needed to stay alert to make sure they would be safe.

Early in the morning, after a very long night it felt, Jesus went out to the disciples. He walked on the lake, on the water.

When his disciples saw him walking on the lake they were terrified. "It's a ghost!" they said. And they cried out in fear.

Right away Jesus called out to them, "Be brave! It is I. Don't be afraid."

Peter then said: "Lord, is it you? If it is, tell me to come to you on the water." This was just like Peter by the way. Always going head on to everything.

Jesus said to Peter just this one word: "Come."

And, so Peter got out of the boat. He walked on the water toward Jesus. He must have felt so proud of himself and also very surprised when he realized he actually could walk on water.

But then Peter realized how much the wind blew and he got afraid. With that he began to sink and he cried out to Jesus, "Lord! Save me!"

Jesus reached out his hand right away and caught him. "Your faith is so small!" he said. "Why did you doubt me?"

When they climbed into the boat, the wind died down. Then those in the boat worshiped Jesus. They said, "You really are the Son of God!"

When all of us were much smaller - with the exception of one :) (our youngest congregation member present is only couple of months old) - there was a time when we took our very first steps and our parents were very very excited for us. Many times what would happen would be that we’d take a step or two and the minute we noticed we were actually moving we’d fall down. As long as we concentrated on where we were going we were doing fine but when we took our eyes from it we’d fall.

Our relationship to God is like that, too. He calls us too look at Him, to concentrate on Him in everything we do and are. When we don’t things start to go wrong, not quite as immediately as for Peter, but nonetheless. But the wonderful news, the good news, the great thing is that the minute we turn our eyes back to Him, He is there and He will always always be.

Remembering our baptism

2011-01-17T13:07:00.000+02:00

I'm sorry it's taken a week to get the sermon of Sunday before last here in this blog. But here it is. The theme was The gift of baptism and my sermon included the liturgy for remembering our baptism.

Baptism is the foundational event that brings us into the community of faith and gives us our identity as God’s people. Drawing from my own denomination Martin Luther regularly reminded people that baptism was the beginning of something that takes a lifetime to complete.

Today will remember our own baptism. This is why the baptismal font has been lifted in the front of the altar. Also as a part of the liturgy of remembering our baptism we will say our creed together at this time and not afterwards.

Remembering our baptism can be an important source of comfort and strength as we struggle with values in the world that are opposed to life in Christ. Because we are baptized we are "in” and “not of" this world. Our primary citizenship is in the kingdom of God.

When we are baptized we do not become solitary Christians, but we are baptized into a community of faith that is part of a communion of saints that spans space and time.

And, so:
On this day we recall God’s saving acts through water. We remember Christ’s baptism, and we claim and remember our own.
We gather at this font of living water to celebrate God’s ever-flowing redeeming grace.
We long to draw ever deeper from the well of God’s mercy.
We celebrate the Spirit with us—
refreshing, renewing, making us one.
We thank you, God, for the gift of creation
called forth by your saving Word.

Before the world had shape and form,
your Spirit moved over the waters.
Out of the waters of the deep, you formed the firmament
and brought forth the earth to sustain all life.

In the time of Noah you washed the earth
with the waters of the flood,
and your ark of salvation bore a new beginning.

In the time of Moses, Aaron, and Miriam,
your people Israel passed through the Red Sea waters from slavery
to freedom
and crossed the flowing Jordan to enter the promised land.

In the fullness of time you sent Jesus Christ
who was nurtured in the water of Mary’s womb.
Jesus was baptized by John in the water of the Jordan,
became living water to a woman at the Samaritan well,
washed the feet of the disciples,
and sent them forth to baptize all nations by water and the Holy Spirit.

water is poured in the baptismal font
Bless by your Holy Spirit, gracious God,
this water that by it we may be reminded
of our baptism into Jesus Christ
and that by the power of your Holy Spirit
we may be kept faithful until you receive us at last in your eternal home.

Together we stand up and confess our faith to you with the words of the Apostolic creed.
I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died and was buried;
he descended to the dead.
on the third day he rose again;
he ascended into heaven,
he is seated at the right hand of the Father,
and he will come to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting.
Amen.

I now invite you to come forward to this baptismal font.
Place your hands in the water. Touch your forehead or face with the water of life—remembering that you belong to God and you are beloved.
(At the end) Let us pray:

Eternal God, you have come to us in Jesus Christ,
given us a new birth by water and the Holy Spirit,
and forgiven all our sins, bless us now with your eternal grace.
Keep us faithful to our Savior Jesus Christ, forever and ever. Amen.

Wandering

2011-01-04T09:00:00.000+02:00

I did this weird thing last Sunday and sent the congregation to explore the main church (our chapel is to the left of the entry hall of the Cathedral and not connected to the main nave at all). From the sermon you can read my logic with this. I think it was a good thing :).

The House of the Lord

Traditionally the reading for this Sunday is the story about Jesus in the Temple when He was 12 years old. What the lectionary says is this: As the child of Christmas grows He searches for the secret of His calling. The Christian congregation encounters Jesus when it gathers to church, to God’s house.

There (or rather here) we thank and praise God for His mighty acts together with the saints and angels in Heaven. In church the congregation also finds its own calling and tasks. Service and serving each other belong together.

Our OT reading on Samuel and Eli places them in the Temple and the Gospel reading does the same when it tells that Jesus was walking in Solomon’s Porch, a part of the temple. The Temple Festival was most likely Hannukkah, the festival of dedication of the second temple by the Maccabees. I’m tempted to tell more about Hannukkah but that would be digressing so let us get back to the main point.

The Temple was something Jesus very much loved. He returns there often in the Gospels and He refers to it as His Father’s house. It was very different from our churches since the area was vast and there were courts of different kinds surrounding it. It was more like, for lack of a better word, a fortress.

For us, however, the place of worship is called a church. And the one we are in is the national shrine of Finland. It was dedicated in the year 1300 and was until reformation came around a Roman catholic church.

One of the things I find heart warming about today’s readings is the love of the temple there is. I have been taught that loving the place itself is not the point but loving God. That is of course exactly right but that has meant that I have felt a little guilty about the way I feel about this Cathedral here.

You see, I love this Cathedral from the bottom of my heart. This church here is where I was baptised and ordained a minister. This is where I came to services after I had been confirmed and faith had become a part of my everyday life. This Cathedral is home to me; to the extent that if something drastic happens this is where I want to be if at all possible.

I absolutely love that Jesus seems to have had a similar feeling towards the temple, His Father’s House. For me, there is something about a place that has been dedicated to God and prayer for over 700 years.

And now good people I am about to send you out to the main church to experience it first hand. A typical sermon usually relies on your capacity to concentrate and then basically to listen. Today I will send you out there to listen but also to see, touch and inhale the soft dusty air of the Cathedral.

As you walk around there you can use your time to pray if you want to, or you can look for that something that speaks to your heart most powerfully about how God is - be it the high ceiling reaching up to the heavens, or the adorable paw prints in the Mayor’s Chapel – or you can find a comfortable spot and let this holy place serve you with it’s ancient walls and love of God.

In case you’re wondering why this is the reason: we are called to serve. In order to know how to serve we are called to be served, by God, by the Holy Spirit. A church is a place of service a place where God serves us. That’s why.

When it is time – in about five minutes or so - to head back to our own little chapel here I will ring this little bell. It is a sound familiar to all Roman Catholic Cathedrals because the sound of a bell has been and is used to indicate the transformation of the wafer in the body of Christ.

When everyone is back we’ll quite simply stand up together to confess our faith with the very old words of the Apostolic creed.

But now, go, explore God’s house.

"the thing about flesh is it forces you to cry"

2010-12-29T13:05:00.000+02:00

Martin Wroe writes about the body and God. Beware you might find this pretty outrageous - or then again - maybe not at all. The original text can be found at Ship of Fools.

what colour are you God
and what are your vital statistics
what's your body like
any disabilities, distinguishing characteristics
would we spot you in a crowd
transfixed by your looks... or some deformity
do you have five senses like us
or do you make sense of everything

your handshake,
is it firm as a vice or slippery as an eel,
blue eyes or brown,
overweight or undernourished
and your breath,
does it smell of life
or of garlic

if the Word was made flesh
are you flesh of our flesh
bone of our bones
is that you there, meek and mild
meanly wrapped in swaddling clothes
is that you Baby J, Word of the Father
(and Mother, and Sister and Brother)
now in flesh appearing
screaming as you arrive
like the rest of us
screaming at the shock of the new
the shock of the cold and the old and the broken

is that you Baby J
landing abruptly in now
all the way from forever and ever amen
slipping clumsily from between a Virgin's legs
covered in blood and gunge and straw
when moments before you were covered in glory
tied to life by a fragile cord
sucking on a breast as if existence depended on it
what a come down...

still,
at least you had an audience
cows was it, a goat or two
did they look on in awe and wonder
were the cattle lowing musically
or were they a stinking racket
little Lord Jesus no crying he makes
that doesn’t ring true
the thing about flesh is it forces you to cry
to prove you’re alive
who is he in yonder stall
at whose feet the shepherd's fall
maybe they just tripped,
in the dark like the rest of us,
maybe they recognised you up close
knew that was you, in the flesh
maybe they were just baffled by the cosmic night patterns
hypnotized by the funny star

and did the flesh inconvenience, annoy
anger you, like it does
the rest of us, your fleshy inventions
did your nose run green
your skin itch, flake or bruise red
breath catch from asthma
chest tighten in fear
in this murky, stale world

and later on, what did you do about your desires
you know, the carnal ones
when your imagination bypassed your moral compass
and, here’s a thing,
apart from the public movement,
mountains into the sea, water into wine,
where did you go for your private movements
are there supernaturally fertile plants there today
never barren, perpetually productive
with roots for miles, branches into the heavens
or are those divine squatting places
where you felt quite a lot lower than the angels
(wiping your bum with leaves)
like every other place, where folks did their business
no horticultural miracle for eternal memento

and when you were at the end of your considerable wit,
when it was all going wrong
your friends misunderstanding, losing interest, wandering off
when the spirit was willing
but your flesh as weak as ours
did you wonder why
you got into this body business
swapping everywhere in general
for somewhere in particular
flesh is limited, cumbersome,
awkward
can’t be in more than one place or time
did you feel trapped in that frame
resent the restrictions of the corporeal
when you were incarnate
could you recall being outcarnate

and did the flesh also exhilarate and excite
did you run and laugh and kiss
sweat and wrestle and fall in love
and if you longed to be more
were you also grateful to live
on earth

as flesh
one of us
little, weak and helpless
tears and smiles like us he knew
and he feeleth for our sadness
and he shareth in our gladness

how's the old body now
do you wear a halo
or a crown
is it of gold
or of thorns
are there marks on your palms still
blood on the side of your shirt ?
here’s to the body God
for ordinary miracle in skin and blood
putting flesh on the bones of our skeletal lives
embodying a dream of how life might be lived

flesh is all we have
but now you know
that
flesh is not all we are

Christmas column

2010-12-20T10:37:00.000+02:00

I wrote this column for Kirkko ja me paper in early December (which is when the deadline for last week's paper was). In the paper there are two mistakes which are corrected here. In the end two blessings had merged into one and not very well (my bad for not triple checking - I did double check). And then the second one which is that if you've red your Bible (I have, though) you know that Joseph married Mary before Jesus was born but I had written husband-to-be! Goodness! This is what happens when the texts of the Sunday are in your mind when you are writing something else which will be in the future. But, oh boy! It seems to me I've made too many plunders these past weeks and I sincerely apologize for all of them.

Have a blessed blessed last week before Christmas! :)

Touch

Blessed are you, almighty God, our light and our salvation,

to you be all glory and praise for ever!

Lord and lover of humankind,

you sent your Son to earth out of compassion and love,

to shine with your eternal light.

We proclaim him Saviour and Lord,

and praise your goodness and mercy.

We join with all creation in praising you, Lord of heaven and earth,

of all that exists, and is yet to be created.

All honour and praise be to you,

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit:

Blessed be God for ever!

The softness of a baby’s skin. The coarseness of the bricks that make the chapel where we worship. The smooth feel of a candle when you light it. The prickling of the needles of a Christmas tree. The cold breeze of a winter’s night and the warm air when you are back inside.

Touch and feel mean so much. Sometimes they mean everything. For a newborn baby the most important thing there is, is that she is held. For anyone in pain be it physical, spiritual or mental the only thing that helps can sometimes be that someone touches you. Deep inside we are the baby we were and we yearn for touch.

God knew this. God knows this. And I see a parallel here with His plan. He gave us His Son. Someone who was as much a human being as every other human being ever has been. And in His Son He acknowledges our need to touch, our need to be touched, our need to see and feel and hear Him.

The essence of Christianity is in incarnation. It is the most absurd, unthinkable, odd and incredible thing to happen. And yet this is what we believe. We believe that God became man.

I keep coming back to that first night when the baby was born. I try to imagine the smells, the sounds of the night, how everything looked, what Mary was feeling and Joseph. I can imagine how the baby felt in her father’s and mother’s arms, I know exactly how a baby smells, I know the awe and happiness his parents must have felt.

What I can’t imagine, and very much wish I could, are the dark brown eyes – or are they blue for all infants? – of the baby looking at his mother and father. That look must have melted their hearts. That look must have brought them to their knees. How can it not have? God’s pure light shining through them combined with the innocence, the newness of a new born.

God’s love is magnificent. God’s love is pure and powerful. God’s love is incredible. And God’s love is a baby boy in a manger two thousand years ago in the middle of the night born to a very young mother and her husband.

Beneath the heart-stirring starlight of that holy night,

was found in a baby the world's Guiding Light

and in the light was a light for all time,

and in the love, a love for all people.

May His light lead your heart to the sweet gift of His love.

Adapted from a greeting card by Kearas

King

2010-12-07T10:00:00.002+02:00

Here is yesterday's sermon and I can't think anything else to say about it except that it took quite a bit of work to get it going.

Be ready and keep your lamps burning just like those servants who wait up for their master to return from a wedding feast. As soon as he comes and knocks, they open the door for him. Servants are fortunate if their master finds them awake and ready when he comes! I promise you that he will get ready and have his servants sit down so he can serve them. Those servants are really fortunate if their master finds them ready, even though he comes late at night or early in the morning.

You would surely not let a thief break into your home, if you knew when the thief was coming. So always be ready! You don't know when the Son of Man will come.’

Luke 12: 35-40

Your King comes in glory

Your King comes in glory this is the theme. But then the passage, does it describe the arrival of a great King? There’s a master coming from a wedding party – who as he arrives serves his own servants (or even as other translations say, slaves) and the other picture is that of a thief?

The problem with lectionaries is that passages are taken away from their context. It is of course my job to give you the context but the second problem is the way Bible has come to being. The stories of several people remembering different occasions have been collected to create the gospels. There are contradictions and quite simply gaps in them because stories have been placed to follow each other following a logic we today may find hard to understand.

It may very well be that as Jesus was talking about his second coming he used several different images at the same time to describe how it would be. Like in here the master and his slaves and on the other hand thief but it is also possible that these images came from two different occasions.

Therefore I won’t try to force them together. I think that if – and as I said it is as likely – Jesus gave these two images at the same time he didn’t mean them to be overly interpreted but rather as two different ways of seeing the same thing. Just as if you or I were explaining something to our friend such as how it felt in church last Sunday. Two things that are not connected can be true at the same time like that I felt very much at home and I found myself thinking about how much I like skating. Nothing necessarily to do with each other except that they are both your experiences.

So, then lets look at the two images. You’ll notice I’m concentrating on the King and not on the servants here, quite simply because the theme of waiting from the perspective of those who wait was the theme one Sunday ago. But I will come back to it, too.

Back to this Sunday then, the master has been to a wedding, expects his slaves or servants to be waiting for him, finds them to have done so and then – here’s the twist – he tightens his belt in order to serve his servants. Does this image ring a bell to you? Right. There is the evening, Maundy Thursday evening, when the disciples are to eat together with Jesus and Jesus takes on the job a of a slave and washes their feet.

Last Sunday on it’s turn took as back to Palm Sunday and to the donkey Jesus chose to ride on when he arrived to Jerusalem. Traditionally both these images have been seen to underline how different Jesus was as a king in comparison to the kings of his or any age. But this is where I came to a halt. I don’t live in a kingdom. My point of reference to kings comes from fairy tales and Disney’s kings such as Sleeping Beauty’s worried looking father and the prince’s very funny round father. Do you see my problem?

Not that it is a very big one, though, I do get why the church wants to describe Jesus as the king. Jesus is the king of all of us. He is the ruler of the kingdom of God. He is our king. And his kingship has very little to do with the kings of our world and everything to do with how God is. He is the servant king. Christ is royal and even more importantly holy at the same time as he is willing to offer everything for the sake of mankind. And this is the image we need to remember.

Now then, the other picture or image. A thief, dear me. But in fact here is another parallel to the very last hours of Jesus life on earth. Remember? God’s Son is on the cross and on his both sides there are the thieves. One insults and mocks Jesus and the other one says: “Don’t you fear God? Aren’t you getting the same punishment as this man? We got what was coming to us, but he didn’t do anything wrong.” And then these words “Remember me when you come into power!” To which Jesus replies: “I promise that today you will be with me in paradise”.

Of course, in our passage today, Jesus is talking about the way it will seem like when he arrives - in other words the follow up on what was described in the story of the thieves. He is describing the unexpected nature of the second coming, this time in a much more spectacular way than the first time around.

And here we – finally - come to waiting. As I was thinking about waiting these were the images that came to my mind. Please do not get offended I was only thinking about waiting in general and will then get to the part about waiting for Jesus.

But here’s what I thought:

A dog waiting by the door ready to greet with kisses and hugs.

A child waiting for mommy or daddy to come home and coming running straight to your lap squealing with delight.

Airport, the door to security check opens and your loved one finally comes through.

The amazing moment when the baby is finally in the arms of his/her mother or father.

The long waited Christmas Eve or morning when you were a child.

The day you graduated and then again the very first day of school.

The moment your child takes his first steps.

Birthdays, at first our own and then those we love.

We wait for many things. Many of the most precious moments in life are moments that have to do with the end of waiting for something or someone. They are moments preceded by times of expecting, waiting, getting ready and ultimately about being excited about the imminent arrival of someone or something we value very much.

Whenever Jesus arrives will it be like that for you? Will you be excited, relieved, happy, filled with gratitude and awe? My prayer for you and for myself is that, yes, we will. And you know what, I do think we will. Perfect love takes away all fear. And God is Perfect Love.

Christmas Prayer For Those Who Struggle During Christmas

2010-11-25T11:26:00.000+02:00

I was reminded the other day by my colleague about how hard Advent and Christmas can be because it is so much about family. As I was looking for inspiration to write my column for Kirkko ja me I came accross this prayer. May it be a blessing to all of you who find this time of the year to be hard. May it remind you that many of us with families do know just how hard it can be because we haven't necessarily had a family ourselves for all our lives. And we pray for you adn will be there for you, too.

Father God,

I ask you to come to those whose hearts ache on your Son's birthday.

Although they sincerely thank you for your greatest gift of all --

they are hurting and lonely.

Father, let them know it's ok to express to you the pain and loneliness and frustration in their hearts. Let them know you are listening --

and care.

I pray for those who are single and who have no family --

who spend much of the holidays alone.

Be with them in the lonely hours,

help them not to feel marginalized during this season that places so much emphasis on 'family'.

I pray for those who are housebound and infirm

and are unable to leave their homes or hospital rooms due to illness.

I pray for those with loved ones that are separated

due to work, weather, duty or other circumstances.

I pray for families who are struggling this year,

financially and emotionally.

I pray for desperate spouses who worry over their marriage.

I pray for those children who are frightened and alone,

who are in abusive situations or who sense the worry and frustration that their parents try to hide.

I pray for parents who have children who are ill in body;

ill in mind or

who are addicted to drugs.

Jesus, please come as Immanuel --

God with us.

Jesus, please enter into each place,

each home,

each hospital room,

each homeless shelter,

each hotel,

each jail cell,

each place of business -

let them know they are not alone.

Holy Spirit, come as the Comforter, l

et your gentle, healing warmth sooth and bring solace to aching hearts.

God the Father, come to those without family

and remind them that you are their family.

Show them your heavenly, attentive, fatherly love for them

in a way that they can understand.

I pray this in the name of Jesus --

who knows our sorrows and understands our hearts.

Katherine Walden

http://blessingsofchristmas.com/christmaspraymeals2.html#christmas

Johnin saarna

2010-11-22T10:14:00.000+02:00

Viime viikkojen keskustelussa painavimman sanan sanoi suosikkiarkkipiispani John. Tätä on todellinen teologia. Johnin saarna ei paranna haavoja, jotka rakkaudettomuus ja armottomuus ovat aiheuttaneet, eikä se poista sitä pahaa mieltä, mitä Raamatun - pyhän kirjan - tekstien ottaminen aseeksi on synnyttänyt, mutta ehkäpä se voi olla muistuttamassa meitä jokaista siitä, että kristinuskon ytimessä on sittenkin kaiken kattava rakkaus ja aivan jokaista koskeva armo.

Emeritus arkkippiispa John Vikström
16.11.2010

Oikeudenmukaisuus, laupeus ja uskollisuus

"Siunatkaa älkääkä kirotko!" Nämä Raamatun sanat (Room 12:17) olivat itsenäisyyspäiväsaarnani otsikkona Suomen valtion täyttäessä 80 vuotta. Jossakin lehdessä saarnaa kutsuttiin eläkkeelle siirtyvän arkkipiispan testamentiksi Suomen kansalle. Valmistellessani tuota saarnaa minulla ei ollut näin mahtipontisia visioita, mutta jälkeenpäin ajattelin: Miksi ei?

Saarnassani sanoin muun muassa näin:

"Menneet sukupolvet tässä maassa ovat olleet siunauksen kansaa. Keväällä on pyydetty Jumalan siunausta kylvetyille pelloille. Syksyllä on piirretty risti - siunauksen merkki - viljasäilöihin ja siten kiitetty Jumalaa hänen lahjoistaan. Perheen äiti on tavannut piirtää saman merkin taikinaan muistuttamaan siitä, että leipä on lainaa Jumalalta. Vähässä katekismuksessa kehotetaan joka aamu ja ilta siunaamaan itsensä pyhällä ristinmerkillä. Päivä kaikkine toimineen ulottui siunauksesta siunaukseen, yön lepo samoin - ja myös koko elämä kasteen ristinmerkistä siihen ristiin, joka piirretään arkun päälle. Siunauksen kiertokulku. Siunauksen kansa...

Siunatkaa älkääkä kirotko! Tuleeko kansamme myös tulevaisuudessa olemaan siunauksen kansa, kansa, joka pyytää Jumalalta siunausta, kansa joka siunaa Jumalaa hänen hyvistä lahjoistaan, kansa jonka jäsenet siunaavat toinen toistaan, kansa joka ei riko siunauksen kiertokulkua?"

Näin puhuin silloin. Latinalainen siunausta tarkoittava sana benedictio tarkoittaa hyvän puhumista toisesta. Kiroaminenhan on pahan puhumista.

Jokaisessa kulttuurissa erilaisuuden sietäminen on vaikeaa. On ryhmiä joista puhutaan hyvää, on niitä joista puhutaan pahaa. On niitä joita siunataan ja niitä joita kirotaan. Ja niitä, joista vaietaan. Asetelma on kaikkialla sama, perustelut vain vaihtelevat.

Siinä kulttuurissa, jossa Jeesus Nasaretilainen esiintyi, ihmiset karsinoitiin rituaalisen puhtauden perusteella. Temppelissä oli tätä varten eri esipihoja. Oli miesten esipiha, ulompana vähemmän puhtaina pidettyjen naisten esipiha, uloimpana saastaisten muukalaisten esipiha. Aamurukouksessaan hurskas mies kiitti Jumalaa siitä, ettei hän ole nainen eikä orja eikä myöskään muukalainen. Oli sairauksia, joita pidettiin erityisen saastaisia. Spitaalisten piti huutaa "Saastainen, saastainen, saastainen", jottei kukaan vahingossa tulisi lähelle ja saastuisi, ei vain ruumiillisesti vaan myös hengellisesti.

Tätä syrjivää erottelukulttuuria Jeesus pyrki hajottamaan sen perusteita myöten. Vähempiarvoiset, saastaiset, kirotut hän veti sisälle siunauksen piiriin. Hän siunasi lapset, puhui naisten kanssa, kävi syntisten kodeissa, paransi spitaaliset, asetti väheksytyn samarialaisen laupeuden esikuvaksi.

Tämän vallankumoussanoman apostoli jälkeenpäin tulkitsi näin: "Yhdentekevää, oletko juutalainen vai kreikkalainen, orja vai vapaa, mies vai nainen, sillä Jeesuksessa Kristuksessa te kaikki olette yksi." (Gal 3:28) "Te ette siis enää ole vieraita ja muukalaisia, vaan kuulutte Jumalan perheeseen, samaan kansaan... " (Ef 2:19) Samaan kansaan, saman siunauksen piiriin.

Entä meillä? Kuinka inklusiivinen on meidän kulttuurimme ollut? Kuinka kauan rengit ja piiat saivat odottaa tasa-arvoista asemaa? Entä naiset? Entä romanit, mustalaiset? Maahanmuuttajat? Seksuaaliset vähemmistöt? Ovatko kaikki nämä mahtuneet näkökenttään ja olleet ihmisten mielissä, kun menneinä aikoina on veisattu "Oi Herra, siunaa Suomen kansa"?

Viime päivinä on maassamme ja kirkossamme tarkasteltu seksuaalisia vähemmistöjä tätä taustaa vasten. Jo se, että näitä on käytetty pelinappuloina monenlaisissa peleissä näinä viikkoina, kertoo jo paljon.

Mitä Jeesus olisi sanonut ja tehnyt viime päivinä? Paavi Benedictus XVI - benedictus, siis siunattu - julkaisi muutama vuosi sitten kirjan Jeesus Nasaretilainen. Siinä kirjassa on pari lausetta, joita olen viime viikkoina muistanut ja paljon pohtinut. Paavi kirjoittaa: "Ajatus, että Jumala on luonut jokaisen yksittäisen ihmisen kuuluu Raamatun ihmiskuvaan. Jokainen ihminen on oma yksilönsä ja sellaisenaan Jumalan tahtoma." (s.150)

Yhdyn sydämestäni näihin paavin sanoihin, ja näillä perusteilla haluan nyt sanoa jokaiselle nuorelle, jolla on homoseksuaalinen suuntaus:

Sinäkin olet Jumalan luoma sellaisena kuin olet. 1970-luvulle asti seksuaalista suuntaustasi pidettiin rikollisuuteen johtavana taipumuksena, 80-luvulle asti sitä pidettiin sairautena. Nyt ymmärrämme paremmin mistä on kyse, myös kirkossa. Minäkin. Sinä et ole rikollinen, et sairas, et synnillinen. Sinä kuulut siunauksen piiriin, et kirouksen.

Jumala siunatkoon sinua. Jumala siunatkoon kaipuutasi rakkauteen, toisen ihmisen läheisyyteen ja lämpöön. Sinuakin koskevat Raamatussa olevat siunauksen monet toivotukset - kuten tietysti myös sekä heteroille että homoille osoitetut varoitukset seksuaalisesta irstailusta.

Jos ja kun löydät elämänkumppanin, toivon, että liitollenne on siihen mennessä luotu sellaiset juridiset puitteet, jotka kaikilta osin ovat tasavertaisia miehen ja naisen avioliiton kanssa. Kaksi eri liittoa, rakkauden kaksi eri suuntausta, mutta sama uskollisuus ja sama siunaus, kaikista kaavoista riippumatta. Erilaisuus ei tässäkään tarkoita eriarvoisuutta.

Toivon myös, ettei vain lainsäädäntömme vaan myös mielemme ja kielemme puhdistuisivat tähänastisesta eriarvoistamisesta ja syrjimisestä - ettei homo olisi enää pilkkasana.

Silloin toteutuu se, mikä Jeesuksen omien sanojen mukaan on "laissa tärkeintä" , nimittäin oikeudenmukaisuus, laupeus ja uskollisuus (Mt 23:23) Silloin kuljemme eteenpäin palaamalla siihen, mikä kristinuskossa on alkuperäistä ja aitoa - Jeesuksen toteuttamaan rakkauteen ja inhimillisyyteen.

John Vikström

Keep watch

2010-11-15T10:48:00.001+02:00

Here is yesterday's sermon. I'm not particualarily happy with it because I think I didn't manage to tie in everything so that the sermon would be coherent. Also, it's always a problem if you have issues with the text and I do. I mention them but that doesn't take away the fact that the perspective offered in the other readings of the Sunday is lacking. The other readings talked about God's time and the fact that for Him a thousand years is like a day. But here she is with her flaws and all. Written with love and a desire to give food for thought and nutrition for the soul.

The Parable of the Ten Virgins

“At that time the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish and five were wise. The foolish ones took their lamps but did not take any oil with them. The wise ones, however, took oil in jars along with their lamps. The bridegroom was a long time in coming, and they all became drowsy and fell asleep.

At midnight the cry rang out: ‘Here’s the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!’

Then all the virgins woke up and trimmed their lamps. The foolish ones said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil; our lamps are going out.’

‘No,’ they replied, ‘there may not be enough for both us and you. Instead, go to those who sell oil and buy some for yourselves.’

But while they were on their way to buy the oil, the bridegroom arrived. The virgins who were ready went in with him to the wedding banquet. And the door was shut.

Later the others also came. ‘Lord, Lord,’ they said, ‘open the door for us!’

But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I don’t know you.’

Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.

Keep watch

The theme for this Sunday is in the Lutheran Church of Finland “stay awake” or “stay alert”. This is basically the theme of all of the readings preceding First Advent which is now a Sunday away. The passage choices are preparing a way for the arrival of God’s Son, Emmanuel, God with us.

Today is also Father’s Day. At first glance I thought the theme of this Sunday and the fact that it was Father’s Day were going to make for a difficult equation. Bridegrooms of course do quite often end up as dads but you would be right to say that your pastor hasn’t quite gotten the point of the parable if I took that route. So, I won’t.

However, parenthood does have much to do with expecting and with staying alert. First there’s the period of hoping for a child, then there is the period of expecting the child and then after the baby is born, well, then there are both the challenges of truly staying awake but more importantly of staying alert, keeping an eye on your child or children so that they will be safe. That’s what all daddies and mommies do. That’s what all caretakers do. They keep watch.

Parables
Parables were the way Jesus taught his disciples. He knew that stories are what people remember easiest. The fact that this parable is in the Bible is proof of that. This particular parable has been interpreted to refer to the end of times, to the time when Jesus comes back. The last words “keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour” certainly speak for that interpretation. We are to keep watch so that when Jesus comes we will be ready.

Now, I don’t know about you but I have issues with the phrase “Jesus is coming, are you ready?” I’m quite sure the question whoever came up with it and with the idea of campaigning with it was meant as a loving reminder of the fact that we are called to live lives of expecting Jesus. At least I hope so. However, expecting with no end in sight is in itself challenging. And moreover the problem is of course that for many the question is not a gentle reminder but outright a threat. Something which I think must sadden God.

God's parenthood
This is where I want to turn the tables around a little. God is our Heavenly Father. For those who have bad experiences with their fathers or other males in their lives this particular expression is sometimes very difficult. Weather it helps to call God our Heavenly Parent I’m not quite sure. But that is of course what is meant.

Our New Testament is nearly 2000 years old and in the context of its time calling God our Heavenly Mother would have been quite extraordinary and Heavenly Parent probably would not have entered anyone’s mind.

The basic point is nonetheless that God is a parent. He has a Son; Our Lord, Jesus of Nazareth. It doesn’t end there, either, He is through and because of Jesus also our parent.

God, as our Father, parent, is keeping a watchful eye on us like every caretaker does. Like every caretaker He doesn’t do it to condemn us or to judge us but in order to protect us, guide us and teach us through His Holy Spirit. And sometimes parenting also means that God will intervene and show that we’re on the wrong path.

Breach of etiquette
Now then, back to the parable. This is not the only place where Jesus calls us to stay alert. And if you recall the last days of His life this story comes to life in the drowsy disciples waiting for Jesus in the Garden of Getsemane.

Now in this story the setting is that of a bridegroom’s procession which was a big deal in Jesus time. It was a great honor to be a part of it and it really did usually take part in the night hours. The bridegroom was usually also late and I don’t know about you but I didn’t know weather to laugh or cry when I found out why. The delays were common because the bride's relatives haggled over the value of presents given them telling the groom and his entourage just what a great bride he had chosen.

As a result all ten virgins should have anticipated a long wait. To not have enough light would have been embarrassing to the groom and would have been seen as ruining the whole procession. In other words, to not be prepared meant that you insulted the groom and the bride and all of their relatives as well; a breach of etiquette of the worst kind.

And, then, of course, here is where we come to the part that is difficult for many. As a result the foolish five were not let in because they had failed to do their part.

Brimstone

What I think we should take with us is this: faith needs to be nurtured. Faith, Christian Faith, is among other things also about love and trust. Love grows, trust grows and both are, because they are emotions, something that change. We can either nurture them or then we can do the opposite; that is, to take them for granted. With that latter choice we run the risk of loosing them and this is what I think Jesus is referring to.

But I don’t want to run from the difficult question of hell here either even if what I just said is more my understanding of what this parable is about.

Now, I love Jesus – it hasn’t always been like that, but today that is how it is. I love they way the taught. I love how He encountered people with compassion and at the same time authority. I love what He chose to do for all mankind. I love how human He was and most importantly because of Him we know for certain that God is love.

I even love that Jesus hated sin and evil so much that He got cross and used strong language to condemn its manifestations but in all honesty what I have a hard time with are the passages where there are brimstones, gnashing of teeth and fire and ultimately the threat of hell. Movie makers and other artists love these but, me, not so much.

The question of hell

Ultimately, though, no matter how you react to the passages about hell the basic thing about them is not that we should live our lives in fear of hell. The reason is this; if God is love and this is what Christianity and Jesus most strongly do claim and if perfect love will take away all fear which is what the Bible teaches us as well then fear of hell cannot be what Jesus wants for us.

Hell I guess exists in some way. Weather it means that we encounter it in our lives like we also encounter heaven or weather it means that it is, well, the trash can where everything impure and evil ends up, I don’t know. To say it doesn’t exist seems, however, impossible if you are to stay true to the Bible.

The main point is, though, that whatever hell is, it is not what we are called to obsess about (nothing is) and being afraid of it is not a part of our calling nor is it good for us.

God loves us and moreover He loves so much He sent is Son to die for us. In the creed we say that Jesus “descended to the dead” and “on the third day he rose again”. In my limited understanding not even hell can be the same again when Jesus’ light has burnt there. Therefore the hell Jesus talked about during His time on earth and the hell there possibly is are not necessarily the same thing, but this logic is not without its flaws so feel free to disagree with me, too.

Take watch because of love
Regardless, this is what I think is important: take watch not because of fear but because of love. Take watch because you want to live lives that will give pride and joy not only to God but to your loved ones. Take watch because ultimately our lives are most fulfilling when we are awake and lead lives filled with compassion, love and a desire to serve. So, take watch because of love.

All Saints' Day Intercessions

2010-11-08T14:54:00.001+02:00

Jesus told his disciples not to let their hearts be troubled.

We ask your forgiveness when that is too often the case.
We remember those whose natural inclination is to be troubled.

We pray for all those situations which have the potential to trouble us:
our own health and that of our families
work commitments
economic pressures
world situations including war and climate change
what happens to us and those we love beyond death

Lord we ask you to increase our faith to trust you in all that concerns us - both large and small - to be rightly concerned but not overly troubled.

Lord, hear us. Lord, graciously hear us.

Lord you went back to Heaven to prepare a place for each of us,
and one day we will be there with you.
Deepen our assurance of this truth so that we will not fear as we get older or in poorer health.
Comfort us with the certainty of being reunited with those who have died in faith.

Lord, hear us. Lord, graciously hear us.

Lord for those of us like Thomas who have honest doubts, help us to express them
and find the truth that brings us peace.

Lord, hear us. Lord, graciously hear us.

We thank you for the revelation of God the Father through Christ the Son.
We pray that through our lives- our words and actions - others may see Christ.
In the places we meet others- where we live and work, relax and socialise, at home or on holiday, may people sense the attractive fragrance of Christ and want to know more about Him.

Lord, hear us. Lord, graciously hear us.

In His words and works Christ always glorified the Father.
Help us in the things we say and do in the power of the Spirit to bring glory to God.
Lord, whatever task you have given us within your Church and within our community,
we pray that God will be glorified.

Lord, hear us. Lord, graciously hear us.

Teach us to be those who overcome the difficulties of this world,
and know that in Christ we have peace - peace with God, with others and within ourselves.
Help us to anticipate the day when we shall see Christ in His glory
and find ourselves to be in His image.
The process by which that image is being restored will be complete
and we shall share in the eternal blessings of Heaven

Merciful Father, accept these prayers
for the sake of your Son, our Saviour,
Jesus Christ.
Amen.

Alanis Morissette - Thank You (Video)

2010-10-28T10:47:00.000+03:00

I've heard this song several times driving to work or from work and I love it. Be warned she IS naked although I think at least this video uses pixelisation to cover part of her at the very end of the song.

I didn't expect to be touched by this music video but I was.

Reformation then and now

2010-10-25T10:36:00.000+03:00

I am not going to talk about today’s passage although it’s a really great one (note: it was John 4:46-53). Instead I’ll take you back in history to 1517 and to a man name Martin Luther who also believed, to the extent that well, this Roman Catholic Cathedral is now a Lutheran one.

This is how the story goes:

On the Eve of All Saints, Day, October 31, 1517, Augustinian Father Doctor Martin Luther, professor of Scripture at the University of Wittenberg, Germany posted an invitation to debate on the door of the Wittenberg Cathedral. This marked the beginning of what we call the era of reformation.

Luther’s invitation to debate contained no less than ninety five points, or theses, concerning the sale of indulgences. Luther had cleverly chosen this particular date for posting his theses because the coming holy day would bring many of the community to services. In other words, his statements were sure to receive wide exposure. And they certainly did.

In the preceding months what had happened was, that Archbishop of Mainz had authorized a Dominican Friar, by the name of Johann Tetzel, to sell indulgences. Indulgences were pieces of paper declaring that the deceased person for whom it had been purchased had received total forgiveness of sins and therefore a release from Purgatory.

Now they were to be sold in order to finance the construction of a church, St. Peter’s basilica and that apparently was what broke the camel’s back for Luther.

In order to understand why things went the way they did and why you are now attending a Lutheran service rather than Roman Catholic mass in this church this is the background: As we Lutherans really like to remind our Roman Catholic friends Luther actually began as a faithful son of the Roman Church. It was precisely because of this that, like so many others of his age, he was deeply concerned about his soul's salvation.

Also like many, Luther was extremely frightened that because of his sin the righteous and angry God would cast him into purgatory or hell. Martin Luther seems to have had rather a sensitive nature which seems to have made him remarkably and painfully aware of his sinfulness. That, coupled with his rather impressive knowledge of Scripture, had led him to a growing awareness that he was condemned by God's law and in desperate need of help.

This is how he described it himself:

“I felt that I was a sinner before God with an extremely disturbed conscience... I did not love, yes, I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners, and secretly, if not blasphemously, certainly murmuring greatly, I was angry with God, and said, "As if, indeed, it is not enough, that miserable sinners, eternally lost through original sin, are crushed by every kind of calamity by the law of the decalogue, without having God add pain to pain by the gospel and also by the gospel threatening us with his righteousness and wrath!"”

The word Decalogue refers to the Ten Commandments just in case you haven’t come across it before. In other words, Luther knowing his Bible and the Ten Commandments felt crushed under it’s weight.

What Luther felt to be the response of his church to his agony was to teach that he was to trust in his own love, holiness, and good works. The problem was that this flatly contradicted the teaching of the Bible. It has to be added, though, that this was not exactly the view of the church either, grace did enter the picture in the Roman Catholic Church, as well. However, after intensively studying Paul’s letter to Romans what Luther finally then came to realize was that struggling sinners are directed to Jesus Christ alone and it was “the” revelation to him that changed everything.

What Paul’s letter declares is that Jesus Christ has already paid for all our sins by His death on the cross. And from this follows that to all who put their trust in Jesus Christ alone as Savior, God gives full forgiveness and heaven as a free gift.

Later on this is what theologians then have started to call justification by faith. It simply means that God loves us and saves us not because of who we are or what we do, but because He created us and we are His.

Now, because the 95 theses were a direct continuum from Luther’s theology regarding justification by faith they were also a direct challenge to the Papacy and what was even worst to the economic system enriching the Papal treasury. Thus, the reaction was swift and severe. The Pope initiated proceedings to have Luther tried for heresy; proceedings that very likely would have led to his execution. Luther, however, with the support of the Wittenberg faculty, appealed to elector Frederick III of Saxony for protection and got it, too.

In the years that followed, Martin Luther protested through his preaching, teaching, and writing the teachings of Rome and called for a Reformation of the Church. Luther's desire was never to start a new Church, but simply to restore the Catholic Church to its original purity. As time past, thousands supported Luther's movement, not necessarily because they were supporting Luther the man, but because they agreed with his teachings.

Although Luther did not intend to begin a separate Church, that was the unavoidable consequence of his challenge. By 1530 Germany was divided between communities loyal to the Pope and those following the reforms initiated by Luther. Nowadays there are over 70 million professing Lutherans worldwide.

And this brings us to today. In Finland, during the past week and a half, thousands of members of the Finnish Lutheran Church (around 30 000 people) have left the church as a response to a debate on television about homosexuality. The conservative point of view came across very strongly in the debate and the actual view of the Church not so much. Thus, people who think that condemning homosexuals for their sexual orientation is wrong have left. Mind you not all have left because of this but for most it seems to have been the straw the broke the camel’s back.

In case you wonder in actual fact the Lutheran bishops have agreed that homosexuality is accepted and homosexual unions as well and that these unions should also receive prayer or and this is the big question even perhaps a blessing. No one is ready to call homosexual unions marriage, though, but other than that the bishops no longer agree with the conservative view.

Our church seems now to find itself in a pretty similar situation with how it was when reformation started. The question is still what really is the core message Jesus had for humankind? And what is the good news, the Gospel?

I see it like this: the four gospels include several stories of Jesus encountering and wanting to make contact with people others regarded as impure, criminal or to be condemned. And those encounters were filled with love and acceptance. In our time and in this society this would mean homosexuals, beggars from Romania, Finnish gypsies, people of different color and/or faith, people who have been to jail and so on.

Also, in the gospels there is this little comment about looking first into our own selves before we go judging others and something about casting the first stone…

The good news is - and I’m not making this up this really is is what the church does teach based on the Bible - that God loves us exactly as we are and does not make distinctions. The good news is shat His son died for all sins, all! And the good news is all of this has nothing to do with how we behave or don’t but with God’s own character, God’s “personality” as it were. It is all about grace. It is all about undeserved mercy for all. Absolutely all.

Could we who ultimately are the church, please start living as if this really was true? Because, you know, it is.

I then continued with the prayer which was the in my last post.

Prayer for Reformation Sunday

2010-10-20T15:00:00.001+03:00

Our heavenly Father,

do no let us bury ourselves into the bunkers of this-is-how-it-always-has-been.

Father, give us courage to look for reformation when we’ve become too set in our ways.

Do not let us be too afraid of change.

Father, please give us courage and faith to give room for your Spirit in our lives,
in the lives of our families and, ultimately, in the life of our Church.

And as you do that, please fill us with your love and joy,
so that we could be the salt of the Earth and the light of the World.

In the name of your Son,
our loving Saviour,

Amen.

Insane ideas and lost voice

2010-10-19T12:48:00.000+03:00

One of my nutty colleagues Jussi had this nutty insane idea that pastors on his mailing list would sing a song and our singing would be compiled together for youtube Live Aid like. Since we are all equally nutty and absolutely willing to humiliate ourselves publicly for a good cause this was done yesterday and here it is. We wanted to take a stand for acceptance and love :) since God's love belongs to everyone!

I have no voice these days so you can't hear me pretty much at all but I did my best :). This fall has meant quite a bit of stress and this gets reflux decease really going. As a result I don't have a voice. I love singing so this is in fact something that is making me very sad but I can speak and not loose my voice so that's good. There is, however, a risk that I'll start to loose my voice all together if medication doesn't help and that would mean me not being able to do my job. There is an operation that could help but I do pray it won't have to come to that. We'll see.

By loosing my voice I don't mean I would go dumb but that it would not work for me to speak louder and long like a pastor sort of needs to be able to do. In other words, me thinks I might need to see a doctor one of these days to see what's up. But not this week since it's fall break from schools and even I get to enjoy it with family for three days. One of which is Husband's and mine 4th wedding anniversary :).

Fingerpainting

2010-09-17T13:32:00.000+03:00

I wrote this today for Kirkko ja me for our congregation's column.

We’ve had a rough start to this fall. Our daughter seems to be a virusmagnet and the first month in daycare consisted of three virus and two bacteria infections. Hence, mommy pastor has been away from work much more than she expected and is now in the demanding but also extremely interesting process of coming up with new ways of doing things so that deadlines are met and things are planned so much in advance that they allow me to be away, too, if need be.

And here we come to fingerpainting, believe it or not. I bought the colours to my daughter one day because I thought she might enjoy them and forget the misery of having an ear infection. I didn’t really expect to participate too much but of course I had to. And something wonderful happened: I found that place in me where creativity had hid itself from the critique of others – and myself.

My daughter would draw something and then we would look at it and decide what it looked like. Mommy got to draw a leg here or an eye there and all of a sudden we had a parrot or an elephant or a mushroom and so on and so on. We went on doing this for a very long time and enjoyed it very much.

When I was a child I used to love drawing, like I think most children do, but as years went by I’ve drawn less and less and less. With the arrival of my child I have been drawing for her and I have enjoyed her enthusiasm but it was certainly a big threshold to overcome to start drawing again because I kept thinking just how horribly bad I am at it.

However, the wonderful thing about children is that they don’t judge. For them it’s the greatest thing to look at mommy and daddy draw the simplest things. There is an enormous amount of grace hidden there for us parents. It doesn’t matter how well or badly we draw it is just important that we do draw.

I think this how God looks at us, too. It doesn’t matter how well or badly we do the things He calls us to do it is just important we do them. He will take care of the rest. That is what grace is about.

God is a creator, the Creator. When He created the world He created it from His heart. He looked at it and it was good. When we create something we bring forth something from a place in us that is made the same way. It can be the simplest thing like drawing wings to make a parrot but creating always involves making something that did not exist before.

Creating things can be messy business but that is also the fun part. In the adult world, however, it isn’t always quite that straight forward. There are expectations and deadlines and limitations and a thousand other things that can come in the way. But even so, in the midst of the messiness that is life, something new can come into being every time we stop trying to force things and take a step back and look at the picture from a different angle. A mouse can become a mushroom and, even if you liked doing things the way you did but no longer can, something good and rewarding can come of the fact that you are forced to change.

May the Creator of us all bless you
with all of His creative love
and Spirit
this fall.
Amen.

Julian

2010-09-07T09:41:00.000+03:00

"All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of thing will be well."

Julian of Norwich

Here is a link you might want to check out, too.

Sermon gone missing

2010-08-30T12:47:00.000+03:00

This is unreal. I cannot find yesterday's sermon from my work computer which is where I wrote it. This happened already once at home and that is how I ended up writing one just hours before the service and now I've done it again! Oh dear.
If I have a possibility I will write it - again - here but this week is really busy so I might not get the chance. But I'll try.

Letting people talk

2010-08-25T15:48:00.000+03:00

I did a scary thing Sunday. I let my congregtion speak ;). Just like that :). Seriously, though, I thought it is time for me to start to look for new ways to do sermons. Not to be gimicky but in order to create a possibility for interaction and most importantly to hopefully bring about something new from God. And let me tell you that it was quite wonderful to look at the pondering faces of those attending the service while they considered the question I'd made. I think every speaker, teacher and preacher yearns to see that what you say gets people thinking. We might not arrive to same conclusions but that is ok. We all have different life stories and backgrounds so of course we will see things differently.

I wish I could say that my question was something I came up all by myself. But, alas, no. As I was looking for material for the sermon I stumbled accross the question and upon looking at the responses there were I realized just how many aspects there could be to the question and got curious about how my own congregation would respond.

In a Finnish-Finnish setting this would in all likelihood never have worked. But with this wonderful congregation of mine I think it did. I'm not very good at drawing all the different points of view together so there is certainly room for growth here but it was a start and I think it went well.

Here then is the passage of last Sunday:

Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, ‘Ephphatha’, that is, ‘Be opened.’And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. They were astounded beyond measure, saying, ‘He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.’

(Mark. 7: 31-37)

Why did Jesus look up to heaven and sigh?

My daughter has a cold. Cold number two in a week to be exact. The first one started last weekend and this one yesterday. Consequently I have not had much of a chance to work this week. And, oh yes, I have a cold, too. Not a bad one but it’s there.

So, what do I do when it comes to preaching? I’ll hand the baton to you. I had in actual fact contemplated about doing a sermon like I am about to do already before it turned out that my daughter’s colds would make it somewhat impossible for me to take enough time to write a sermon.

I was first challenged by a blog entry and then more so by a short comment by someone on a paper. Her comment? “There is, I think, about one sermon I have listened to that I can remember.” I don’t have even that. I remember bits and pieces from different sermons but honestly mostly they are then the funny anecdotes or jokes of the sermon.

Now, I don’t know weather remembering a sermon from start to finish is even what one needs to strive after. In order to do so I think you’d have to always tell a story because that is the way we remember best. Something Jesus as the brilliant teacher he was very well knew and utilized.

But to tell a story every Sunday would probably get old at some point, too. What else can one then think to do. Well, one option is to take to technology and use the many possibilities provided by computers and or internet. As you can see, not today, though.

Today I am - like I said - going to give the word to you. I am going to read the passage once more and ask you one question. The question is this “Why did Jesus look up to heaven and sigh”? There are no wrong answers. As you tell why you think Jesus sighed you will give others food for thought and a possibility to see this passage through your eyes as well. Something I think is really important because the kind of intimacy I think even a congregation is called to have comes from encountering each other right where we are and through sharing our way of seeing things.

Why did Jesus look up to heaven and sigh?

Creative subversion

2010-08-09T10:00:00.001+03:00

My favourite colleague from Australia Geoff Boyce keeps a blog. This following is his latest entry and I thought it was great food for thought :). If you're wondering why I copied it here it's because I imagine myself so busy that often I don't klick the links provided even though it probably would be a good thing to do (or then I'm plain lazy).

Incidentally, I haven't preached these past two Sundays. Two weeks ago we were blessed with a testimony and yesterday due to the fact that I worked only on Wednesday our reader Geoffrey preached. I'm sorry to not have his sermon available - I'll ask him, though - it was certainly food for thought, too.
Anyway, here's what Geoff writes:

In India, to cross a busy road, you need only avoid stepping out in front trucks or buses – and maybe cars. Giving way is according to size. So provided no buses or trucks are within immediate sight, it’s a matter of stepping out from the footpath, if there is one, focus attention on the other side, keep one’s nerve, and walk steadily across. The myriad of bikes, cars and three-wheelers simply move around you. It’s all about anticipation. But if you hesitate, you’re gone!

In the UK, step out on to a pedestrian crossing and all the traffic, including buses, come to a halt! I always feel quite apologetic, bringing them to a stop. But they’re the rules. And the British tradition is that if you have regulations, you need to keep them.

So it was, in 1833, that the Vicar of Holy Trinity Church in Coventry found a creative way to get across the 'road' of Church of England Law. Holy Trinity catered for the poorer citizens. It was, and still is, a less elaborate church compared with the Bishop’s huge Cathedral, a stone’s throw away. The Vicar wanted to invite his Scottish friend, the Bishop of Ross, Moray and Argyll to Holy Trinity Church. But at that time, Church of England Law forbade Scottish clergy from "setting foot" in its churches.

Not content with bowing to this superior injunction, the Vicar at Holy Trinity had a special chair built for the Scottish Bishop to carry him in and out of the church. The Scotsman never 'set foot' in the church!

The spirit of this response concurs with Jesus’ injunctions in Luke, that when faced with misplaced authoritarianism, one should neither retaliate in like manner, nor accept it passively. There is a third, creative and subversive way.

Walter Wink points out that in the culture of Jesus' time, to “turn the other cheek” put the aggressor in an impossible situation – only the 'unclean' (left) hand is able to be used to hit the cheek – offering the other cheek challenges the hitter because it can't be hit with the unclean hand; similarly to offer to give away one’s tunic in a court of law, having unjustly lost one's cloak, would make one naked, thereby forcing the aggressor to public shame by breaking the law about creating public nakedness.

The Vicar at Holy Trinity found a creative way to subvert without culpability. Followers of Jesus today are likewise called upon to love enemies and find ways around stultifying legislation, not as passive condoners or aggressive reactors, but by using their wits.

Your greatness is seen throughout the earth

2010-08-04T13:08:00.000+03:00

The internet is full of wonderful things as much of course the other kind. One of the wonderful things is the multitude of prayers and sites that are dedicated to sprituality. I was looking for a prayer for this coming Sunday and came across Praying Each Day. The following is from there.

The Apollo 15 spacecraft splashed down into the ocean on this day in 1971 [that is Aug 7th]. The astronauts had spent 2 days 18 hours on the Moon. One of them, James Irwin, wrote that the greatest effect of that spaceflight had been to deepen and strengthen his faith and all the religious insight he ever had.

“When you lean far back and look up, you can see the earth like a beautiful, fragile tree ornament against the blackness of space. It’s as if you can reach out and hold it in your hand.

“As we reached out in a physical way to the heavens, we were moved spiritually. As we flew into space we had a new sense of ourselves, of the earth, and of the nearness of God. We were outside of ordinary reality; I sensed the beginning of some sort of deep change taking place inside me. Looking back at the spaceship we call “Earth”, I was touched by a desire to convince mankind that we have a unique place to live, that we are unique creatures, and that we must learn to live with our neighbours."

“I had become a sceptic about getting guidance from God, and I know that I had lost the feeling of his nearness. On the moon, the total picture of the power of God and his Son, Jesus Christ, became abundantly
clear to me.”

The prayer for Sunday at Praying Each Day is Psalm 8, a copy of which was left on the Moon in a metal canister during the first manned landing in July 1969:

Lord, our God and King,
your greatness is seen throughout the earth.

When I gaze at the heavens
which your fingers have formed,
and look at the moon and the stars
which you have set there,
I realise how small we are
in the magnificence of your creation.

Yet you treasure us
above all that you have made,
and you give us control
over all the works of your hand
- animals both wild and tame,
birds in the air,and the creatures of the sea.

Lord, our God and King,
your greatness is seen throughout the earth.

Railway mission

2010-07-28T12:51:00.000+03:00

An international railway mission conference is being held here in Turku starting tomorrow. The participants will be joining our congregation on Sunday for the service, so I thought I should check out what railway mission is about :).

Here is what their homepage says:

Meeting people . . . . . meeting needs

The Railway Mission (founded 1881) work in partnership with London City Mission (founded 1835). Since those early days our staff have been caring for the spiritual and felt needs of the railway community. Together we provide the National Rail Chaplaincy Service.

Today we have more than fifteen Chaplains covering England, Scotland and Wales.They are involved with people of all levels and positions within the Railway Industry, helping with all sorts of issues and enhancing the support network provided within the Industry.

Pretty cool! :)

Sermons

2010-07-26T12:09:00.003+03:00

I wrote my sermon for yesterday on Wednesday. There were things getting in the way and I can see looking at it that it didn't quite get to the point where it flows clearly enough from one point to the next. I tried my best to not just read it but to tell the sermon and hopefully it made it easier to follow.

The thing is that the first sermons I'd written (after returning back to work) had seemed to me to be quite long. Not in comparison to Martin Luther or other magnificent theologians perhaps but otherwise. My aim is to try to preach a sermon that is, well, interesting, gets you thinking, is something you enjoy listening to, gives you something to take with you to your everyday life and in general is short enough that the above mentioned is possible.

At the end of the day, though, I have to trust God's Spirit with everything I do in a service. Sometimes it can be just a smile at the right time, sometimes the bread and the wine, sometimes the sermon, sometimes a blessing that touches you and with every person present it is something different. And that's how it should be, too.

The Gospel reading yesterday was from the Gospel of Matthew 7: 15-23 .

The tree and its fruit

This is The Message version of today’s reading:

"Be wary of false preachers who smile a lot, dripping with practiced sincerity. Chances are they are out to rip you off some way or other. Don't be impressed with charisma; look for character. Who preachers are is the main thing, not what they say. A genuine leader will never exploit your emotions or your pocketbook. These diseased trees with their bad apples are going to be chopped down and burned.

"Knowing the correct password—saying 'Master, Master,' for instance— isn't going to get you anywhere with me. What is required is serious obedience—doing what my Father wills. I can see it now—at the Final Judgment thousands strutting up to me and saying, 'Master, we preached the Message, we bashed the demons, our God-sponsored projects had everyone talking.' And do you know what I am going to say? 'You missed the boat. All you did was use me to make yourselves important. You don't impress me one bit. You're out of here.'

Using God to make yourself important isn’t perhaps the first thing you encounter in Finnish culture. Here we tend to keep hush about our religion much more than in many other cultures. But this is not to say that we do not need to be aware of the fact that there are – and have always been – people who look the part but are in fact nothing but frauds.

The problem quite simply is that our spirituality is the side of us that is deeply connected to feelings and when feelings come into play we are far more likely to not think things through the way we otherwise do. Houses, cars, mobile phones and so and so on are bought when the seller gets our emotions involved. All advertising relies on the fact that if you can create an emotional response – even a negative one – then you have it made. Within a Christian context I think most of us have heard of televangelists, tv-preachers whose only purpose is to exploit their listeners. In other words, nothing has changed in 2000 years.

Isn’t this the ultimate nightmare: someone you admire and regard as a gentle loving personality turns out to be, quite simply, evil? One minute you’re looking at something lovely and the next minute that loveliness has vanished and you see nothing but ugliness and destruction. Fairytales, movies, plays, artwork of all kind have always been fascinated with this theme. Be it then Darth Vader, Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Snow White or then the other way round Beauty and the Beast.

The thing is that we have plenty of false prophets about. To the extent that it becomes hard to distinguish just whom you should listen to, if anyone. Any good pastor or priest will always admit that what we teach and preach we do with the best of our understanding but that already the fact that what I say and mean with what I say will not be exactly the same as you hear and understand will make it very important that you listen to all teaching carefully and with discernment. Never ever give any pastor or teacher or prophet the keys to your mind and heart and allow them to say how things are. You have to watch carefully. You have to pay attention. You have to pray for the Spirit’s guidance.

In today’s passage I see two things happening. Jesus firstly talking to the people and warning that the teaching of the religious leaders isn’t according to God’s will and secondly giving a prophecy that there will be a time when people will use his name to further their own agenda. I hear in his voice the concern of all parents throughout history and everywhere. We do our best to teach our children love, compassion and tolerance towards other people while facing the fact that we also have to teach them to not trust everyone unconditionally. It is the same concern I have for you my congregation. I think we all need a lot of protection and guidance in our journey with God.

The good part is of course that God knows this. His Son teaches us in the Bible to be wise and careful and God’s Spirit is at work in us. God will protect us and guide us. But we also need to mind our step, take time to evaluate what is according to God’s will and not - and pray.

Heavenly Father,
in our eagerness to be with you we sometimes forget to listen to your instructions on how to come to you.

In our willingness to follow you we sometimes just keep rushing ahead without realizing that it was time to take a break.

In our love to you we are willing to love also things that we should not love.

And in our desire to please you we make decisions that aren’t what you request of us.

Help us to slow down.

Help us to take the time to think things through and listen to you.

Help us to trust that less really is more.

Help us to know your will and to do it.

In your precious Son’s name,

amen.

Aaargh!

2010-07-22T12:47:00.000+03:00

Oh, boy this is turning out to be harder and it really isn't that important. I mean creating the look I like for this blog. With every single option - and there are MANY - there's something that I dislike. With this it's the fact I can't figure out how to change the color of the font of the blog archive list, hence you can't distinguish much of anything.

The thing is, though, that I think this blog is one of the ways to introduce to the world our congregtion and the work student chaplains do in Turku. And I'd like it to a) look nice, b) be easy to read and navigate c) be fast when it comes to adding photos and entries d) be informative and hopefully also thought provoking and if at all possible fun. At the moment b) takes precedence over other things and still there's the above mentioned blog archive problem.

I'm doing this work from home since all of the photos I use are on this computer and it takes a huge amount of time to add just one photo on the page from here. If I were to do this at the office it would take forever. However, my husband and daughter are about to return home - I pushed them out of the door to get some work done - and I'm pretty sure that I can't get much of this type of work done anymore today. So, this is how the blog is now going to have to look for a little while and I'm going to return to looking at the sermon of this coming Sunday.

Something to touch your spirit with

2010-07-20T13:06:00.000+03:00

I'm about to start to look at the texts for this coming Sunday. Before that I went to check out a site which is meant for us pastors and other workers of the Finnish Lutheran Church. The chosen verse for today is formed of the two last sentences in the passage. They touched me and so does this encounter (it always has). Maybe it'll touch you, too.
Be blessed.

God called to Moses from within a burning bush which wouldn't burn up.
- Moses! Moses!
And Moses said:
- Here I am.
- Do not come any closer. Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.
Then God said:
- I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.
At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.

Exodus 4: 4-6

Sin, love and the Holy Spirit

2010-07-12T09:58:00.000+03:00

This is the sermon I wrote for yesterday's service. Because of the heat wave we chose to do a lighter less wordy eucharist service and didn't read the sermon then. I gave a speech which somewhat correlated with the themes of the sermon and apparently was pretty long since the service ended up being close to an hour anyway. Sigh! :)

Matthew 5: 20-30

For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
‘You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, “You shall not murder”; and “whoever murders shall be liable to judgement.” But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgement; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, “You fool”, you will be liable to the hell of fire. So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are on the way to court with him, or your accuser may hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. Truly I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.
‘You have heard that it was said, “You shall not commit adultery.” But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into hell.

Sin, love and the Holy Spirit

All three passages of this Sunday are lists of things you should or should not do to be acceptable in God’s eyes. Leviticus, the first passage that is, got me smiling. Nothing has changed in the thousands of years between. We still have to have very similar laws to make sure people behave. To this day there is so much dishonesty in us that we must have laws to say that stealing is wrong, that cheating another person is wrong, giving a false oath is wrong and so on and so on.

As I said in the beginning of the service the theme for this Sunday is law of love which is a really great theme. I’d love to write and will try to preach about that. The problem is that the readings we have aren’t exactly what you’d expect with the theme. At least I would have thought that the Gospel reading would include the great commandment. In other words: “'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and love your neighbor as yourself.”

On closer look the great commandment is of course present in all of the readings as the background onto which the rules or laws are built on.

Getting back to the Gospel reading: consider yourselves reminded that it is in fact a part of the Sermon of on the Mount. It doesn’t do justice to this passage that it has been taken off context. If the only teaching you ever heard from Jesus was this I’m not quite sure you’d get the whole picture.

Incidentally even if you don’t know too much about the legal system of the Jews in Palestine 2000 years ago it is clear that as Jesus gives examples of sins they are going from lesser ones to worse ones – and I’m about to get into trouble because one of my main points for this sermon is that there are no degrees in sin. All sin is as bad and that’s that.

In actual fact I think I’m not in trouble. Jesus always chose to speak in a way that would be most understandable to his listeners. We all do think there are degrees in sin. We think the acts of a serial killer are far, far worse than thinking that the driver of the car behind you is an idiot. It is this Jesus has in mind.

From God’s perspective sin separates us from Him and the size of the sin doesn’t enter into the equation. From our perspective even if it doesn’t make a difference to God it certainly does for us as we try to live in peace and harmony with each other.

Now, if you had just heard Jesus teach what he teaches in today’s reading you would most likely get the overall point that obeying the law is useless if at the same time you allow your motives and indeed your very soul to harbour feelings and attitudes based on sin, right?

In other words, sinful acts are the result of what happens deep down in your heart. It is in the heart where sin has its roots and it is there where righteousness needs to begin – and just in case you’re not quite sure what righteousness really means, it means something acceptable to God.

As Jesus is teaching the people we can be pretty sure that He is very aware of the fact that they have been strongly influenced by what they have been taught which is that obeying the law is the point, why you do it not so much. He knows there are also scribes and Pharisees listening and he is talking to them especially since it is their teaching that has caused people to think so. You have to remember that most of the listeners were not people who could read or write and therefore didn’t have as much of a chance to study the holy scriptures themselves.

Now if cutting limbs and organs really were what Jesus demanded all churches would be filled with people missing body parts. George Clooney alone would have cost me an eye and when I was younger, and Johnny Depp was too, he another one.

Of course Jesus’ doesn’t mean for us to take what He says literally. But this way he certainly made sure people would remember what he taught. And they did since this passage is a part of the New Testament.

All of this passage is a wake up call to see that what was happening in His culture was that the purpose of the law had faded and the rules and regulations had become something you had to follow just because it had always been so. What had become the point was that if you did everything right you were a good person and if you didn’t you weren’t. Doesn’t it sound pretty familiar, too, though? Things haven’t changed in this regard either.

I don’t, for the life of me, understand how it can be justified that you use the Bible – of all things - to make another person feel less than you are and yet it happens all the time. I don’t get that you can judge and condemn another person based on their sexuality and say I have the right to do so because the Bible says so.

ALL have sinned and moreover all will continue to sin. We are forgiven, we keep being forgiven and there shouldn’t be any other response to that than doing our utmost to not sin any more. Not judging others would be a good place to start.

We ALL fall short in front of God. All need to be forgiven. And the gospel, the good news is that the entire human race HAS been forgiven through Jesus Christ. Your sexual orientation, your choice of work, your race, your social status, your cultural background none of it matters to God. We are absolutely equal in front of our God both when it comes to sinning and when it comes to forgiveness.

What follows from the fact that we are all equal in front of God should be that no one is excluded. No one austersiced. No one is told I will not bless you because you are a sinner. No one is regarded as less than all else.

All are loved by God so much so that He gave His Son to the world to die for our sins. This is the gospel, the good news and this is the bigger picture. Whenever you read the Bible and get stuck, frustrated, or angry even, this is the bigger picture. As Christians this is what we always need to bear in mind. Everything in the Bible is connected to this.

Our different churches are by no means immune to the sins of the Pharisees and scribes. Our collective sin as humans is that we want to regulate things that shouldn’t be regulated and we get annoyed when others see – and horror of horrors - do things differently; which is when we make more rules. Our second and even worse sin is that instead of God these rules become what we obey and even take to be His will.

At the end of the day I think our collective problem is that it bugs us that we cannot predict much of anything. Diversity and change is good in small proportions but not if I need to change to accommodate to them.

I’m a mom to a 2-year-old who is now struggling to get through this transition period we have because I’ve returned back to work. Otherwise things are going very well – she is a very positive and sunshiney girl – but her insecurity surfaces when she is tired. The result; routines must be followed exactly like before or she gets very upset.

I don’t think we are as adults much different from that. The ever changing nature of the world around us makes us feel insecure and we respond by creating rules to try and control it. From a larger perspective they must look extremely funny but we take them earnestly.

The other option? Well, that is the question. Having established that we are all sinners and that most of us really rather would have lives where we could predict what happens next, is there another way? There is. This is ultimately why Jesus was sent to Earth. The entire Good News is that we are forgiven AND that God has sent His Holy Spirit into the world, in fact into our hearts to do what we cannot do ourselves which is to become acceptable to God. This miracle happens in baptism.

It doesn’t quite mean we are freed from all sin but being led by the Spirit does mean that sin is not what defines our lives. Love and faith are.

If we allow the Spirit to lead us the ever changing nature of the world around us no longer is something to be afraid of but something wonderful and amazing to behold because it expresses the nature of God. If we truly believe that God has won over sin and death then the fact that He allows for them to exist is a part of His plan. The most difficult one to understand, but a part of it, it has to be, too. There is no beauty in sin but there is in God’s love for us. And in His plan for us which also encompasses our sinful nature be our sins big or small.

Protector of all

2010-07-08T13:06:00.000+03:00

I'm in the process of writing my sermon for Sunday and also preparing the service itself. I was looking for the collect for Sunday and came across this one. It isn't for the coming Sunday but I thought it was pretty cool so I thought I'd share it with you :). I especially loved this part: "O God, the protector of all who trust in you, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy." When you say it well, you say it well.

Common worship, collect for the fourth Sunday after Trinity:

O God, the protector of all who trust in you,

without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy:

increase and multiply upon us your mercy;

that with you as our ruler and guide

we may so pass through things temporal

that we lose not our hold on things eternal;

grant this, heavenly Father,

for our Lord Jesus Christ's sake,

who is alive and reigns with you,

in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

one God, now and for ever.

Holy Fear

2010-07-05T10:16:00.001+03:00

Luke 5: 1-11

Once while Jesus was standing beside the lake of Gennesaret, and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, ‘Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.’ Simon answered, ‘Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.’ When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. So they signalled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink. But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, ‘Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!’ For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken; and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. Then Jesus said to Simon, ‘Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.’ When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.

Holy fear

I have always had great fondness towards Simon Peter – like I’m sure many others have, too. He is so delightfully eager, at times utterly clueless and more often than not quite wrong. I’m sure Jesus loved him very much but I’m also pretty sure that he got quite exasperated with Peter at times – and angry. Simon Peter has a puppy like quality about him; great love, affection and respect towards Jesus and at the same time such clumsiness that you can’t but love him.

What I most like about him is that you get a picture of a very genuine character. And I think it shows so well with the very first comment when Jesus’ reveals to Peter that he is not just any teacher. I think what is truly special about Simon Peter is how he reacts when encountered with utter holiness. He recognizes it immediately which I’m not so sure we all can do. I know I don’t. I do at times a little later but immediately, no. And still I’m absolutely convinced that we are surrounded by God’s holiness everywhere we are and go.

But even more telling is his reaction to Jesus; falling down at Jesus’ knees and saying: “Go away from me I’m a sinful man!” On the last night of Jesus’ life on earth Peter betrays Jesus and lies, three times, and yet something about Simon Peter gives the air of an honest man. It’s the fact that he isn’t politically correct and careful with his words and it is this first reaction that gives that impression. He knows that he isn’t worthy to be touched with such holiness and admits it. Even tries to push it away so that his sinfulness wouldn’t soil it.

Many theologians speak and write about the fear of God. What that fear is has always eluded me but with Simon Peter I think I understand that it is the realization that there can be something so pure and holy that it should be protected with every possible way. It is a fear of tainting what is pure and right. But I don’t know if that’s it. Maybe it is that we are afraid of seeing our own sinfulness like many theologians seem to think. Maybe.

However, in all honesty I’m inclined to think the first. I think fear of God is not about us but about Him. I think it is about suddenly realizing just how wonderful God is and when encountering His pure love – and power – realizing just how small and sinful we are. I don’t think it is about being afraid of our own sin. I think we are afraid of that, too, but I think not when we encounter God. And the reason is that I think that with a revelation of God’s power you are just as much revealed just how much God loves us. Love has a quality about it which is that it pulls us away from our self centred existence towards itself and, thus, your unique sins become less relevant and that you are loved much more so.

If it hasn’t yet occurred to you then it has to be admitted that I’m talking about something I haven’t really experienced. I haven’t ever encountered that which I think is holy fear. I understand that God is the creator of all universe and that he is omnipotent and has great power and I do think that makes Him something there is good reason to be afraid of, and I am, albeit in a more intellectual way than emotional. But come to think of it maybe fear of God is not about emotion but understanding?

The thing is I also spent many years in my youth being afraid of the wrong things; one of the biggest being hell. I had encountered people who had told me that I would go to hell if I didn’t repent and turn to Jesus. The fear of Hell had been instilled in me much earlier on – at school of all places - and manipulating me with it was the easiest thing to do. The only thing was, though, that as far as I understood I was already a believing Christian.

That fear stayed with me for years and years.

And I think it must have and must grieve God so much when we fall into the trap of thinking that faith is about fear. It isn’t. Faith is about love. Love. Not fear. It is about God’s love and our love to Him. I’m absolutely sure that when Jesus said to Simon Peter ‘Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people’ he gave Simon Peter the gentlest most loving smile and Simon knew that he would make the biggest mistake of his life if he didn’t follow Jesus right then. So he did.

He didn’t do it out of fear. He didn’t die on the cross like his master out of fear. It was love, so undeniable that no more could Peter ever anymore say that he didn’t know who Jesus was.

Today 2000 years later we read the Gospels and struggle to understand them. The culture is not familiar, the customs are unfamiliar, the stories themselves are collected together from many sources and are both illogical and confusing. At the same time if we have grown up with Christianity we know them from early childhood so they are not new to us anymore. The truest most awe inspiring thing about the gospels is the amazing fact that we still have them. And one of the reasons is that at the end of the day they still manage to stir our imagination, challenge us, make us weep and laugh and most importantly bring us to God.

Now, I’ve been away from my job, this job, for two and a half years. When on Monday I took a look at the texts for this Sunday I found that the liturgical colour for today is this, red. Come December 22nd I’ll have been ordained for 8 years. That day – my ordination day - was also a day when the liturgical colour was red. And there are very few during the church year. Red represents the colour of Christian martyrs who suffered death for their faith. It is the symbol martyrdom but more importantly for me the colour also symbolizes discipleship and calling.

As I come back to this ministry my question is this: “What does it mean to be a Christian?” Sounds like a simple one, doesn’t it? But that is my question. How does it show? What follows from being a follower of Christ? What does it mean when it comes to me personally but also what does it mean when it comes to our beautifully versatile and ever changing congregation?

There is no hurry to answer that question, though. Indeed I think it is one that we keep or should keep asking from time to time throughout our lives. As for now I leave you with it. What does it mean to believe in God, to be a Christian?

Father, Son, Holy Spirit,

here we are.

We want to follow you.

What can we do?

Please lead us, guide us and

help us find your will in everything we do and are.

Amen.

What?

2010-07-01T12:31:00.000+03:00

Well, miapappi actually means pastor Mia and ever since our beloved little girl came to us my blog has become more and more about our family. Of course. But now it's time to get back to work and this blog will return to its original purpose and our family now has a new/old blog called The Pusas (thepusas.blogspot.com). New since the name is new old since the content and appearance is the old one.
Today I need to write a sermon for Sunday and plan the service, thus, I won't write more or indeed do much else with this blog. But come Monday I'm on it :).