A Culture of Grace

Names are important, I believe.  When I first learned, in junior high Latin class, that my name was also that of a Roman goddess (the goddess of the moon and the hunt, I was told), it had a positive effect on my self-esteem.  At least temporarily.  Some people are named on purpose, after parents and beloved grandparents, after screen stars and presidents.  Perhaps there are hopes involved.  Perhaps this child will be like grandpa Joe, or grandma Ellen; perhaps this child will be President someday, or swing a bat, or sing arias.

Names are important, I believe.  I love the name of my church:  Grace.  In fact, I think it is fair to say that I came here, at least in part, because they were a church named "Grace."   There were other reasons, of course:  they have an amazing pre-school, for one thing.  They love to study and said that they were hungry to learn more about God and faith.  They worship in different varieties.  They actually began a homeless ministry in their county.

And their name is "Grace".  Names are important.  When they were doing strategic planning, they had the name of their church listed as one of their strengths.  Because I believe that grace is the heart and the root of our faith, it is the one thing that we most have to share with the world, but it is somehow notoriously difficult to get ahold of.

What is grace?  What does it look like?  What would it be like to actually practice grace, the grace of God?

I have been thinking about this lately, because I am thinking about culture and strategy, strategy and culture.  Pretty soon, we will start developing a strategy:  where do we want to go, and how do we want to get there?  What will be the steps along the way?  And I can't shake the idea that the name of my congregation is "Grace", and that this name is a strength.  But what does it look like?  And what does it tell us?

Maybe the question before strategy is this one:  who are we, and who do we  WANT to be?  Are we gracious?  Do we want to grow in grace, and in graciousness?  What does that even look like?  Is it just 'being nice'?  Is it biting your tongue and remaining silent?

What does grace look like, in a community of faith?

I can't help thinking about something Nadia Bolz-Weber said, about her church, "House of All Sinners and Saints."  She says to every group who wants to join, that there will be a point where the church, or someone in the church, will hurt them, or disappoint them.  Or, there will be a point when you will be the one who hurts or disappoints someone else.  At that point, she says, please do not walk away and leave.  Because if you do, you will miss the grace of God, the power of forgiveness and reconciliation.

That's what she said, or something like it.  And I thought -- this is true, but it is so hard.  There are times when it is true, we need to walk away.  But there are other times, times when someone has disappointed us, or we have disappointed someone else.  There are times when we have hurt one another, but instead of turning away, we have said:  "I'm sorry."  "I forgive you."

And that is Grace.

It is:  I don't agree with you, but you are my sister, and I love you.
It is:  You have hurt me, but I forgive you, and I still want to serve God together.
It is:  I have screwed up and failed and crashed and burned, and you have given me another chance.

Is that who we are?  Is that who we want to be?

Names are important.

I believe.

Language School

When I was learning to be a missionary in Japan, I went to language school.  Five mornings a week, we got together in small classes with only about eight students in each classroom, because the emphasis was on oral language learning and drills.  There, we met missionaries from other traditions as well as students in Japan for more secular pursuits.

Eventually we would go to our assignments, either as pastors or as English language teachers.  But for now our main responsibility was to learn the language, at least enough to get started at communication and relationships.  Our language classes did not give us the ability (for example) to understand or speak in religious terms, but we learned to ask questions and understand the answers, and we learned some basic sentence structure and vocabulary.  After six months were were launched into our prospective vocations, where we would (presumably) continue to learn Japanese at the same time we were sharing the gospel.

I think language school is a good idea.  I sort of wish I had language school right now.

I am about to leave the congregation I have served for 17 years.  This congregation is located in a part of the country where I grew up.  I know the culture here so well that perhaps I take it for granted.  I am an expert on the upper Midwest, its language and its idiosyncrasies.  I know that you can call a casserole a "hot dish" and that it is all right to invite someone to go along with you somewhere by asking the question, "Do you want to come with?"  I know that you should not park on certain streets after it snows.  I know the variations of city, suburban and rural life here.

My new church is in an area of the country I have only visited a couple of times.  They have alligators there.  And they don't have winter, really.  Different flowers bloom at different times.  I know I will have to learn to say "you all", and I suspect that "you all" is just the tip of the iceberg.

I sort of wish I had language school, a time set aside to learn the language, but not just the language.  One of the things I remember about the time of "language school" was the time spent doing other things:  the afternoon we spent at a sumo wrestling match, the time I got lost because I took the wrong train, wandering around Shibuya station one day and seeing the statue of "Hachiko", the famous dog that waited for his master every day.  I remember going to Yokohama and eating octopus, visiting parks and admiring tea sets, learning to read, but not just the language.

I am pretty sure that I never really mastered Japanese, although I did improve over the years.  I may be fooling myself as well that I have mastered "Midwestern", too.  I have lived here most of my life, and perhaps I take it too much for granted.  Now, traveling to a new place, I suspect that I will be learning a new language, one that I will not master, although I hope to improve.

I don't have time set aside for "language school" this time, but perhaps it would be wise to set some time aside for it anyway.  Perhaps it would be wise to remember that I am not just called to speak, but to listen, not just teach, but to learn, not just to find, but to get lost, and be found.  Perhaps it would be wise for me to remember, as missionaries have told me before, that I am not bringing the Word to people, I am not bringing Jesus to people, I am not bringing the Holy Spirit.  God is already there.

For the Word became flesh, and He inhabits each particular language and culture, breaking bread, eating rice, getting lost and found, with us.

By Popular Demand: the post on Lutfisk

There's a story in my father's family about how one year, when the kids were all teenagers, my grandmother made the traditional Swedish Christmas Eve meal, complete with meatballs and Swedish sausage, boiled potatoes, and, of course, lutfisk (yes, I know, everyone calls it "lutefisk." Lutfisk is the real, Scandinavian spelling.) The children, revealing their true feelings, ordered Chinese food. My grandmother went into the bedroom and cried.

My mom and dad argue good-naturedly about lutfisk. He isn't wild about it; she loves it. She says it's because she learned to eat it the good way, that is, the Norwegian way: with hot melted butter all over it. He, on the other hand, had to eat it with a cream sauce (which, I guess, is a punishment worse than death).

Lutefisk is, literally "lye fish". It has been a popular favorite in Sweden and Norway since medieval times. It is cod soaked in lye. I used to think it was perhaps much more popular with the Scandinavian immigrants than with the Swedes or Norwegians themselves, but I recently found a web site that indicated that they still eat it over in the old country. The Swedes mostly reserve it for Christmas time; the Norwegians like to eat it all year long. Maybe it's because of the butter.

I only remember having lutfisk once or twice as a kid. My grandmother, who didn't learn from experience, served it at least once at Christmas. I tried a bite.

So, not long after I moved into South Dakota (actually, I think it was Labor Day weekend) , a couple from my congregation asked me, "Do you like lutefisk?" (they said it with an "e".) Thinking it was a trick question, I answered, "Why do you ask?" It seemed that there was a very big and very popular lutfisk dinner in nearby large(r) town (1,000 people to my 63) coming up at the end of October. They wanted to show their appreciation for me by taking me to the dinner. It was the nicest thing they could think of to do. But if we didn't buy the tickets during the next week, they would all be gone.

Thinking about my experiences with cultural exchange in Japan, I said "yes." I might learn something. What could it hurt?

My parish members were so proud to have me there with them. They watched me to make sure I ate my lutfisk, said this was about the best dinner in the area. "Really good fish," they said. And it was so crowded! People had to eat in shifts, because the church basement was not big enough. And, at a lutfisk dinner, they don't just have fish. They have meatballs too.

I have found out since, that here in the Twin Cities, you can go online and find a "Lutefisk Dinner" at some church somewhere almost every week once it hits mid-October or so. It's quite a social event for people of a certain age and ethnic persuasian.

The retired pastor who cooks the fish (in a mesh bag, by the way) for my congregation is 90 years old. So it's possible that this social and cultural event will die out someday. But in the meantime, there are still quite a few people left who get together around long tables eating white fish covered with butter. And meatballs.