As old as I am (52 years), as many years as I’ve had in pastoral ministry (25), when it comes to learning how to pray, I feel like I’m still in elementary school.

I went to confirmation at a little Lutheran church in western Nebraska with a pretty rigid and guilt-inducing pastor. He was determined to instill in us the discipline of regular bible reading and prayer. He was fond of reminding us that we weren’t really Christians if we didn’t read the bible and pray regularly. So began my odyssey of trying to cultivate the discipline of prayer.

In those junior high years, I can’t tell you how many times I started reading the bible cover to cover. Usually I didn’t get out of Genesis. Sometimes I actually made it to Leviticus. I don’t think I ever got through Leviticus. Somewhere along the way, I think I read a couple of the shorter letters in the New Testament, but can’t remember if I ever got through one of the gospels.

And prayer. I was told that I should pray, but was given precious little guidance about how to pray — or at least that’s the way I remember it. In my home, we prayed regularly before and after meals, and occasionally had family devotions. I said, “Now I lay me down to sleep. . .” with my mother when I went to bed, but my daily prayer was nothing more than that. As a freshman and sophomore in high school, I got involved with a group of students from a variety of churches and traditions who gathered every morning in the home of a retired high school teacher across from Bridgeport High School. But I was with a group and could rely on the “pray-ers” in the group and didn’t have to work on my own prayer life.

My college years were pretty dry as I think back about my prayer life.  In the seminary, I tried again to cultivate the regular habit of prayer and failed. As a young pastor, I bought every prayer book around, used all of them for a short time, and could never develop the habit. Typically, I have been good with the parts of being a pastor that use my mind. Not so good on the spirit, or whatever part of me from which rises the impulse to pray.

And so here I am at 52 years old and 25 years in the ministry, still feeling like a novice at prayer.

A couple of years ago, I enrolled in Grace Institute, a two-year program of spiritual formation connected to Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. I can’t say that I’ve loved it. But it has been good for me. I’ve learned about the many streams of prayer through the centuries of the Christian church. And I’ve been given the opportunity to practice them. I’m still working on the practice part, still getting better at it, and still with a long ways to go. But for the first time, I’m finally developing the regular discipline.

At the Grace Institute, the two year program of 8 retreats includes readings in the particular discipline of prayer and practice that we are introduced to. I’m the kind of person that rarely meets a book I don’t like or at least one that I can’t give a fair hearing. So, I’ve kept up with the readings pretty well; still I’m still always on the lookout for other fellow pilgrims who are much more practiced than I am and who can help me on the journey.

I recently finished a little volume that I wish I had read a long time ago: Creating a LIfe with God: The Call of Ancient Prayer Practices, by Daniel Wolpert. After an introduction to the life of prayer, he includes chapters on a variety of standard prayer practices, including Lectio Divina, the Jesus Prayer, the Examen, and a whole lot more. The explanations are detailed enough to give an idea of what it’s all about without burdening the reader with an academic treatise on the practice.

As much as the descriptions were helpful review for me, what I appreciated most was the tone of Wolpert’s writing. He doesn’t set himself up as an expert, but shares instances of his own learning and struggles to learn how to pray. It feels real. I came away from my reading not with the burden of how little I have learned about prayer and how much I have struggled to develop a life of prayer, but with the encouragement of a fellow pilgrim that prayer is work. Sometimes it feels a little easier and sometimes it feels very difficult. But the journey is always worth the effort. And for the first time, I feel like if I never get out of elementary school, at least I am praying. And that is growth for which I am grateful.

In the aftermath of the Newtown shootings, 24/7 conversation goes on about how to make ourselves safer.  One side says ban or strictly limit access to guns or ammunition. The other side says we need more guns. And so the banter goes back and forth.

The conversation has branched out to a discussion of whether there is anything we can do to make schools safer, even though it appears that those in charge at Sandy Hook Elementary School did everything by the book. Just yesterday, the NRA proposed putting an armed guard in every school in the country. (It’s hard to take such a proposal seriously, not just philosophically, but practically. I can’t imagine the NRA supporting the kind of tax dollars it would take to fund such a proposal.)

I’ve also noticed a proliferation of self-help kinds of articles aimed at parents with young children. The 7 Things You Can Do to Make Sure Your Child Is Safe at School kinds of articles.

Behind all of this is a usually unspoken assumption that a breakdown in security is the problem. We just have to work harder and smarter at making ourselves safer and we can prevent the kinds of horrific crimes like Newtown. Figure out at way to control or eliminate the bad stuff and we won’t have to be so afraid.

The kind of security we yearn for is, of course, a fiction. As long as we are human, we will be vulnerable. So, the notion that we can get to the point where we can take refuge in our own security is an exercise in futility. It’s chasing after the wind. There is too much to get secure against.

Yet we try. And the movement proliferates. Our culture teaches us to fear almost everything, despite the fact that living in fear is a really lousy way to live.

In the Moravian Daily Texts earlier this week, one of the readings was the opening verse of Psalm 127:  Unless the Lord guards the city, the guards keep watch in vain. And then my mind went to the second lesson from the Third Sunday in Advent (Series C), which concluded. . . and the peace of God which passes all understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

So, we can’t guard the city. But we can choose both to live in God’s shalom and to work for that shalom. Shalom is not just the absence of conflict, but the the presence of harmony. It’s creation as God intended it to be. Everything in the world and in life is in it’s proper place and function. It’s the opposite of chaos and disorder. It’s the opposite of fear. It’s the opposite of Newtown and and Aurora and Dekalb and Virginia Tech.

Protecting ourselves with guns may be on some level effective, but it’s not shalom. Instituting security measures that seem more and more to isolate ourselves from one another may prevent certain crimes. But it’s not shalom. One might show by research or anecdotal evidence that more guns or more security measures have some degree of effectiveness (an argument which I don’t buy), but they are not shalom.

So, let the policy wonks and legislators debate about security and safety. As members of faith communities, our questions ought not stay at the superficial level of how we can make ourselves safer, about what security measures are most effective, or how we can prevent violent crime.

As the church, our mission is shalom. Our commitment is to living in such a way that we bring shalom to all of creation.

It starts with all of us as individuals. What will I do to bring shalom in my closest community, my family? How do I talk with them? How do we solve problems and deal with conflict? How do I talk with them about other people? How do I practice generosity?

Then it moves into the other places where I interact with others: where I work, where I play, where I shop, where I go for amusement and entertainment, in social media. Does my speech build up or tear down? Am I interested in the advancement and development of others? How do I practice generosity in these places?

How do I foster shalom in the community where I worship? Anyone who’s been around the church for any time at all knows that congregations are not automatically places of shalom. In my congregation, how do I interact with others when there are things we disagree about? How do I talk at my church about other people? If I’m a leader, how do I model an inclusive way of coming to decisions?

And, finally, I think we have a responsibility to bring that shalom to the larger community. Shalom is nurtured when we turn from suspicion of others to embrace their differentness and discover anew the wondrous variety in the human community. Shalom comes when we work harder at building relationships than we do at isolating ourselves for the sake of security. And we will find ourselves much further along the path to shalom when we find a way to care for, support, and lift the most vulnerable: the poor, the aged, the disabled, the addicted, the diseased in body, the troubled in mind and spirit, and the imprisoned.

Maybe the notion sounds crazy, but I’m naive enough or jaded enough or hopeful enough to think that a lot of us committing to such behavior will make a difference. What do we have to lose? Living from fear sure hasn’t worked very well.

I can imagine that in many Christian churches — particularly ones that follow the lectionary — a lot of lectors are going to be choking on words come Sunday morning. And a lot of people sitting in the pews are going to be shaking their heads in disbelief or reaching with extended fingers to plug their ears.

How will we read what we will read and say what we will say, knowing what we know?

From the prophet Zephaniah:

Sing aloud, O daughter Zion;
shout, O Israel!
Rejoice and exult with all your heart,
O daughter Jerusalem!

From Paul in his letter to the Philippians:

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.

To say the least, it feels out of character, even inappropriate, to encourage such joy-filled, upbeat celebrating when our hearts are so full of sadness at the unspeakable horror of the murder of so many innocents. How can we say what we will say, knowing what we know?

For most of Friday, I was in my home in silence, reading and going about a lot of mid-December tasks, oblivious to what was going on at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. Not until mid-afternoon did I turn on the radio to find that another unspeakable tragedy had taken place. In terms of the tragic and violent loss of life, it’s no different than the other mass shootings that have become all too frequent. Yet this one feels different because so many young children were the victims. It’s truly heart-wrenching for me.

How will we read what we will read and say what we will say, knowing what we know?

It’s probably a good time to remind ourselves that when the prophet spoke these words, he wasn’t speaking in a time when the Israelites were on top of the world. In fact, he spoke the words in a time of national humiliation. The people of God had been carried off into exile. Their homeland was gone and their Temple — the visible sign of God’s presence and blessing — had been destroyed. And don’t think for a minute that when the Babylonians took over, property wasn’t plundered, homes and businesses burned, and people killed, including innocent children.

Need I remind you that Paul was not writing from his lakeside cabin in idyllic retreat? He was writing from prison, with the full expectation that he would not get out. This is where he would die, so he thought.

Yet they both have the audacity to speak not only of rejoicing, but of living in any circumstance with confident hope in a loving and gracious God who is still present even in the midst of the pain, suffering, and tragedy that is part of human community.

If I had to speculate, I’d guess that neither the prophet nor the apostle would find anything untoward about reading these texts in a time of national shock and mourning. In fact, these might very well be precisely the words they’d want us to read, because when we allow our faith to speak in the midst of tragedy, we hear of living in confident hope.

When we read these ancient texts on Sunday, we will stand in a long line of proclaimers who have spoken jarring words that bring hope in the midst of despair, rejoicing in the midst of sorrow, and life in the midst of death. We will have the audacity to proclaim what is at the center not only of these texts, but at the center of the Christian faith. That God’s love is not negated or overshadowed by tragedy, senseless violence, or the inexplicable horror that one human being might inflict on another. At the center of our faith is the truth that God is especially in these times and these places. These are the times and places when the comfort and hope of God’s coming speaks so forcefully.

God did not offer God’s love from the distance of a heavenly throne, but came to dwell among us, born of a baby. God’s love was demonstrated most forcefully in the midst of the unspeakable violence and cruelty of a crucifixion. And God’s penchant for life was demonstrated most profoundly in Christ’s resurrection, reminding us that while death is real and often horrible, it is never the last word.

So, we will read and we will sing. We will pray and we may even shed tears. And because we know what we know, we will rejoice.

The other day as I was driving through our neighborhood I noticed a new sign on the front porch of a home I drive by every day. The big banner furled across the railing of the house read “Vote Pro-life.”

I’m not sure exactly why the banner caught my eye or why I even thought about it, as ubiquitous as political signs are these days. But by the time I had gotten home, I had vowed that I would join my neighbor. So, I’m on a crusade. I say, “Yes. Vote Pro-life.”

Vote for the candidates who will support policies that determine to lift up the poor from a concern for mere survival and help give them the tools to a life of dignity and respect. Vote for candidates who will pledge to give them a helping hand rather than a dismissive “why don’t you go get a job?”

Vote for the candidates who will support policies that protect the environment and foster life not only for the human species but for all of creation. Vote for candidates who will pledge to help us move away from energy policy that far too quickly depletes our natural resources and uses energy sources that are clean and readily available, sources like solar and wind.

Vote for the candidates who will support an end to US aggression and police action. There is nothing more anti-life than war.

Vote for the candidates who will support policies that limit access to guns. Support candidates who will support legislation to make it difficult for anyone to own a handgun or semi-automatic rifle or assault rifle. Why can we legislate the necessity to wear a seatbelt when you get into a car, but we can’t legislate access to guns that have no other purpose than to kill people? I say, “Vote Pro-life.”

Vote for the candidates who will support policies that will make health-care affordable and accessible for all people. And vote for candidates who will have the courage to admit that our present health care system is neither just nor sustainable.

Vote for the candidates who will take on the challenge of reforming our penal system. It’s so counter-productive and barbaric for a society to warehouse criminals and pay only lip service to rehabilitation. Give people who have made a youthful mistake — albeit a serious mistake — a second chance to be the people they were meant to be.

I say, “Vote Pro-life.”

See, while I agree that the life of the unborn is precious, that they should be honored and protected, and that abortion as birth control is wrong, it’s more complicated that black and white answers and policies. And I bristle at the notion that one can be pro-life with regard to only one narrow slice of the broad range of life and life issues. How can we be so adamant about protecting unborn children, but leave significant numbers of the already born children hungry and in poverty and attending substandard schools? How can we decry the violence of abortion and have no moral qualms about unleashing drones that have killed an unconscionable numbers of innocent people, including children. Is it pro-life to consider them as nothing more than collateral damage?

So, when it comes time to cast my vote in less than two weeks, you can be sure that I will be considering every candidate and every issue, and I will voting, proudly and unabashedly, pro-life.

Let Your Light Shine Together
A Wedding Sermon
The Marriage of Elizabeth Coyne and Christopher Honig
Jeremiah 31:31-34
Philippians 4:4-9
Matthew 5:14-16

From Naperville to Valparaiso and Glen Ellyn to Valparaiso via Bloomington, Chicago to Pretoria, South Africa, and West Point, Nebraska, Ann Arbor, Hyde Park, Chicago.
The two of you have certainly kept the Post Office busy trying to stay current with your forwarding addresses. For the past few years, this has been your story, Liz and Chris — many places and many people and many experiences. All of them have led to this beautiful moment in your story. Here you are in this place, this holy ground, with your family and friends, before the signs and symbols of your faith — a pulpit with a book, a baptismal font, a table, and an assembly of family and friends.
Rejoice in the Lord always.  And again I say rejoice. That’s part of what we’re here for, to celebrate with maximum joy your love, but more so, to celebrate the promises God has made to you and the promises you will make to each other. That’s a shorthand way of saying that we are here today to celebrate your intention, Liz and Chris, to bind yourselves to one another in covenant promises, to give God thanks for the blessing that God brings to those promises, and to talk about how your marriage becomes a fundamental part of how you live out your baptismal identity in the world.
The lesson you chose from Jeremiah is one of those classic biblical passages about covenant. I’m a little leery about saying anything about “covenant” in the presence of a future lawyer, but I’m going to anyway. We don’t use that word much in popular culture, and when we do it’s in the sense of a legally binding agreement, as in a homeowner’s covenant that you can’t paint your house hot pink, or that if I pay you rent, you will take care of my leaky faucet.
In the biblical sense a covenant is so much more — it’s a binding promise that flows from the strength and grace of relationship. Covenant gets right at the heart of who God is and how God deals with us. In spite of our brokenness, God has bound God’s self to us in love. God has promised to make God’s self known to us. You will all know me, from the least to the greatest — That’s exactly what God has done in Jesus. God has promised to each of you — to all of us — faithfulness and love and forgiveness that will last your whole life and carry you through death to whatever life God has in store.
And because we know God’s faithfulness, we can pledge our faithfulness to one another. In popular culture weddings and marriage are all about love. I don’t want to deny the importance of love. But today is much more about promise and fidelity and community. It takes very little to fall in love and be intimate. It’s a much more weighty matter to make a pledge of faithfulness and to bind our lives to each other. You can do that, Liz and Chris, because you have known the faithfulness of God. You can do that because your lives are lived under the grace and commitment of God’s crucified love. We love because God first loved us. So, freely, you give yourselves to each other. Freely, you promise faithfulness and love. Freely you promise to share your lives with each other in good and bad, sorrow and celebration, when there is much and when there is little. And God promises to be in the covenant and bless you.
The other lesson you have chosen gives us one more important thing to talk about. You are the light of the world. Let your light so shine before men and women that they may see your good works and glorify your father who is in heaven. Those words take your love for each other and thrust it out into a world that for the two of you has become small. When I was your age, I was the kid coming out of the small town in Nebraska and I thought it was awesome that I got to fly to Minneapolis once. The world was so big. But for the two of you and many of your friends, the world has become small. You have traveled, you have worked and studied around the world. You have met and worked with people from from across the globe. And you have seen brokenness not only in your own neighborhoods but in places that are so different, but where people are fundamentally the same. You have witnessed first-hand a world in need of healing.
Two of the hymns that we yet will sing both speak of moving from the church into the world, from this sanctuary to Ann Arbor and then back to Chicago, from this sacred music to the cries of suffering and injustice. In fact, the hymn we will sing in just a moment specifically reminds us that since God has entered your story, your story now goes out into the world. You will take God’s love, your gifts, and your talents, and you will hurl them against darkness and evil. Your task from here on is to cast your light over those places where you live and work, to permeate every place you go with what Jesus called “your good works.”  See, you don’t get to stay in this sanctuary very long. And neither do you get to stay in the classrooms of the University of Michigan Law School or the Lutheran School of Theology for very much longer. Before long you will go into a world where the music will not be the grand hymns of the sanctuary but will be the screams of families when children are killed on the sidewalks of the city and the the cries of the hungry and the laments of those denied opportunity and the mourning of the prisoner and the weeping of those for whom life is a great burden. For God’s sake and for the sake of the world, talented and gifted people like you have to turn outward. You must insist that your light not be hidden beneath a bushel; you must demand that the light of Christ shining through you shines brilliantly on our social, economic, ecclesiastical and political life. And when that happens, you will be part of realizing Christ’s own vision for the world in which truth and equality and justice and peace and abundance for all are the way of the world.
Today, Liz and Chris, I suspect that you more than anyone here realize how graced and gifted you are, how many gifts God has given you, how your parents have loved and shaped you, how your larger family and circle of close friends have enriched your lives, along with the hundreds of people remembered or forgotten who have brought you to this day. And you know without my telling you that these gifts, both divine and human, are most richly used when they are shared.  We have the highest hopes for your future; we don’t know where you will be summoned to live and love and work. But we do know that that wherever God calls you, the deep love that you already share with each other will increase and multiply as you turn that love also to others.
This is your story, a story that neither begins nor ends today. Instead a story that comes to a momentary climax before continuing in the world. In a moment, you will make promises. And then you will come to the table together for a meal that unites you and all of us in Christ. Both your promises and that meal of grace make real in this moment the mission that you received in your baptism. A long time ago, you were commissioned by water and the Spirit to let the light of Christ within you shed its redeeming light over others. Today, in a moment of deep celebration and fuller awareness, you resolve to let your light shine together.

My oldest son is now married. And I presided at the wedding.

In the weeks leading up to the wedding, lots of folks asked how I would be able to do that without getting emotional. You know, father of the groom. First-born son. All of the emotional stuff tied up with being a father.

To a certain extent, all of that is true. Chris and I have a special relationship. We have always had the gift of enjoying time together, of good and sometimes deep conversation. I have been awed and humbled that Chris calls me or sits in the living room with a beer and asks for fatherly advice in a way that I never did with my own father. I don’t know how things worked out that way, but I am grateful.

Back to the wedding. When we first started the conversation about where it would be and who would preside, we talked about other options; for many different reasons, none of them were better than having the wedding at Faith Lutheran Church (where I am the Senior Pastor) and having me preside at their wedding.

As the wedding day approached, as Chris and Liz planned their wedding service, as I shared in those plans, I became more and more determined that for a little over an hour on a Saturday afternoon in October, I would be pastor and not father.

That may sound strange, especially given the nature of our relationship. It’s also strange because as a pastor, what I do and who I am are inextricably linked. I am a father; I am a husband; I am a pastor; I am Jim. While I might try to distinguish these roles, I never very successfully segregate them. So, when I preside at my son’s wedding, I am father, I am husband, I am pastor, and I am Jim.

Which brings me back to what I said a few lines ago. For a few hours on Saturday afternoon, I was determined that I was going to be more pastor than father. It would have been easy to tell cute stories about Chris when he was a kid, or about the phone calls when he told me about he and Liz falling in love. But I’m convinced that would have been the easy way out. And it would have short-changed Chris and Liz.

For the promises they were making, they deserved to have someone speak to them about how their covenant is informed by their faith, by the long arc of scripture and tradition, and by the sacramental presence of God in their lives and in the assembly gathered around them. The weightiness of the promises they were making demanded that their words of promise to each other be put into the context of their own baptismal calling where God spoke words of promise to them. They needed to hear how it makes a difference that they make those vows in the presence of the Body — those gathered, and the Body extended through place and time.

It was a delightful weekend, full of family, celebration, stories, laughter, and bright hope for the future. As father, I relished all of it. But in the middle of a weekend filled with being the proud and happy father, for one hour on a Saturday afternoon I was pastor.

Dear Coach Eigbrett,

You probably don’t remember me. I was that scrawny freshman kid on your cross-country team at Bridgeport High School. I wasn’t very good as high school cross country runners go, and that in a region where cross country wasn’t a big deal for anyone; it was all about football, as I remember.

There were only 5 of us on the team. Frank was the star. Even as a sophomore, he placed in the top 10 in the state meet. In fact, it was mostly due to Frank’s first place finish at districts that we even made it to the state cross country meet.

If Frank was the star, I was the complete opposite. I rarely finished the workouts without walking. The rest of the guys were in the showers already by the time I got back. I usually didn’t finish any of the races without walking, and I know I was one of the last runners to cross the finish line at the state meet. I’m pretty sure I was an embarrassment to you; at least that’s what I felt like.

I really didn’t like running, and I especially didn’t like being pushed so hard that it hurt. So, I quit. Not the team, but the workouts and the races. When it started to hurt, I started to walk. It made sense to me. When it didn’t hurt so much, I started running again. Like I said, I didn’t like running very much. My dad had convinced me that being on the cross country team would get me in good shape for the basketball team, which was the sport I really liked. I wasn’t very good at that either, though I did make the team and did a good job of cheering the starters from the bench.

I guess on some level I liked being part of the team, even though, as I remember, I didn’t feel that much a part of the team. I liked the trips to the races; I really enjoyed the state meet, but I don’t remember ever feeling like I contributed anything. Probably because, in concrete terms, I didn’t. Our score was based on the cumulative total of the five top finishers. Since we only had five on the team, my consistently end-of-the-pack score didn’t help the team very much. I might add, however, that if there had been only four on the team, we would not have been scored as a team and we would not have been eligible for the state meet; Frank could have run as an individual qualifier, but the team would not have gone. There is that.

So here’s the funny thing. I’m 52 years old, and I’m still running. Imagine that!

When I got to college, I discovered that running at a more leisurely pace for a half hour or 45 minutes was actually enjoyable, and a good antidote to the hours of sitting in class and in the library. It became a way to clear my mind and to decompress a little. As time went on, I began entering 5K races, a 10K race here and there, and found a whole community of people who ran for the fun of it. Over the years, I’ve loved being a part of that community.

In my 30’s, still running, after I was married and had a new baby, I even convinced my wife to start running, a physical activity that she was convinced she hated, and now she is still running 4 times a week into her 50’s, and enjoying it.

Through the years there have been brief periods when I have quit running. Felt it was too hard on my body, got too busy, or just found other ways to get exercise. But running is the thing I always come back to. I’m still not very fast. But I do it consistently, and I can even finish a workout without walking. I’m sure you would be happy about that!

The even more amazing thing is that about 5 years ago, I started running marathons. Crazy, huh? The kid who couldn’t run 4 miles without stopping is now running 26? I know, it doesn’t make sense. But I’ve run 1 or 2 marathons a year for the past 5 years and I can’t imagine my life without it. It keeps me disciplined, it keeps me in a relative degree of well-being, and I simply cannot describe in words the feeling of elation, exhilaration, and accomplishment when I cross the finish line after 26 miles. I will probably never qualify for the Boston Marathon. But I finish. And that means a lot to me.

So, I just thought you might want to know that maybe the point was not how I did or didn’t fit into the competitive culture of high school sports – even though back then it was way, way, way less intense than it is these days. Maybe the point is to cultivate some ability to recognize exercise and some kind of physical activity as a fundamental component of living well. I’m not so sure that’s what you had in mind. But I am grateful that the seeds planted in a scrawny, no-good-to-the-team runner have taken root and grown into a lifelong pursuit of fitness and well-being.

The number 5 runner on the Bridgeport High School Cross Country Team and bottom 10 finisher at the 1974 Nebraska State High School Cross Country Meet,

Jim Honig