Jesus, come! Surprise our dullness,
make us willing to receive more than we can yet imagine,
all the best you have to give:
let us find your hidden riches, taste your love, believe, and live!

— Christopher Idle (ELW 312)

Did you receive a Christmas gift this year where, upon opening it, you said “you shouldn’t have?” Why do we say dumb things like that? Obviously, we sometimes mean it tongue-in-cheek, such as with a Yankee Swap gift (I’m sure whoever received my Executive Back Scratcher was tempted to say those words…) But sometimes—I would say most of the time—what we really mean when we say “you shouldn’t have” is “I don’t deserve this.” I don’t deserve it because I forgot to buy you something, or because you clearly spent much more than I did, or because I haven’t been that good at keeping in touch this year, or because I don’t even think I’m worthy of having such nice things.

Well, this year, someone called me on it. A friend of mine whom I barely see surprised me with a small gift: just some chamomile tea and homemade granola. And I, embarrassed that I didn’t have anything to give in return, and humbled that she would even think to give me anything, said, “Oh really now, you shouldn’t have,” to which she replied, “Well I shouldn’t with that attitude!” (Or something close to that…)

She said it with a laugh, but she was clearly hurt—not because I didn’t like the gift, but because I didn’t receive it as a gift. We are so accustomed to earning what we have in our society, and then feeling deserving of what we possess. Even families that have tried to scale back on their Christmas budgets by drawing names from a hat and buying for only one person still end up in the same predicament: you give one gift and you receive one gift. Everyone comes out “even” in the end. The idea that someone would just give us something because they care about us and not expect anything in return almost doesn’t register in our brains.

And yet that’s what a gift (in the truest sense) really is: receiving something you don’t deserve. It’s being surprised by someone’s generosity…taken aback by someone’s kindness…left speechless by an act of grace unplanned and unrewarded. Think of those K-mart shoppers who showed up to the layaway counter this holiday season to find their balances had been anonymously paid. That’s a gift. Better yet, think of Jesus doing the same thing with us.

My favorite line in the hymn quoted above (which is based on the story of Jesus turning water into wine at a wedding feast) is “make us willing to receive.” Not make us worthy to receive, but willing—as in learning to stop being the person who says “you shouldn’t have” and instead is open to the possibility that someone somewhere —namely God—does love you unconditionally and wants to give you the “best he has to give,” the gifts of life, healing, forgiveness, and acceptance that we experience in Jesus.

We’ll never deserve those gifts, and we’ll never repay them, but God will always give them, because that’s just who our God is. That, if you will, is the real “epiphany” this season: that God has come among us not to collect on a debt but to pay it in full…to fill our empty vessels with his love and strength…to flood the dark places of our word, our hearts, and our minds with heaven’s light.

May that light that is Jesus shine upon you this season, and may you receive it as a gift! 

Jon Niketh +

To go where love leads;
To serve where love calls.

– new Purpose Statement of the New England Synod

It’s almost shockingly brief, and at first glance, it might seem too vague to even begin to describe what we, as the 188 congregations that make up the New England Synod, are here to do—particularly since it doesn’t actually mention God. But this past weekend, the Doing What Matters facilitation team unveiled our new Purpose Statement, crafted over the past several months through the input received from many individuals at the Mission Area Assemblies held throughout the Synod this spring.

As words on a page, they might not seem like much. But after spending this past weekend in Springfield with around 600 Lutherans from all over New England, excited to be together, putting their faith into action through acts of love and service, and making connections between what we do here on a congregational level and what we do together as the New England Synod and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, I began to see that there is much more meat to these words than meets the eye.

A “Purpose Statement,” after all is not meant to be an exhaustive description of what an organization does. It isn’t even meant to give specifics or goals. It’s meant to give an over-arching theme that answers the question, “Why do we exist?” And as Lutherans, who approach everything we do from the place of God’s lavish, unconditional grace and mercy, it does seem to make sense to ground everything we do in just that: love. Love, after all, is not just a feeling. For Christians, love is always an action—but more importantly, a person. For us who are the baptized people of God, we know Jesus as God’s love incarnate…and ourselves as Jesus’ love embodied in the world today.

There was a palpable energy at this year’s Synod Assembly that said to me, “we are really starting to understand this.” It’s one thing for me to preach about love; it’s another thing for us to do it. Jack King and Gabby Richard, who represented FLC extraordinarily well, can tell you about the faith experiences they had in making this connection between what we believe and how we live—especially when we do it together as the church in the world.

It is my hope that a lot of the energy and enthusiasm that we experienced at Assembly can be brought back here to Lynn to help others make that connection as well. Already, at our Council meeting last Monday, we began taking action on one of the resolutions passed at the Assembly that called for congregations to consider developing community gardens as a way of providing fresh, local produce to the neighborhood and helping us consider our relationship to the earth that God made. Resolutions on developing pastoral care and liturgical resources for ministering to interfaith families, and calling the church to take a public stand against bullying also passed overwhelmingly—thanks in part to Gabby Richard, who had the courage to speak of her own experience of bullying (in front of over 600 Lutherans) in favor of the resolution! Here at FLC, the concert we hosted earlier this spring to support the anti-bullying work of nAGLY was already a great start to fulfilling this mandate to speak out. Look for more opportunities to get the word out that God loves everyone and that FLC is a safe, welcoming church for all people in the coming months.

As we celebrate the festival of Pentecost on June 12, I am excited to see how the Holy Spirit will move among us in the coming months. I sense a renewed vitality among more and more people in this congregation, and I look forward to seeing how we will “do what matters” by loving and serving the world in Jesus’ name.

Yours on the journey,

Jon Niketh +

Look to Jesus,
who for the sake of the joy that was set before him
endured the cross, disregarding its shame,
and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.

– Gospel Acclamation for Good Friday (Hebrews 12:2)

Dear church family,

There are a lot of things that demand our attention. Many of us, from the moment we wake up until the moment we go to sleep, sort through a barrage of information, people, tasks, and deadlines that all scream “LOOK AT ME!” At this very moment, how many messages do you need to return? How tall is the stack of mail on your desk at work or at home? How many people are counting on you to do something for them? How many times have you checked your e-mail or Facebook account today? How many TV shows or movies are on your “must see” list?

The positive side of living in our media culture is that we have access to all sorts of great information and social connections at our fingertips. We can get answers to questions, stay current on the news, share our ideas, and interact with people in a way that was impossible a generation ago. The negative side is a very real phenomena that psychologists call sensory or informational overload, where we have so much visual and mental stimulation that we can’t process it all, sometimes to the point where can’t even give our full attention to the person sitting right in front of us.

One might think that the answer to this problem is simply to do less, or to cut back on our intake of information— and perhaps some of us need to. But Dr. Pamela Rutledge, the director of the Media Psychology Research Center, suggests something different; she says that stories are the antidote to information overload. Stories help us make sense of all the information swirling around in our head. Stories take all those facts and images and sound bites that make up our lives give them meaning. Stories help us connect the dots between all those things that demand our attention and put them in the context of more important questions like “Who am I?” and “What is my purpose in this life?”

One of the many gifts of being followers of Jesus is that we have a pretty incredible story. It’s the story of a God who all throughout history has been in love with his people and time after time has carried them safely from death to new life. In the coming weeks, we will journey deeply into the heart of that story as we enter Holy Week—the week that changed the world. Through ancient words, songs, and rituals, we will make the old story new again. We won’t simply “remember” or “re-enact” what happened a long time ago to some other people; we will enter into the mystery of Jesus’ death and resurrection in our own time and place.

We will be the ones who wave our palms and welcome him as king; we will be the ones who deny ever knowing him. Ours will be the feet he stoops to wash through the hands of our brothers and sisters, ours will be the sins that are forgiven, ours will be a place at the table where he shares his holy meal. We will be the ones who gather around the wood of the cross and dare to call that Friday “good.” But most of all, it will be us who stand in amazement at our own empty tombs, who light up the darkness with the light of Christ, and who sing with every bit of joy we can muster that Christ is risen—and so are we.

There are a lot of places we could look for meaning in our lives. Holy Week is our invitation to LOOK TO JESUS. Please make time to be a part of this saving story again this year. Details on our special worship services are posted here. I look forward to telling the story with you!

Yours on the journey,

Jon Niketh +

As the deer longs for the water-brooks,
so longs my soul for you, O God.
I thirst for God, for the living God;
when shall I come to appear before the presence of God?

– Psalm 42:1-2

Dear church family,

One of my earliest memories of church as a child was a song that was based on this Psalm called “As the Deer.” We used to sing it a lot, and over many years it had a way of imprinting itself on my heart (which, by the way, is how the liturgy works—what seems like repetition is actually a holy rhythm that slowly becomes a part of our lives…but I digress.) The part of the song that resonated with me was not just the music, but the image of thirsting for God.

On the one hand, especially to a kid, it made no sense. If God was a spirit and lived in heaven, how could a person be thirsty for God? But on the other hand, there was something about the idea that did make sense—the part about having a longing deep inside myself for a connection with something greater, something more beautiful, something more eternal than my own little life.

I don’t think it was scientific proof I was after. After all, there have been philosophical arguments for and against the existence of God for centuries, and while they are great for the brain to chew on, they aren’t necessarily nourishing for the soul. I think what I wanted was an experience of God, a God who wasn’t simply a spirit living light-years away, but a God who was part of my life, nourishing my body, mind, and spirit the way a cold glass of water soothes a parched throat.

Have you ever longed for God in that way? Maybe it was a time in your life when you felt very alone and began to wonder if your life really mattered. Maybe it was a time when you received a scary diagnosis or some bad news and didn’t know what the next day would bring. Maybe it was a time when you were at a crossroads, and needed to make an important decision about a job or a relationship and didn’t know which path to choose.

In times like that, I think we really do thirst for God. I think we need reassurance that somewhere behind all the uncertainty and pain, there is a greater story in which our lives belong—a story that ends not with death but with resurrection. We are about to begin the season of Lent, a time in the church year when we take a step back and return to “the source,” what’s at the heart of our lives as Christians: our baptism into Christ. It’s in our baptism that God satisfies our longing for relationship in a way that mere words could never do: by quenching our thirst with living water and writing our lives into the story of salvation.

As we journey through these forty days to the cross, there will be many ways for us to encounter that life-giving story. On Ash Wednesday, we will be marked with ashes in the sign of the cross, a reminder that even when we return to the dust, we will be safe in God’s keeping. We will gather on Wednesday nights to share dinner together, catch up on each other’s lives, and sing Evening Prayer together in the candlelit sanctuary. We will be nourished each Sunday in the Eucharist with living bread from heaven. And we will walk together through the beauty and mystery of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil, where through every word, sign, symbol, and sacrament the church can muster, we will experience the power of the resurrection in our ordinary lives.

All of us thirst for God. Please make time in your schedule this Lent for God to quench your thirst. The abundance of God’s well never runs dry.

Yours on the journey,

Jon Niketh +

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
snow had fallen, snow on snow,
snow on snow..

ELW 294

I should start by saying I’m not usually one to complain about winter. I love living in an area that has all four seasons, and I’ll gladly take a few hours of shoveling now and then for the monotony of Florida or Arizona any day. Each season brings its own set of banes and blessings, and being able to experience all of them gives us a greater appreciation of the cycle of life and of God’s good creation.

That being said, this has been one crazy winter. The snow is piled so high in front of the church that we can barely see across the street, and we’ve been forced to cancel and reschedule too many important times of being together— Wednesday Church Nights, Chattering Crafters, and our second visioning meeting for the new H.O.P.E. Initiative of Lynn. We’ll be playing catch-up this month, so please pay close attention to the calendar in the Sunday bulletin each week— which may continue to change as Mother Nature changes her mood…

But as much as these snow days have forced us to stay inside and rearrange our plans, I wonder if there isn’t something holy in that too. Our lives are so scheduled that perhaps it is a kind of humbling gift to realize that the world will, in fact, go on without us for a day or two…and that all those appointments and practices and rehearsals and meetings that seem to define our lives are not as important as, say, spending a night at home with people you love around the fire.

One of my favorite things about winter is being able to use the fireplace. This past Wednesday, when it was below freezing and the roads were covered in ice, I sat in front of the fire and realized that it was the feast of the Presentation of Our Lord (Feb. 2)—forty days after Christmas—the day Mary and Joseph would have brought their baby to the Temple according to Jewish law. The gospel of Luke says that on this occasion, an old man named Simeon took the newborn into his arms, and realizing that he was holding the Savior he waited his whole life to see, said “Now, Lord, you let your servant go in peace…for my own eyes have seen your salvation…a light to reveal to the nations” (Luke 2:29-32). In many churches, all the candles that will be used for the year are blessed on this day, symbolizing the light of Christ that still burns brightly in our midst.

We didn’t get to do that on Wednesday because of the storm. But as I stared into the fireplace, I pondered the ways in which I have been able to sing Simeon’s song in my own life—times when I have seen the light of Christ reflected in you and in the ministry we do in this place. When we were baptized, we were each given a candle and told to let our light shine before others, that through our lives of faithful service, others would come to see and experience God’s love and salvation.

As we all know, the world can sometimes feel like a cold place, regardless of what the temperature is outside. And there are many people, even in our own lives, who wonder if they will ever see with their eyes what they have hoped for in their hearts. Our mission as the church to keep on singing Simeon’s song: proclaiming to the world with our words and actions that God is here in out midst, fulfilling the promise of salvation. We shouldn’t be timid about sharing that good news, or as the song says, “hide it under a bushel.” During the rest of this Epiphany season, let’s take up Jesus’ call to let our light shine, and in doing so bring some much-needed warmth to our world.

Yours on the journey,

Jon Niketh +

“Ah,” I smiled. “I’m not really here to keep you from freaking out. I’m here to be with you while you freak out, or grieve or laugh or suffer or sing. It is a ministry of presence. It is showing up with a loving heart.”
— Kate Braestrup from Here If You Need Me: A True Story

Dear church family,

Over the past several weeks, I have been reflecting on our ministry together, which is now well into its third year. I’ve been thinking about what we’ve accomplished together: the new or revitalized ministries that have begun or are in the process of getting started, our beautiful and faithful worship, and the slow but steady gift of new faces in our church family. I’ve also been thinking about all that still needs to be done: growing our ministry with youth, reaching out more intentionally to our neighborhood, spreading out the responsibilities of the church more evenly so people don’t get burned out, and taking care of some building issues which have been deferred for way too long. Put together, it can produce a lot of anxiety!

And yet, in the midst of mulling over all these tasks and programs and “action items,” I’ve also been listening again and again to the Christmas story—the story of “God with us”—of Jesus who came to earth not with a “to-do” list, but with a “to-love” list. Jesus’ ministry, while it did have a clear mission statement and concrete objectives (read Luke 3:16-21), was first and foremost rooted in human relationships. People came to trust Jesus and the God who sent him because Jesus was a part of their lives. He didn’t have an office or a church building. He did preach, forgive sins, worship, and heal, but he went to where the people were. He ate with them, talked with them, and shared in their joys and sorrows. Jesus had a ministry of presence.

Kate Braestrup understood this concept. After losing her husband in a car accident, she pursued his dream of becoming a minister, and ended up serving as a prison chaplain. She encountered some of the most difficult and desperate situations you can imagine. But rather than get anxious or obsess over how to “fix” everyone’s problems, she understood her pastoral calling as “showing up with a loving heart.”

One of my goals this year is just that. Office hours at church are great, and I will still have them. But this year, I also want to begin having OFFICE HOURS ON-THE-ROAD. The reality is that many of you work during the day, or don’t live close to the church, and can’t simply “drop in” over your lunch hour the way you might have been able to a generation ago. So, rather than expect you to come to church, I want to bring church to you. I would love to come see where you work. I would love to meet you at your favorite place for lunch. I would love to meet you for coffee (or if its your preference, a beer) when you get out for the day. If I haven’t already been to your house, I’d love to come over for dinner.

I don’t just want to see you here on Sunday morning; I want to see what’s important to you in the rest of your world. I want to hear what your joys and concerns are and find out where you see God at work in your life. I can’t promise to fix all your problems; but I can promise to show up with a loving heart. And, in the process of listening to each other and growing in relationship, I have a feeling that the direction forward for us as a congregation will become clearer, and our anxieties will begin to melt away.

So check your calendar, pick a day, and let’s get together at your place. I think it’s what Jesus would have wanted.

Yours on the journey,

Jon Niketh +

Today, Christians around the world honor God’s gift of the faithful, courageous woman who would become the Mother of Christ, our savior. As we prepare for Jesus’ coming into our lives during this Advent season, we remember that it all started with a young, frightened teenager who opened her heart—and her whole life—to be a vessel for God’s love. May we all open ourselves to God’s brooding Spirit to do new and hopeful things through us.

Mary the dawn, Christ the perfect Day;
Mary the gate, Christ the heavenly Way,

Mary the root, Christ the mystic Vine;
Mary the grape, Christ the sacred Wine.

Mary the wheat-sheaf, Christ the living Bread;
Mary the rose tree, Christ the Rose blood-red.

Mary the font, Christ the cleansing Flood;
Mary the chalice, Christ the saving Blood.

Mary the temple, Christ the temple’s Lord;
Mary the shrine, Christ the God adored.

Mary the beacon, Christ the haven’s Rest;
Mary the mirror, Christ the Vision blest.

– Medieval Hymn

Holy darkness, blessed night,
heaven’s answer hidden from our sight.
As we await you, O God of silence,
we embrace your holy night.

— Dan Schutte

Not too many Sundays ago, we turned our clocks back and said goodbye to one more hour of daylight… and welcomed one more hour of darkness. It might seem somewhat unusual to think of the darkness as “holy,” as this hymn invites us to do, since many of us think of these dark days of December as depressing, or even ominous— something to be feared. Our readings in worship during Advent seem to echo this fear; themes of “the end,” judgment, and the return of Christ take center stage.

For some of us, the darkness we see outside echoes the darkness we feel inside. If we are grieving the loss of a loved one, going through a major life transition, struggling with health issues, or simply have no one to celebrate the holidays with, this season where the world tells us we’re “supposed to be happy” can be very difficult. And yet, for us who gather in the light of Jesus, we know that the darkness is nothing to be afraid of. We know that hidden in every ending we could ever encounter is a new beginning, and that in buried in every death is a resurrection. God’s love is like a flame burning in secret, waiting to be revealed in our lives.

Sometimes it feels like we have to strain our eyes to see that light. Sometimes it feels like we have to wait forever before the peace and wholeness and answers we long for actually come. But the gift of Christmas is that God comes to us in the place of our deepest need, when our hope seems lost.

These dark days are an invitation for us to watch and listen for God where God is truly found: not in the bright fluorescent lights announcing door-buster sales, not in the endless loop of Christmas carols on the radio that began back in October, but in the quiet flicker of an altar candle, reminding us that God’s home is, was, and always will be right here with us, in the beautiful mess of our everyday lives.

The shepherds who first found Jesus were led to him by a star. As any kid who has gone camping can tell you, the best condition for seeing the stars is a clear night sky, when things are the darkest. My prayer for you during this Advent season is that whatever darkness you find yourself in, though it may not seem holy right now, makes the conditions right for you to see that same star, and be led to Jesus, the one for whom we have waited, and in whom there is no darkness at all.

God bless you, your families, and all those dear to you during this holy season!

Yours on the journey,

Jon Niketh +

We lift our voices,
we lift our hands,
we lift our lives up to you,
we are an offering.

— ELW 692

Dear church family,

For some of you, this hymn might be a little unfamiliar. It is new to many Lutherans, appearing for the first time in Evangelical Lutheran Worship, published just a few years ago, but it has been extremely popular in other Christian groups for many years. It is called “We Are An Offering,” and we’ve been singing it in worship for a few weeks now as our offerings of bread, wine, and money are brought to the altar in preparation for Holy Communion. The music is uplifting and has a way of staying with you through the day. But more importantly than that, I can think of no better words to capture the essence of what stewardship is for Christians.

So often stewardship sounds like churchy code language for money. When we hear that the Stewardship Campaign is about to begin, we can be tempted to think “uh oh, here they come asking for money again.” And, to some degree, you’d be right. The church does count on your generosity in all sorts of ways to help keep God’s ministry in this place vibrant and growing. You’ve been hearing about some of those ways at the beginning of worship as we get closer to Commitment Sunday (Nov. 21) and you can read about even more ways on page 8 of this month’s Echoes.

However, if we focused only on money when we talked  about stewardship, as if we were “paying dues” to be part of some group, we’d be missing the point entirely. Stewardship is not an annual fundraising appeal; it is a reminder that everything we have is God’s gift to us: our home, our possessions, our food, our church—even our own lives. We don’t “pay dues” for any of it; God gives it to us, as Martin Luther says in the Small Catechism, “out of pure, fatherly, and divine goodness and mercy.” We could never “pay God back” for what God has given us.

What we can do is lead lives of gratitude; we can be good stewards of what God has entrusted to us. A steward is someone who is given the responsibility of taking care of something that belongs to someone else. As stewards of God’s creation, it is, as we say in the Eucharistic Prayer each Sunday, “our duty and our joy” to give thanks to God at every time and every place—by making sure that everything God has placed into our hands is taken care of, and gets used not only for our benefit, but for all God’s children.

One way we do this is with our money. We return to God a portion of what we have to ensure that God’s message of love and forgiveness continues to go out to all the world through the ministries of this congregation and beyond. But just as important as our money is our hearts. As this song so clearly says, we are an offering—not just what we have and can give away, but what we are on the inside as people. God has given each of us gifts for ministry and for the building up of the body of Christ (Ephesians 4:12), and I firmly believe that includes everyone. Each person in the FLC has something to contribute, whether it be creative ideas, music, time, labor, or hospitality.

This church is what it is because of you. You are the building blocks built on Jesus the cornerstone. As you prepare for the stewardship season this year, remember that. Remember that you are an offering. Thanks be to God!

Yours on the journey,

Jon Niketh +

Dear church family,

You might notice the picture on the cover of this month’s issue: it’s a scene from the 2003 movie Luther, where Martin Luther (played by Joseph Fiennes) reaches out to embrace a poor, young girl who is unable to walk without crutches, and whose mother cannot afford even the basic necessities in life, much less the medical care that might make her well. In the film, Luther is moved by the family’s plight and takes a personal interest in their safety and well-being.

In one scene, the mother shows Luther an “indulgence” she was scared into buying for her daughter. An indulgence at that time was a document being sold by the Church that promised either the purchaser or another person of their choosing forgiveness of eternal punishment for their sins. Luther was outraged and heartbroken that the small amount of money the girl’s mother had been able to save—and which was supposed to be for her and her daughter—was spent instead on a worthless piece of paper. He felt that the Church had betrayed the very people it was supposed to protect.

Around Reformation Day, we often think of Luther primarily as the man who nailed the 95 Theses to the door of the village church, made bold pronouncements like “Here I stand, I can do no other,” and whose bold ideas and reforms changed Christianity and the Western world forever. Remembering Luther in this way—as a revolutionary or hero—makes us proud of our heritage, and encourages us to be bold in our own faith. It is, however, only part of the story.

As the scene in the movie attempts to illustrate, Luther was first and foremost a pastor. What kept him up at night was not church doctrines or liturgical practices—and certainly not the desire to create his own church—it was people. Luther couldn’t bear to see that the people who were entrusted to his spiritual care were burdened by guilt and manipulated by a corrupt institution. His motivation was not ego or ideology or a desire to be “different” from the Catholic Church—it was to help bring the Church back to it’s original purpose: to share the freedom and joy of the gospel with everyone through word and deed.

To truly honor Luther and celebrate Reformation Day is not to simply be proud of being Lutheran, or to focus on what makes us unique as a denomination. To celebrate the Reformation is to commit ourselves to the ongoing work of the Spirit in the Church today—putting the needs of the world before the preservation of an institution, proclaiming God’s unconditional love and forgiveness by grace alone (and not some human-made list of requirements), reaching out to those on the margins who might not believe that there is a place for them in God’s family, and insisting that the Church’s voice be on the side of God’s most vulnerable children—the poor and oppressed.

That is what Luther did. There would be no 95 Theses or Reformation Day or “A Mighty Fortress” if not for Luther’s pastoral heart, and his conviction that the Church was not simply for the rich and holy, but for all people. Our challenge as Lutheran Christians today is to look at the Church and the world through his eyes. Where does the Church need reforming in our time and place? Who do we exclude from the peace of God’s embrace? What can we do to make God’s message of love more clear and more available to those in need? May the same Spirit that moved in Luther and all the reformers who have come since move in us as well, that we might carry on their work of opening the doors of the Church to all.

Yours on the journey,

Jon Niketh +