Last Sunday's sermon

Those of you who heard me preach Sunday, firstly, I'm sorrry, secondly this is how I'd written the sermon. Those of you who didn't you'll see it when you read this that it wouldn't make for a good sermon quite simply because it's both too long and there are too many things happening at the same time. However, when I wrote this (and it has been 1,5 years since I last wrote a sermon) I was kind of pleased with myself simply because I'd been worried that I couldn't get a sermon going at all. So, be merciful, ok? It was the theme of the Sunday anyway :).

The Message tells to Gospel of this Sunday like this:
About that time some people came up and told him about the Galileans Pilate had killed while they were at worship, mixing their blood with the blood of the sacrifices on the altar. Jesus responded, "Do you think those murdered Galileans were worse sinners than all other Galileans? Not at all. Unless you turn to God, you, too, will die. And those eighteen in Jerusalem the other day, the ones crushed and killed when the Tower of Siloam collapsed and fell on them, do you think they were worse citizens than all other Jerusalemites? Not at all. Unless you turn to God, you, too, will die."

Remember what I said in the beginning of this service? The theme for this Sunday is Be merciful! And this is the Gospel for this Sunday? The Good news? You've got to be kidding me.
But no, it isn’t a joke. For reasons that escape me this is what the lectionary has as the Gospel for this Sunday. I’m not saying that you should omit anything of God’s word from the Lectionary. Although for practical purposes it isn’t possible to read through the entire Bible in a Church Year and therefore a lot of the Bible really is not a part of the Lectionary. What I am saying is that I don’t quite get how this text is connected to the theme of this Sunday. If the theme were Repent, yes, but Be merciful?
However, this is the reading and I’m done complaining now. So, let’s see what we have here. A high ranking officer of the occupying force had ordered people to be killed and they’d been killed at the temple in the middle of a service and not spearing any blood either. No wonder the people were in shock and probably seeking both Jesus’s condemnation of the murders and His consolation. But Jesus, true to himself, didn’t respond the way they expected - at all.
Have you ever encountered the abbreviation WWJD? It stands for What would Jesus do? Now those bracelets have always annoyed me somewhat. The truth is, though, that this is because I never knew their background. The reason they annoyed me was that I think it just plain silly to think that we could know what Jesus would do in any given situation. If you study your Bible you’ll notice that most of the time He never ever did what was expected of Him. Moreover He is the Son of God so do we really think we know how God himself thinks? Seriously. Of course we don’t. And if we think we do, we need a reality check fast.
But. There is a but here and that is that the question is not What would Jesus say or How would Jesus react but What would Jesus do? The point of the question is in the doing. It is not an introvert but rather an extrovert question. It begs you to look around you and act.
The question itself originates from a book by Charles Sheldon written already in 1896. It was actually subtitled “What Would Jesus Do?"
In it Rev. Henry Maxwell encounters a homeless man who has difficulty understanding why, in his view, so many Christians ignore the poor. This is what he says:

"I heard some people singing at a church prayer meeting the other night,
'All for Jesus, all for Jesus,
All my being's ransomed powers,
All my thoughts, and all my doings,
All my days, and all my hours.'
"and I kept wondering as I sat on the steps outside just what they meant by it. It seems to me there's an awful lot of trouble in the world that somehow wouldn't exist if all the people who sing such songs went and lived them out. I suppose I don't understand. But what would Jesus do? Is that what you mean by following His steps? It seems to me sometimes as if the people in the big churches had good clothes and nice houses to live in, and money to spend for luxuries, and could go away on summer vacations and all that, while the people outside the churches, thousands of them, I mean, die in tenements, and walk the streets for jobs, and never have a piano or a picture in the house, and grow up in misery and drunkenness and sin."

Good question. Isn’t it?

I don’t claim to be a brilliant theological scholar or a scholar of any sort. I’m a stay at home mom and a pastor at the same time. I understand very little and to be honest I’m not sure that the things I claim to know are even right. I think they are but I may be wrong, too. But I also believe that I have not been left to my own devices to deal with life but that there is God and He is at work with me so that if I have gotten something wrong I will eventually be led to see it.
Now, this is what I believe. I believe that God is love. I believe that Jesus is God’s son. I believe that He died so that all sin including every single most horrifying deed of mankind would be forgiven. And I believe that the Holy Spirit will lead, guide, and comfort us. I believe that in Holy Spirit God’s wisdom is poured into our hearts together with all of His love, joy and compassion.
How does this then relate to both WWJD and the Gospel of this Sunday then? To attack the latter question first. From God’s perspective sins are never miniscule. They are always huge. To Him there isn’t a difference between murder and thinking that someone is an idiot. For us there is and that’s why we have such a hard time understanding many of the comments Jesus makes. From our perspective surely a child molester is a much much bigger sinner than someone who steals their neighbor’s Sunday paper. This is why courts sanction people with anything from a fine to a life time in jail and in some countries even death. We think that sins are of varying degrees. Jesus didn’t. God doesn’t.
Each sin even the very smallest one in our perspective rips right into the heart of God. We may be horrified with genocide, hideous murders, rapes and all of that which gives fuel to the tabloids but God’s perspective is different. The sins which result in the headlines they all start somewhere. It is that very first sin - be it indifference to someone else, apathy in the face of injustice or just plain lying to yourself - that is equally horrible than the end one. There are no levels of sin. All sin leads to death.
This is what St. Paul says in his letter to the Romans and taken out of context is unnerving. However, what the point is this: no one, not a single person on earth can claim to be without sin but God can. He is without sin.
The problem with sin is that sin manifests the existence of evil in our lives. Nothing less. Sucks, doesn’t it, but that’s the way it is. That is why it cannot be ignored. That is why God cannot just say let’s forget about it I’m sure you’re a good person deep down. No, he wants evil out all together. And he sees evil as it is; in the smallest of our sins as much as in the biggest ones. Therefore weather there had been a horrible massacre at the temple or not was not of significance to Jesus. All sins were to Him equally horrifying.
For Him there was no element of surprise he knew that we as humans are capable of great evil. It is a scary thought and one that will not make me popular and certainly didn’t make our Saviour popular. But we all are. Therefore, right then, Jesus’s concern was for those who came to Him expecting Him to either be horrified with them or to say that those who had died deserved it in some way.
He makes it abundantly clear that by concentrating on the sins of others, in other words, by judging others you were both committing a sin yourself and not in any way or form any better than anyone else. We all have sinned and we all need to both acknowledge it and turn to God to ask for His forgiveness. To put it in biblical terms: we need to repent.
The good news – and one wonders at times how people are supposed to see the Gospel as good news if all we say is that you’re a sinner and you should repent. That was what John the Baptist did in preparation to Jesus’s arrival. With Jesus the story continues further. The good news is that God forgives. Not only that but He loves so much that He gave His Son to die for us so that the power of evil would be broken. And it was and is.
You are right, there is still sin in the world, masses of it. But evil has lost. God’s love won. And with that the Holy Spirit was poured into the hearts of mankind. We are living in the church year the time after Pentecost. This is especially the time of Spirit’s work. So, we’re not only talking about the fact that God has forgiven all mankind and that his forgiveness is absolute but that His love has been plentifully poured into our hearts, to the core of our very existence in His Spirit. He is in us.
And here is where we return to the WWJD. We do not know what Jesus would do. Lets just face it. Even better lets just say it to ourselves, I do not know what Jesus would do! But the Holy Spirit does. And this is both the Gospel, the good news and our calling. We are called to action. We are called to let love manifest itself in our lives in every shape and form it will. Because love is God.
When I became the pastor of this congregation back in 2003 I came with one thing I wanted to have in each service. It is the words I say at the very end as the words of dismissal. They come from St. Paul:

Go forth into the world in peace;
be of good courage;
hold fast that which is good;
render to no one evil for evil;
strengthen the fainthearted;
support the weak;
help the afflicted;
honour everyone;
love and serve the Lord,
rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit.

They are what Christianity is all about. Loving God, living our lives honoring, loving, serving and being merciful to each other and ultimately rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit. Being a Christian can be hard work, yes, but the reward is huge. It is God’s joy over us poured into the very center of our being. What could be better?

RIP

MJ, rest in peace, and may light perpetual shine upon you.

Midsummer and home

Here are our two youngest midsummer travellers :). Ellanalle has rapidly become Lotta's most loved toy and is a huge help when for example we have to go to the doctor's - which we've had to do quite often lately because Lotta's eyes keep getting infected. The eye specialist now tells us that she might need an operation to her tearducts to make them wider. I so so hope it won't come to that, though.

We now massage the area right beside her eyes on the sides of her nose four times a day in addition to putting the antibiotic drops into her eyes also four times a day. Massaging is supposed to help somehow but if it doesn't do the trick in two weeks time we're back to the doctor's. Sigh. The mere thought scares me to death. Not the doctor but the operation. The doctor himself was very matter of fact and nice but also very funny since he clearly has no kids yet and kept making suggestions that were somewhat over ambitious for a 14 month old.

Moving on, though, this was the weather midsummer weekend. Rainy and not particularily warm.

It has after that changed somewhat :). It's about 27 degrees inside in our home and can get up to 34 outside in our back garden which gets sun from noon on...

On the left photos from the front of the house and on the right from the back of the house i.e. front and back gardens.

The road from our road. This is where we walk to get Lotta to fall asleep for her nap. We are right in the middle of the most beautiful countryside :).

Our kitchen and Lotta's room.

We are moved :)

It looks pretty chaotic here but little by little curtains and lamps have been put to their place. One room is still full of boxes and our study, which is where I'm writing this, looks very messy with odd piles of lamps, shelves (Lundia), electric cords etc. etc. But WE HAVE MOVED!
I don't have a whole lot of photos yet since my days are spent putting stuff away and taking care of our little helper who is having the time of her life pulling out the stuff I just put away :). Also, the weather hasn't been to sunshiney and since we haven't had lamps installed there hasn't really been enough light. The reason for the lamp problem is that we moved from an old appartment and had needed to change the wiring to suit it and now this is a new one where the system is different.

Here are in any case a couple photos for you from the back garden and our kitchen and of Lotta who is enjoying her own little cottage :).

We think Lotta likes our new home but there have been some rough nights which I think may have resulted from her feeling a bit insecure with everything. It must be confusing that every time you wake up from your nap there have been changes. Now the changes are less obvious and we think that her periodical insomnia is caused by a handsome new tooth :).

Stuff

It's that time of the year again. Cauliflower planting has started and Husband left early in the morning to help. This would be all fine and dandy except that since school is almost over he's been so busy that we've hardly seen him all week. We miss him!

But he'll be back in the evening and tomorrow Lotta gets him all to herself when I go take my very first service after having her. It's sooooo weird, returning back to work that is, although just for this service. It's now been a year and a half since I last was in charge of a service. Well, God was and is, but you know what I mean.

I am not the same person anymore but I'm not quite sure what that really means, if anything. I hope that motherhood has changed me for the better but if it has how that translates to being a pastor I don't know. I'm really looking forward to tomorrow just for that and I'm so pleased to see my congregation again.

We haven't been able to attend services because up till now our little one has taken her afternoon naps between 3-4 p.m. and then eaten around 5 p.m. She is right now in the process of starting to take only one nap a day but that waries a bit still, too. Mostly because of teething. She now has two new teeth on the bottom and the other two are on their way. In fact I think one came through last night (at least there was very little sleeping happening...).

I wrote months ago that I wanted to try to write something about motherhood come Mother's Day. As you can tell I didn't. Motherhood kind of got in the way :), and the move, and the fact that Husband is more overworked than ever.

I love blogging and find myself often writing a little piece in my head but to actually get to the computer and write that's another thing. We seem to have so little time as a family and as a couple that sitting in front of the computer during those time just isn't the thing. And more often than not these times when Lotta is taking her nap I have a thousand chores to take care of.

I do now, too, but I really wanted to write AND I can't do much packing since it makes quite a bit of noise so I have the perfect excuse.

I can't believe that we're almost there. This is our last week in this apartment. Come Thursday or if we are lucky already Wednesday evening we get the keys to our new home - the family moves this weekend but wanted to do some cleaning up before letting us move in. I'm all for someone else cleaning so this is really nice :).

There's renovation work being done in the houses surrounding us where we now live and it is about to extend to ours, too. They lifted something that sounded like an old rusty submarine up there on Thursday and forced Lotta and me and uncle T out for her naptime since it was LOUD and Lotta couldn't understand what was happening. Understandibly so since they were on top of us on the roof. So, we're REALLY looking forward to the move.

This time around we've hired a moving company. It's kind of costly but I think we're not going to regret it. Thursday we move our beds and a kitchen table and chairs into our new home plus all of the other stuff we need to be able to sleep over there. Friday the moving company guys come in and move our furniture. And Saturday Husband and Lotta's godmother's wonderful husband move all of the boxes we've already packed from the temporary storage where thay now are. There are about a hundred of them plus other stuff from our storage here. We have incerible amounts of stuff! And fifty of the boxes contain books :).

So this is us for now. Tired and preoccupied with the big move but extremely happy about it and expecting a great summer :).

Home

It's done! We know own our new home - or rather the bank does -but we're ignoring that detail and rejoicing over the fact that it is now ours. Yay times ten! We get the keys on Ascension Day morning.

No more having to cram Lotta in her stroller into the tiniest elevator in the world. No more having to do the dishes by hand. Husband is especially thankful of this since it has been his chore, in fact he is doing them right now :). No more having to have a washing machine that opens at the top because the other kind doesn't fit into our bathroom. No more having to step up into the bathtub to take a shower.

On the other hand, no more soaking in the bath since the new place has a sauna but not so surprisingly no bathtub.

What we now leave, this is the home were we have spent our first three and half years together. Here is where we brought our new born baby girl. Here is where Husband carried me over the threshold the day after we had gotten married. Here is where we had huge fights when renovating it to suit both our tastes but those are the fights that made us a real couple. This was our first home together and we will never forget.

Travellin'

This photo is one of my favorite ones ever. I love the light, I love the little girl :) and I love the bright colors. This was taken the day we were driving to see yet another apartment which turned out to be the one :). So a special picture in every way.



Little miss Lotta was playing with her dad and the both of them had a brilliant time.




This last photo was taken on our way to Ikaalinen during Easter. Lotta had slept for an hour and woke up very happy which was so nice since she hasn't relly been a very keen traveller.

After a photographic update then a literary ;) one. As of yesterday we no longer own our apartment! Yay! Today at 3 p.m. we meet at our bank to close the deal on our new home. Double yay! :) Scary, too, since it is kind of a big loan we're undertaking but we've done the math (how could we not have, given Husband's occupation :)) and we think that even with a clearly higher intrest rate we'd still be ok. And we're loving the new place so it's worth it even if things are tighter at some point.

It's been a really eventful spring up till now I have to say. First we were selling, then we sold, at the same time we were looking and finally found what we were looking for. In the midst of all of this our daughter is growing and learning new things every day and making every day both busy and special.

Then of course there was Easter. The very first Easter that I didn't get one chocolate egg and more importantly never got to church. You see, we were in Ikaalinen for the weekend which was lovely but I have to admit that it feels weird to not have celebrated the single most important Christian Holy Day there is. I missed all of it so much! It is a good feeling to be sad about it, though. Once in a while it's good to be reminded just how much I love my Christian tradition and my church. I don't need to be reminded about loving God :) but the other part of my relationship to Him - the one that is tightly connected to His church - this is the part that I at times don't remember just how much it means to me. Consider me reminded! I hope you all had a wonderful Easter and the miracle of Christ's resurrection has touched you in a new way once more.