Claimed, gathered and sent

This past week was the most amazing Holy Week I have ever experienced. Considering I spent a number of them in the Holy Land, that's really saying something. I have never been so involved in the planning and participation of the services. Although I'm not yet a pastor, the experiences I've had during internship have whetted my appetite even more to be doing this for the rest of my life. According to Frederick Buechner, vocation is “the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet" With the tiredness, yet the high of Holy Week following me into this week, these words describe this job, work, vocation of serving God and God's people more than ever. I experienced this today as I made my weekly trek to Winchester, VA for physical therapy. It's an hour and a half drive one way. Winchester Hospital is just down the road, so I've been able to combine physical therapy days and hospital visits. Today's visits were especially poignant...

Well, I thought I had just the direction I needed for this Sunday's sermon for the Baptism of Our Lord...it even include alliteration, which I love, but not the above alliteration. It would have been titled, "Vision, Voice, Vocation." I had it all worked out. At Jesus' baptism, there was the vision of the Holy Spirit coming down like a dove, Jesus' heard the Father's voice , and Jesus was thereby commissioned for his vocation. Then I looked at the passage some more and tried to write this sermon and it just wouldn't work. Apparently God had something else in mind. So, now it's time for a new direction. As I've studied and prayed, I keep thinking of the theme to CSI (which I don't watch), the Who's song, "Who Are You?"   The other song I think of is Diana Ross' "Do You Know?" For Jesus and for us, it all comes down to baptismal identity--who we are and whose we are. Because of who we are through baptism, children...

One of my favorite prayers is: O God, you have called your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown. Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go, but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting up; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (ELW p. 317). The first time I prayed this was at an evening prayer service at Emanuel Lutheran Church in RI. It struck a chord with me then and continues to do so. As the time approached for the move to seminary and since our arrival, these words have echoed in my heart, "...not knowing where we go, but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us..." I don't know where we'll go after graduation in 2012. I don't know where my internship will be my third year. I don't know where my CPE will be this coming summer. Until today, I didn't know where my teaching parish would be that starts this Sunday. Today I f...