St. Andrew's United Methodist Church

4-1-26

3-25-26

Dear Friends,

On Sunday we will commemorate the beginning of Holy Week, the week that takes us through the celebration of Palm Sunday, the surprise of Maundy Thursday, the heartbreaking grief of Good Friday and the triumph of Easter.  Each of these days is designed to lead us into concentrated commitment and deeper understanding of the Kin(g)-dom of God.

On Palm Sunday, we reenact the enthusiasm of the crowd for the Restorative Jesus who heals.  They have experienced his teachings on the hillside and lakeshore where his miracles have restored people to wholeness and his words have brought new life:  the last will be first, the peacemakers and meek are blessed, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and visiting the imprisoned lead to eternal life.  This Jesus  demonstrates in thought, word and deed what it means for God's kin(g)-dom to exist on "earth as it is in heaven" and the crowds recognize this Jesus as a savior thus they shout "Hosanna" (save us) as he enters the gates of Jerusalem.

On Maundy Thursday Jesus shares a special meal with his disciples where he begins by washing their feet demonstrating the upside down, reverse nature of God's kin(g)-dom.  At this meal, Jesus makes the strange declaration that the bread is his body and the cup is his blood, broken and poured out for humanity.  It is at this meal that Jesus speaks of his coming betrayal to the authorities by one of his inner circle. 

Good Friday commemorates the torture and murder of Jesus.  It is a time when we relive the encompassing grief, confusion and abandonment of those who understood Jesus was the long awaited Messiah.  Good Friday reminds us that we along with many others know these feelings that lead to despair. We sit with these feelings through Holy Saturday, the day before Easter, remembering that there are many, around us and throughout the world, whose current realities are marked by despair.  We might feel despair.  It's Friday, but Sunday is coming.

Holy Week with its attendant commemorations reorients us to the foundations of our faith.  This is why we participate in the season of Lent and the special services of Holy Week, not to prove anything to anyone but to give ourselves the gift of remembering and  rededicating ourselves to life in Christ. 

I'm praying that this Holy Week will be will be a gift for us all.

3-18-26

The Camino as a Symbol of Transformation

The Camino de Santiago pilgrimage has long been known as a journey of self-discovery. For centuries, people have walked the Camino paths for spiritual, emotional, and personal reasons. The film “The Way” (DVD is available in our library) brings to life the transformational journey of walking the Camino where disparate people come together to enjoy community, find meaning, and embrace change.  Our journey through Lent is intended to foster the same type of journey.  Each person on the Camino has a story that led them to travel the trails, and there are different paths to the cathedral.  In the same way, we are all on a journey of faith that takes different paths that lead to the same place. These various paths are honored by the symbol of the Camino, the scallop shell.  The grooves and ridges of the shell converge at one point which represents the various physical paths that lead to the cathedral of St. James in Santiago de Compostela.  Our journeys, the trails of the mind and soul, take paths that converge in the Risen Christ.

Pilgrims on the Camino look for signposts with the scallop shell to stay on the path.  Pilgrims also adorn their walking sticks and backpacks with scallops to identify themselves to one another as fellow travelers. The shells were used in previous centuries as eating and drinking implements by pilgrims as they often traveled ‘light’.  They did not have the amenities available to modern pilgrims.  The signposts for our faith journeys are not always so directly obvious, but they exist.  Jesus told those following in his footsteps that if they had “eyes to see and ears to hear” the signposts he gave us, which were often contained in stories, would be evident.  Cultivating our ability to notice and our ability to listen are not only worthwhile endeavors, they can be lifesaving as they keep us from straying too far off the path into dangerous territory.  When the fog descends and we cannot see where to go, listening for “sounds of life”, those sounds that help us find the path again, will lead us toward the Source of Life.  Listening and watching are skills I’m cultivating during our pilgrimage this Lent.

Scallop shells for Camino travelers represent a journey into new life, transformed life.  What symbol would you choose to represent your life journey?

3-11-2026

George and the Georgians

Journeys take many forms.  Our Lenten practices this year are less about giving something up and are more about examining our communal and individual journeys.  How do they intersect?

This poem and the accompanying artwork are from Matt Moberg, a fellow student when I was in seminary.  This artwork and the poem describe one intersection of the personal and communal.

"Nobody on the TV will track this market.

There’s no graph for it.
No analysts leaning over glowing screens
saying things like “the compassion index is up 3 points today.”

But, if you want to understand
how a city survives a hard season,
you should start in the kitchen
of an eighty-four-year-old widower
named George.

Of course you wouldn’t think to start there,
because George doesn’t use words like “economy.”
George uses a yellow legal pad
that sits on the table in front of the still pulled out chair
where his wife had sat for 37 winters.

The paper is soft from weeks of use.
The handwriting is slow, deliberate —
the kind that grew up believing
that if you wrote something down
you meant it.

On it George writes names.
Addresses. Apartment numbers.
Who needs rice.
Who can’t have peanuts.
Who has three kids now because the cousin moved in last month.

Outside the winter is roughhousing.
The wind interrogates more than it blows,
rushing down the street like a cop looking for trouble.

But every Thursday morning,
George sits at that table and begins the quiet work
of keeping a small corner of the world from falling apart.

He calls them one by one.

“Hey there. You still able to make the run today?”
“Two families in Phillips.”
 “Can you grab diapers if you’re already at Aldi?”

His voice carries that quiet authority of a man
who has buried the love of his life
and decided that sorrow won’t have the last word.

And everyone is in. They always are.

A mechanic who smells like motor oil.
A teacher who hasn’t slept deep since September.
A Grandma named Sue (that George is convinced keeps making eyes at him).
And a college kid with a borrowed and bruised Corolla that coughs every time before it starts.

By noon, the invisible infrastructure of kindness is already underway.

Cars pulling into Aldi parking lots.
Shopping carts rattling across slush.
People doing complicated mathematics
with grocery lists and debit cards.

Rice. Beans. Eggs. And bananas, if they look decent.

They carry the bags through a winter that feels
like it has a personal grudge against human hands.
Plastic handles cutting small red half-moons into their fingers.
The wind arguing with them the whole way.

The economists will never study this system.
They cannot measure the tensile strength
of a plastic grocery bag cutting into an old man’s hands.

They cannot calculate the conversion rate
between a bag of rice and a mother sleeping
for the first time in three nights.

But every week,
George and the others —
the ones neighbors have started calling the Georgians —
they show up.

And yes, George really is always with them.

Eighty-four years old
and still refusing to outsource the work of mercy.
He pulls on a coat that still carries
the faint ghost of his wife’s perfume
that she used to wear to church.
Zips it up to the chin.
Laces his boots that have seen better decades.

And then he starts walking, slower than the others,
but with bags in his hands that don’t weigh any less.

Someone always tries to take those bags from him.
They tell him he doesn’t have to do it anymore,
and they say it gently like they’re offering him a way out.

George nods, and then he lifts the bag anyways.

He knows that grief is just
love looking for somewhere else to go.
And he knows that he's here to carry it door to door.

Across the ice.
Through the wind.
 Up three flights of stairs where at the top,
 somebody finally opens the door.

Inside the apartment the air smells like cumin and laundry soap.
George hands over the bags, with no speeches attached,
and a father in the corner exhales.
A child asks if the oranges are really for them.
A mother says thank you in the best English she can gather.

And George smiles and waves it off like he always does.

“Just groceries,” he says, before heading back down the stairs before kindness has time to become a performance.

And in a way, he's right: it is just groceries.

But if you could see the invisible ledger
where the true arithmetic of this city is kept
you would understand something.

In the official economy those groceries cost $74.27.
But in the economy George keeps
with pencil and yellow paper
they are worth:

one mother
unclenching her jaw for the first time this week.

one child
who doesn’t have to learn the sound a fridge makes when it opens to nothing.

one night
where nobody has to pretend that they’re not hungry.

And it's all because one man
stubbornly refused to participate in the empire’s favorite ritual
of always looking away.

If you ever find yourself wondering
what faith looks like when it’s stripped of ceremony,
you could do worse than picturing
an old widower walking through a Minneapolis winter
 with two bags of groceries
 cutting into his two hands
 as he climbs on two knees that always complain.

Of course George would just say it's the math of being alive.
You carry what you can.
You bring it to the door.
You write the next name on the pad.
And you stop waiting for the applause
before you decide to do it again.

This is the Economy of Kindness."

"George and the Georgians" from the series "Stories from the Surge"
Watercolor on Paper Print

All proceeds go directly toward mutual aid in our community.

Prints are available here: https://www.mattmoberg.net/prints/george-and-the-georgians

3-4-2026

At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.” He said to them, “Go and tell that fox for me, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way...” – from Luke 13: 31-34

Ponderings from the Movie-(available to check out in the church library): "So many guidebooks, so little consistency! The pilgrims argue over which guidebook is better, more accurate, and why they have the slants they have. Because Danes are just "looking for the next party". Or Americans "always have an opinion". The question this week includes reflecting on what “guidebooks” we are following and why. What values do we have in our lives that draw us to our decisions along the way? Are we following what we believe in, or are there other influences that take us astray? Jesus laments that “Jerusalem” rejects the very prophets sent to help it.  He would gather the people as a hen (God) gathers her chicks underwing. But instead, the 'faithful' are out to get him… or at least throw him off his mission. Do we know what our mission is so that we can stay true to the path that gets us there?

Going Deeper:

Jesus faces pushback and threats and from the Roman authorities during his ministry. Have you ever encountered resistance from others when living out your calling and doing what you knew was the right thing for your own life? How did you respond?   

What voices, values, or influences shape your decisions and sense of purpose? Where do you notice yourself being pulled off course, either by fear, habit, or the expectations of others?   

Prayer for the Week: God of the Bending Road, be with us on The Way. We find ourselves changed by the things we encounter and the people we meet. We want to grow and yet sometimes the growing pains can be disorienting for everyone. Help us as we navigate the twists and turns, and help us see that others are doing the same. Amen and Buen Camino! 

(from Worship Design Studio)

2-25-2026

 Now when all the people were baptized and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. – Luke 4: 1-2

   After Jesus’ baptism, he goes on a pilgrimage into the wilderness. A common practice among spiritual leaders of his day, this was a time to dig deep into the humanity of his soul. Along the way, he encounters what we all encounter along the paths of life: temptations to stray from the path that God has intended for us. But “all who wander are not lost,” for it is in the wandering that we find our true selves.

  In the movie, The Way, we get some comic relief after heavy grief scenes as Tom heads out on his impromptu pilgrimage. He starts out heading the wrong direction… twice.Watching Tom head in the wrong direction, reminds us that we all can get “pumped up”  for making changes, going in a new direction, finding new possibilities in our lives, and we go headlong into what we think is the right “way” only to find that we haven’t really given it enough thought or preparation. But, as Tom says, “here we go.” And we deal with whatever mistakes we make or confusion we encounter. It all becomes part of the unveiling of who we are–with all our courage and our foibles. We learn more about ourselves along the way.  

(devotional from Worship Design Studio)

Ash Wednesday 2-18-26