#40 Lanie the Lion

For the past week or so, Lanie's been showing signs of teething. She's fussier than normal and seems to be having a little extra trouble sleeping. She drools constantly and wants to put everything in her mouth, including making attempts to eat large things like water bottles and her stuffed lion. Lanie gnaws on her fingers, her clothes, her spit rags, and all of her toys. But those things aren't enough. Lanie also wants to eat other people's fingers. This afternoon she was propped up against my legs, holding my index fingers in her hands. Slowly but surely, Lanie pulled our hands toward her face. Then, like a lion, she pounced into action, flinging her mouth towards my right finger. Startled, I yanked my finger back. But Lanie is a tenacious baby girl. She tried this same plan of attack three or four more times before I couldn't contain myself any longer. I started laughing so hard that Lanie gave up and went back to charming me with her adorable smile. She's quite the little mastermind. I don't know how I entertained myself before she was born.

Grace and peace,
BMH

#39 Family

Last week I didn't blog because Tess and I went to a Monday evening showing of The Fate of the Furious, and Monday evenings are when I normally blog. I've been thinking a fair amount about the movie over the past week. The central characters in this series stress the idea of family over and over again. Over the course of a whole slew of adventures, this diverse group has become a family. Only a couple of them are biologically related, and the family changes over time, often expanding to include former enemies. But no matter the challenges, family loyalty binds the group together.

Now I'm not going to sit here and defend the morality of the Fast and Furious franchise. I'm not going to tell all of you dear readers that you must see and enjoy these films. But I think we can learn something from this concept of family. I think that the church should look something like the Fast and Furious gang. The church is a diverse group of people—made of up representatives from every nation, tribe, people, and language, according to Revelation—united in and by Jesus Christ. The Bible often refers to us as brothers and sisters and challenges us to love and care for each other. And like Dominic Toretto and company, we should be willing to accept former enemies as beloved family members. Our church family will change over time, but our bonds of love should always hold us together.

I think we should keep this family image front and center in our discussions of the church. So often we Christians emphasize nuclear families: parents and children. Certainly we have responsibilities to our parents and siblings and children, but if we hold up individual families as an ideal, we run the risk of ostracizing and hurting those of us who are single or divorced, those of us who have lost family members or are estranged from our families, and any others of us whose family life doesn't match our perfect model (which, honestly, is probably all of us). But the church is a new family, the family of God. The church is a family that accepts any and all who believe in Jesus Christ. And I think a lot of people in the world today are looking for a family, for a place to belong. How many times have you heard young people come back from a mission trip or Christian retreat or Bible camp and gush about how they felt like part of a family?

In Luke 21, Jesus says that there will be no marriage after the resurrection. That passage has always confused me, but it started to make more sense to me as I prepared for a Bible study last week. Shortly after that statement, Jesus talks about how we will all be part of God's family. I think that's the point. When the kingdom fully comes, our individual families and marriages won't matter because we'll all belong to God's family. We should celebrate God's family and share its blessings with all who will come. After all, this family lasts forever.

Grace and peace,
BMH

#38 Remembering the Resurrection

(I'm indebted to one of my seminary classmates for the idea for this post. Thanks, Mike!) I've been thinking a lot about Easter over the past few weeks. I've been preaching on some of Jesus' resurrection appearances and picking out music that goes along with those texts. I've been reflecting on what Jesus' resurrection means for our lives today and remembering previous discussions I've had and things I've read about the significance of Easter. I've noticed something peculiar. In my Christian experiences, we talk a lot more about Good Friday than Easter and spend a lot more time focusing on the cross than the empty tomb.  That seemed like it couldn't be true, but I've found that I know more songs in the Good Friday section of the hymnal than the Easter section. I can think of many more general songs that reference Jesus' death than His resurrection. When we summarize the gospel in sermons and conversations, I think we much more likely to mention how Jesus died for us than anything else.

Maybe this isn't everyone else's experience, but I definitely think it's true of my experiences. If we talk more about Jesus' death than resurrection, then I think we're making a mistake. Jesus' death is important. Don't get me wrong. We should never stop talking about how Jesus' crucifixion shows us God's love and secures our forgiveness. Jesus' death is absolutely necessary for our salvation. But so is Jesus' resurrection. Jesus' resurrection proves that Jesus has conquered all the powers of death and suffering and sin and evil. Jesus' resurrection shows us that God approves Jesus' death and all of Jesus' ministry before that. Jesus' work of saving us is finished. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15, Jesus' resurrection is the heart of our faith. Jesus' resurrection is what really gives us hope. Without the resurrection, our faith is worthless. God's love, forgiveness, and faithfulness toward us are incredibly good, but without the promise of eternal life, we're not ultimately any better off as Christians. If we spend all of our time talking about Jesus' death, we run the risk of concluding that God is angry and simply looking for a sacrifice to satisfy His wrath. The resurrection helps us more clearly see God's love and His desire to save and restore us. (This works the other way, too: we need to remember the crucifixion so we don't forget that God cannot tolerate sin and our sins have a cost.) So here's my proposal: let's balance our references to Jesus' death and resurrection. Whenever possible, let's mention them together. This is how Jesus Himself spoke when He predicted His death to His disciples: He'd mention His resurrection right after His death. If do we need to talk about just one of the two for a little bit, let's make sure to talk about the other later on. (We also should talk more about Jesus' incarnation, ascension, and return, but we'll save that for another post. And in my Epiphany post I already mentioned how we shouldn't forget Jesus' life and ministry.) As we remember when we celebrate the Lord's Supper, Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again. Amen!

Grace and peace,

BMH

#37 Drowning

Alena Joy Hofman was baptized yesterday. Baptizing Lanie was probably my favorite moment of my pastoral ministry so far. I love the imagery of baptism, especially infant baptism. God acts to claim us as His own, even though we are totally helpless. As our liturgy says, "For you, child, Jesus came into the world. For you He died and conquered death. All this He did for you, little one, though you know nothing of it yet." In baptism we celebrate that God acts first to deliver us and then calls us to follow Him, to truly live into our identity as His children.

Baptism also reminds of our union with Christ. In Romans 6, Paul writes, "Don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life." Baptism is a sign and seal of our dying and rising with Christ. It's as if our old selves are drowned in the waters of baptism, as Jesus raises our new selves to life. As the hymn "Sing! A New Creation" puts it:

Sing! A new creation calls us;
God's Son, firstborn from the dead,
makes the drowning which befalls us
into cleansing birth instead.

In order to make this imagery and symbolism of dying and rising more visible (since God gives us the sacraments to make His good news clearer to us), Tess and I chose to have Lanie baptized by immersion. It was a beautiful, meaningful moment. See for yourselves: 

God holds out His promises in His grace. We have responded with a promise to raise Lanie as a child of God. Now we pray that God's Spirit will stir in her and lead her to claim His promises and receive His grace in faith.

Grace and peace,
BMH

#36 Let Sleeping Brians Lie

Lanie woke up at 6:30 this morning. Tess gave Lanie her pacifier, and then turned to me and said, "Brian, do you want to get up and take her?"

"Sure," I replied, "I'll take her, but I'm going to sleep for a little bit longer."

By the time Tess had processed this, I was snoring again. Thankfully, Lanie took her pacifier and went back to sleep.

When Lanie woke up again at 7:30, I got up without any trouble.

Tess told me this story around 9:00 this morning. I had no idea. We laughed about the whole thing for a solid couple of minutes. I guess Holy Week must've really taken it out of me. Happy Easter everyone!

Grace and peace,
BMH

#35 Music on My Mind

I listen to quite a bit of music on a weekly basis. I have music playing almost the entire time I'm writing each of my sermons. Tess and I have the radio on whenever we're driving out of town. We go through quite a few songs with worship services and other church activities. With all that music in my life, I almost constantly have one song or another in my head. Sometimes I sing them to Lanie or belt them out in the shower. And sometimes I start humming them without knowing it. I'll be walking along and find myself halfway through a verse or a few bars into a chorus. Normally that isn't a big deal, but occasionally I catch myself doing this while walking in a group of people. I snap back to focus from being in my own little world and find others giving me some interesting looks. A lot of strangers probably think I'm a little bit out there. Then again, I think most of the people who know me think the same thing. :) I often wonder if other people hum subconsciously. Anybody else want to own up to that?

Grace and peace,
BMH

#34 Opening Day

Today is Major League Baseball's Opening Day. (Yankees, Rays, Giants, Diamondbacks, Cubs, and Cardinals fans, I know your teams played yesterday. I don't care. Today is the real opening day.) Opening Day is one of my favorite days of the year. I'd be up for making it a national holiday. (Side note: there are two kinds of people in the world: people who love baseball, and people whom I don't understand.) After about five months, my favorite sport is fully back. Over the next six months, I'll have 162 Brewers box scores to check. I'll keep tabs on batters' BA, OBP, SLG and pitchers' IP and ERA. I'll feed my interest in mathematics by looking up some advanced statistics like WAR, RC, and FIP. I'll start peppering my conversations with phrases like "runners at the corners," "hit for the cycle,""walk-off," and "suicide squeeze." I'll wonder if bringing the LOOGY out of the bullpen will turn those RISP into LOB. The Brewers will probably be terrible yet again, but I'll cherish each time Bob Uecker calls "Get up, get up, get outta here, gone!" and Bernie tumbles down his yellow slide. I'll dream about the smell of beer and brats on a sunny day at Miller Park. And I'll keep hoping that maybe, just maybe, the Brewers will bring home a pennant at some point in my life. For now, happy Opening Day, everyone!

Grace and peace,
BMH

P.S. Here's an acronym guide: BA = batting average; OBP = on base percentage; SLG = slugging percentage; IP = innings pitched; ERA = earned run average; WAR = wins above replacement; RC = runs created; FIP = fielding independent pitching; LOOGY = left-handed one out guy; RISP = runners in scoring position; LOB = left on base. If you'd like more explanation, Google is your friend!