Pastor Charles D. Bang has announced that he will retire on Sept. 1 after serving as senior pastor and headmaster at Gloria Dei, Hampton, for over seven years. A New Jersey native, he's graduate of Hartwick College, Pacific Lutheran Seminary and Graduate Theological Union. He has served Lutheran congregations in Walnut Creek and San Francisco, CA.,Liverpool and Buffalo, NY. He and his wife, Debbie, have two daughters, Kathryn and Sarah,                Dr. Phylis Castens Wiederhoeft, executive director of ALDE (formerly Association of Lutheran Deveopment Executives, was scheduled to speak at Resurrection, Fredericksburg, on March 18. She is a consultant for the church's campaign.
             Christine Osheim has been named administrative assistant at St. Mark, Charlottesville. She owns the Mobius Keramik, producing pots and teaching clay             Members of Christ, Fredericksburg, can record their own faith journey on video on Sundays of April 29 and May 6.  

            It all started with such promise - the angel announcing to Mary that the child she would bear would be called Son of the Most High; the conviction of Mary that this child would be the embodiment of God's promised justice, that the hungry would be filled with good things and the rich sent away empty; angels announcing his birth; thousands being fed; the sick healed; the dead raised.

            And then, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" It was over. The world hadn't changed. Might still made right. How ridiculously naïve to believe that any reversal of the old order could come about. Hope is for the gullible. Looking at this broken man hanging utterly helpless, naked and broken on a cross, the powers and principalities, earthly and spiritual, death and the devil must have said, "You fool."

            This, as St. Paul reminds us, is the wisdom of the world. And the world can present plenty of hard evidence that it is right: children killing children in horrific school shootings, 60 million displaced people - all of this supported by our rebellion against God, our idolatrous claim that we are in control and the world is ours. In the face of this and all of the suffering others cause and we cause others, we, too, might cry out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

            I believe that the beginning of Psalm 22 expresses the anguish of the psalmist and the anguish of our Lord, but there is more going on here. Citing the first words of a text was, in the tradition of the time, a way of identifying an entire passage. The psalm ends this way: "All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord; and all the families of the nations shall worship before him. ... Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord, and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, saying that he has done it." This is the wisdom of God. Jesus' crucifixion is the death of our death. His innocent suffering has reconciled all of creation to God. He has done it. We stake our lives on this.

            This year, Easter falls on April 1. We shall have come through the Lenten desert to the Easter garden. We shall say, "Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Alleluia!" And we shall confess this and live this in the face of worldly wisdom that is based on death. Life wins. Love wins. And, if the world wants to call us April fools, we are glad to claim that title.

 

A monthly message from the presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Her email address: bishop@elca.org. This article originally appeared in Living Lutheran's April 2018 issue. Reprinted with permission.

Serving children in Nicaragua 

     by Pastor Mark Wm. Radecke

            From February 16-25, 14 members and associates of Muhlenberg Lutheran Church, Harrisonburg, enjoyed a week of service and solidarity with children and staff at the Nicaraguan Christian Children's Center (CICRIN) on Ometepe, a volcanic island in Lake Nicaragua. Lodging, eating and working on CICRIN's 80-acre campus, participants divided into three work teams: dentistry, construction, and Vacation Bible School.

            This was the seventh trip for dental hygienist Libby Sieber (Christ, Roanoke). She

Libby Sieber cleans teeth

has always loved the children's smiles and takes great pleasure in seeing that those smiles are healthier now because of the annual cleanings, examinations, fluoride treatments and dental education she has provided. Dentist J C Owens, Shamokin, PA, has joined her for the last two years, enhancing the dental services by providing fillings, extractions, and sealants. This year, the two saw more than 100 patients.

            CICRIN is currently transitioning from a residential refuge for abused, abandoned and neglected children to a pre-K through grade 12 high school enrolling 200 students, while continuing a limited residential program for 12 children who have no safe home to which to go. (For more about CICRIN visit www.cicrinus.org .)

             Along with the expansion of services come needs for facility improvements, so the

	Mission team stands by a Nicaraguan waterfall.

construction team worked with skilled local workers on the school cafeteria and several other campus buildings. The VBS team explored "Historias del Amor de Dios" - Stories of God's Love - in an open air classroom by the lakeshore. The mission team also explored Ometepe Island, a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, and hiked with 13 of CICRIN's students part-way up the Maderas Volcano to a beautiful waterfall.

            Team leaders Mark and Tami Radecke have taken 19 teams totaling more than 400 short-term missionaries to CICRIN since beginning the trips in 1999. Through 2014, the trips were part of a national award-winning service-learning course Pr. Radecke taught while serving as University Chaplain and associate professor at Susquehanna University, a college of the ELCA. 

 

            The first time-lapse films I ever saw were fascinating. One showed a flower going through its entire life cycle in less than one minute. Another, a butterfly egg becoming a caterpillar, then a pupa and finally, a new butterfly emerged, all in a matter of seconds.

            Those cycles of birth, rebirth and new life help to describe a recent, five-week-long, 708-kilometer Lenten pilgrimage that I undertook on Spain's 768-kilometer Camino de Sureste, starting on Feb. 1. That experience produced a brand new perspective on the Lenten Journey, which I want to share.

            The Camino de Suerste is a well-marked, but circuitous pathway stretching from the city of Alicante on Spain's Mediterranean Coast to the city of Benavente in Northwest Spain.

            I think of those time-lapse films when I recall the stages involved in preparing for and completing such a pilgrimage. Purpose, preparation, time, growth, development and fulfillment all are involved in beginning, participating in and completing such a trek.

            At the start, one's legs, feet and mind are fresh and strong. The spirit is eager, hopes are high, determination is strong and the pace is upbeat. All is well. Life is good. As the walk progresses, all of those important, much needed aspects of trekking wane, grow weary, become frayed and tired. Doubts begin to set in. Feelings of pessimism, defeat, low energy and listlessness increase and one wants to quit.

            But, in time there comes renewal, rejuvenation and the assurance of reaching the goal. Nearing the end, new liveliness arises from the anguish and strain of nearly two months of moment-by-moment, hour-by-hour, day-by-day, week-in, week-out walking. And, upon completing the pilgrimage, feelings of accomplishment and satisfaction arise and help to erase all of the former troubles, doubts and misgivings. One feels renewed, refreshed, enlivened and upon returning home, the journey of everyday life resumes with a renewed promise for a successful completion of that pilgrimage.

            As ELCA Bishop Elizabeth Eaton recently commented on her faith journey, I would like to describe my Camino pilgrimage, using similar words. "We said 'yes' to the pilgrimage because the call was irresistible, because of the joy of being served and serving others and because of the great privilege of walking with people as the love of Jesus: The Way, The Truth and The Life; become more real to us."

            Afterward, I thank my Pennsylvania-based trekking friend, Paul Labounty, for his help before, during and after this endeavor. I also thank the people in Spain who helped so much on The Way, city and town leaders, mayors, Guardia Cival personnel, police officers and all whom we met there for being so incredibly generous, helpful and hospitable. More than just hospitable, they were genuinely happy that we had walked into their lives and communities. Buen Camino!

            A California scholar gives high marks for Bob Benne's recent book, "Keeping the Soul in Christian Higher Education: A History of Roanoke College," in the Los Angeles review of Books. Paul W. Gleason said the book raises questions about mainline institutions' future and purpose. Benne has retired from Roanoke's religion and philosophy faculty.

          "How can schools like Roanoke serve their churches? Or should they keep their old denominational ties at all," he asks. Gleason said Benne ends on a note of cautious optimism when he argues that Roanoke "can still pursue every part of its old mission (from its founding in 1842): scholarly rigor, service to community and nation and a special place for the Lutheran faith." Benne wrote about the religious beliefs of each of Roanoke's presidents.

            In his lengthy review, Gleason notes that the process of secularization, leading to the "demographic decline of the Protestant mainline churches " is a central theme in the Benne book. Benne taught for 35 years at Roanoke where he found "a microcosm of Christian higher education, at least for those schools of the Protestant mainline."

            The review closes with the observation that "colleges like Roanoke have an opportunity to look for answers and have some say in what happens next."

            Gleason is a doctoral candidate in the University of Virginia Religious Studies

Department but he lives in Los Angeles and teaches at California Lutheran University.