New England Synod Bishop's Bulletin, May 2025

 

Alleluia! Christ is risen!
I recently attended a social event designed as an icebreaker for the LGBTQIA+ community in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Several queer friendly organizations were each given two minutes at the event to introduce their organization to the participants. One of the speakers was a pastor of a queer welcoming and affirming church in Worcester of another denomination. She used her two minutes to clearly, explicitly, and powerfully announce God’s love in Jesus Christ for all queer persons and all gathered for the event. More sermon than invitation, she told the crowd that God’s love included each of us and that we all were welcome to come to her church to experience God’s love.

When the time for presentations concluded I introduced myself to the pastor and thanked her for her witness.

 

Our brief conversation was interrupted three times by people approaching us to thank the pastor for her words and ask how they could connect with her congregation. These people were genuinely excited to learn more about her congregation and connect with faith in a new and hopeful way. Her mini-sermon had clearly landed.

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A few days later, the New York Times published an article (“An Age of Extinction is Coming. Here’s How to Survive” – April 19, 2025) in which Ross Douthat suggested that the digital revolution in which we are living, the age of the internet, smartphones, and emerging era of artificial intelligence, is forcing the human race into what evolutionary biologists call a “bottleneck” – a period of rapid pressure that threatens cultures, customs, and churches with extinction.

Douthat wrote: “Surviving the bottleneck will depend on intentionality and intensity. Any aspect of human culture that people assume gets transmitted automatically, without too much conscious deliberation, is not going to make it.”

Let that thought sink in ...

As I read Douthat’s article I thought about the church. What does it mean for us to intentionally, and with intensity, tell the story of Jesus? What are the ways we can cut through the noise to speak God’s love announced in Christ in clear and compelling ways? How can we articulate clearly and compelling God at work in our local ministries for the sake of the Church’s ongoing witness?

The pastor at the LGBTQIA+ icebreaker event inspired me, and so many others, with her intentionality and intensity in preaching God’s love. She didn’t wing it. She was prepared with notes. She intentionally used her two minutes to publicly proclaim God’s love announced in Jesus Christ with a genuine intensity that moved people to find out more about her church and how they could participate in God’s love. It was a Book of Acts, apostle boldness, moment. Following in the Apostle Paul’s footsteps, she went to where the crowds were gathered (in an event venue far from any Church) and preached Jesus Christ.

Telling the story of Jesus has never been an optional elective for Christians. Telling the story of Jesus is imperative for the survival of the church. The Lutheran insistence on justification by grace through faith, that God’s love is announced to us in Christ as a complete gift of grace apart from any works of our own, must be told intentionally, and with intensity, so that the Lutheran witness exists on the other side of the “technological bottleneck.”

Now, let me be clear: the survival of the church does not rest with any one of us. The Church already has a savior and his name is Jesus. That said, in a mystery of faith, the Holy Spirit doesn’t just say “abracadabra” and then “poof” the church is formed!

The Book of Acts witnesses that the church was first formed in the same way the church will survive and prosper today: by Apostles going forth to preach the message that Jesus Christ, the crucified and buried one, is resurrected and living! As the Apostle Paul wrote: “Faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17).

Faith comes from hearing. The Church does the speaking.

For the sake of ongoing Lutheran Christian witness to God’s love announced in Jesus Christ, how can you tell the story of Jesus intentionally, and with intensity, in new ways? Where are the opportunities in your community to speak God’s love for people who don’t know if God loves them? What are the ways you can show up where the crowds are gathered to tell them that God loves them, each of them, all of them!?

For the sake of Christ, and for the sake of those lonely, isolated, afraid, suffering, and hurting in our communities, I pray you will be bold in clearly and powerfully speaking God’s love for all peoples. With intentionality, and intensity, announce the unconditional grace and mercy of Jesus Christ! With the boldness of the apostles of the early church, proclaim that Christ is alive leading all people from death to life.

Christ is risen, indeed! Alleluia!
Bishop Pipho

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     The Rev. Nathan Pipho

     New England Synod

     Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

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New England Synod Bishop's Bulletin, April 2025

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Holy Week … 

 

I fell in love with Jesus during Holy Week.

 

Every year as a boy, my parents took me to Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday services.

 

It was during those powerful liturgies I fell in love with Jesus who entered Jerusalem on the back of a donkey to shouts of hosanna as people waved palm branches and exalted him as the Son of David … who then knelt before his disciples as he washed their feet and commanded them to love another just as he had loved them … who shared a last meal with his friends and even with Judas who would betray him … who prayed in the garden and was arrested … who stood trial before Pilate … who was sentenced to die while the crowds released an insurrectionist … who body was ultimately broken and crucified on the cross … all leading to the Easter morning joy of the resurrection.

 

I fell in love with Jesus during Holy Week.

 

As the Church prepares to gather once again around the central story of our faith, we will do so with a range of traditions and practices. My own approach to Holy Week has evolved from the days of my childhood parish to my second call to parish ministry.

 

As a boy, I remember the Palm Sunday we followed a donkey down the road to experience what it might have been like in the crowd as Jesus entered Jerusalem. As a teenager, I turned up the organ as loudly as I could as I played “All Glory Laud and Honor” as the congregation waved their palm branches and processed into the worship space. In my first call, I shortened the gospel reading to emphasize Palm Sunday as the entrance into the story that would unfold over the course of the rest of the week and I put out sign-up sheets, creating as many ways to participate as possible for my congregation to participate in the story during the Holy Week services. In my second call, we read or sang the full passion according to the synoptic gospel on Sunday and then read or sang John’s passion on Good Friday. I grew to appreciate reading the full passion story on both Palm Passion Sunday as presented by the synoptic gospels and then again John’s passion on Good Friday. Two presentations of the passion during Holy Week proclaiming the fact that this is the central story of our faith.  

 

In my boyhood congregation I remember the power of receiving the absolution and the forgiveness of sin on Maundy Thursday and the time when, with our sins forgiven, I intentionally went up to a woman in the congregation who had said hurtful things about me and I shared peace and forgiveness with her. In my first call, for many years we borrowed a practice from my dearly departed colleague Pastor Tim Stein where instead of washing feet we washed each other’s hands as a sign of service. The whole assembly participated. In my second call was the first time I experienced members of the congregation washing each other’s feet. In every place, I remember the haunting stripping of the altar as we left the church in silence.

 

On Good Friday, as a boy we experienced a Tenebrae liturgy as we read the passion of Jesus, interspersed with hymns, as the church gradually darkened until we read of Jesus’s death and the church was completely dark. And then, for a second night in a row and unlike services the rest of the year, we departed in silence. I repeated the Tenebrae tradition in my first call where I also experienced the “Seven Last Words from the Cross” three-hour liturgy for the first time. It was an ecumenical liturgy hosted by the United Methodist Church from Noon to 3:00 p.m. and local clergy each preached a sermon on one of the “seven last words” from the cross. The first couple years I only attended for my “word” and perhaps the word before or after, but then as a devotional practice I started staying for all three hours. In my second call, guided by scholars who suggested John’s gospel presents not a suffering servant of the synoptic gospels, but a triumphant king firmly in control and who had intentionally chosen the cross, I came to think of Good Friday not as a tearful funeral day, but as a solemn and triumphant coronation day. Certainly one where we observed the death of Jesus on the cross, but also as one where we celebrated Christ’s accomplishment of salvation. “It is finished” not the last gasps of the dying, but the exclamation point on salvation accomplished.

 

The tradition of the Easter Vigil was one I learned about in seminary and internship. I instituted the tradition in my first call and was glad to connect with a well-established tradition of the vigil in my second call. In both places, I was fond of the liturgy of readings occurring in halls where A.A. groups, English as Second Language courses, neighborhood associations, musical groups, and other community groups had gathered throughout the year. Reading stories of God’s deliverance in the place where community groups also gathered was a profound witness and connection to God who continues to work new life in the world today.

 

I fell in love with Jesus during Holy Week.

 

It’s been said that a successful marriage requires falling in love with the same person again and again. In a way, the same can be said about faith. Faith is about falling in love with Jesus over and over, knowing that as we do so Jesus is always completely in love with us.

 

Regardless of how your congregation observes Holy Week, I pray you will participate fully and fall in love again with Jesus. I pray you will fall in love with the crucified and risen Jesus who continues to proclaim that life is found in mercy; God’s love is found on the cross; and Christ’s resurrection is found in the Church, the living body of Christ today, living out the story of salvation. I pray you will fall in love with Jesus who is always in love with you.  

 

Hosanna to the highest!​

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Bishop Pipho

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     The Rev. Nathan Pipho

     New England Synod

     Evangelical Lutheran Church in America