Jim PetersenJim Petersen
Assistant to the Bishop
Nebraska Synod, ELCA

Sometimes life reminds me of the guy standing on the observation deck atop the Empire State Building in New York. As he’s looking out over Central Park, someone comes up behind him, grabs him, and tries to throw him over the side. He struggles mightily but his assailant is stronger, so down he goes. As he’s zipping past the 42nd floor, he’s thinking, “Well, it’s going pretty well so far!”

Which illustrates two conflicting absurdities; the reluctance with which we anticipate change and, once it’s underway, the speed with which we adapt to it.

During my 70+ years, I’ve been pushed off the edge a number of times. Looking back, I’ve come to value the time I spent in free fall. It always provided me with both an opportunity and an incentive to change. Let me rethink that. I’ve never truly been in free fall. It’s really been more like bungee jumping or falling off a trapeze bar because my faith has always been both tether and safety net.

I’m sure that life has also pushed you off the edge at one time or another. It happens to us all. When it happens, the question that makes all the difference is, “Do you dive into the ground like a homesick prairie dog or do you rely on your faith and your ability to adapt to whatever change is pushing you, to be your safety net?”

Saul of Tarsus was having a wonderful time persecuting Christians. He was the Jewish zealot who held Stephen the first martyr’s cloak as a crowd stoned him to death. (Acts 7:58-8:3) Left uninterrupted, Saul would have gladly kept up his persecution until there were no Christians left.

Then, in the middle of the Damascus road, Jesus pushed Saul off the edge. He knocked Saul down, struck him blind and asked him; “Saul, Saul why do you persecute me?” During the days afterward, while Saul was thinking about that, God also pushed a man named Ananias off the edge. In a vision, God told Ananias to go meet Saul, lay hands on him and heal him. To which Ananias replied (and I’m paraphrasing here), “Are you kidding? This guy has come here to persecute and destroy Christians!” To which God shot back, “Go! This man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles!”

How do you wrap your head around that one ─ God asking you to bless and heal God’s worst enemy! Yet when pushed off the edge, Saul became Paul — the missionary who pursued the Gentiles with the same fierce tenacity he’d earlier used to killed Christians. Paul’s free fall into Christianity changed the world.

Looking back, I rejoice in the many pastors, lay leaders and congregations I’ve seen who, when pushed over the edge by change, respond with a life-giving faith that allows them to change, then change the communities around them. But I’m also saddened by the many I’ve seen who seem unwilling to change their behaviors and practices in order to open up their congregations to those outside their doors and invite them in to share the Good News with them.

Change is all around us every day. If folks in our congregations ran their businesses, farmed, provided services to clients or practiced their professions in the same way they did back in the 1960s, 70s or 80s, they would be out of business. So why do a number of our congregations simply run in place — continuing practices that have already driven several generations of people away from them as the world moved off in other directions?

Our God is a God of abundance, expansion and change — not scarcity, contraction and same old, same old. God has demonstrated that time and again in Scripture! I pray, as I walk away into the distance, that if your congregation is stuck, God will drag you to the edge kicking and screaming and, if necessary push, you off. There is nothing more life-giving than being forced to test your faith, then find the courage to change before you hit the ground! A good push can wake you up and force you to rethink possibilities.

We say we’re a resurrection people. If we believe what we say that means we are unafraid to die to old ways that render us powerless and meaningless. Being resurrection people is supposed to give us new life in order to reach out to those many in the communities around us who desperately need what we already have — our faith.

Take the plunge!

Shalom and thanks for the blessing of being called to serve you these past seven years.

The Road Not Taken
by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

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