Northwoods Seelsorger

 The following is the sermon I will preach for Reformation this year.  I don't often post my sermons, but thought this one was worth sharing.....      Five hundred years ago, on the spring day of May 4, 1521 , men disguised as robbers captured a young monk and professor and quickly whisked him away to the Wartburg Castle in Germany for safe keeping. His life was at great risk. For just a few months before, the head of the church, Pope Leo X , wrote a special order [1] , Decet Romanum Pontificem , “It Befits the Roman Pontiff,” which excommunicated Dr. Martin Luther from the church, essentially branding him a heretic who could be arrested, tried and executed.   To further protect his identity, Luther disguised himself as a knight with a beard called Junker Jörg , or Knight George.   Although now separated from all the activity outside, Luther did not simply sit around and wait.   But here, hidden away from the world and the dramatic changes he b...

During my youngest daughter's sophomore year at Concordia University - Chicago, she was required to read part of Rod Dreher's well-known book The Benedict Option - A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation (Sentinel Press, 2017, 2018). After she was finished using the book I told her that I would like to borrow it to read myself.  Unfortunately, I have spilled coffee on it, so I guess I'll be purchasing the book now! I had heard about the book prior to my daughter using it, but for one reason or another never got around to reading it.  I took my time working through its roughly 250 pages, but it is really not a difficult read.  One of the criticisms of his work, as it came indirectly to me, was this sense of escapism.  But that is anything but the message he hopes to convey.  Toward the end of the volume Dreher makes an effort to clarify what the Benedict Option is and what it is not:  "The Benedict Option is not a technique for reversing the lo...

 Recently I checked by Ancestry.com account as they periodically update the genetic findings.  At my last check my Irish heritage seemed much higher.  But it's interesting how this update seems to affirm something my mother may have told me many years before.  She mentioned that our background was, in part, "Scots-Irish" (although she, and others, often referred to it as "Scotch-Irish").  In this latest update my profile is now only 8% Irish, but 28% Scottish.  But here's the interesting part.  If you click on "What does this map show?" regarding the map graphic to the left, they break down the regions with regard to the percentage of Scottish heritage among locals. In the 25% to 50% category one of the colored regions associated with that was the northeast corner of Ireland, the area associated with the "Ulster Irish" or "Scot-Irish."   Back in 2014 my eldest daughter and her husband gave me a book The Other Irish - The Scots-...

 [Note: This was printed in my local paper, the Antigo Daily Journal, July 16, 2021.  Local clergy rotate in submitting articles on themes of their choice.]      Some years ago I pulled out a favorite tie only to discover part of it destroyed by moths.   It was a special gift from a friend’s trip to Ireland, a tie from the clan tartan of my Macauley descendants.   That was the first time I really had something valuable to me affected by this tiny, destructive insect.   As I get older I realize so much that I held to be important is not at all permanent.   Every winter I watch part of my van eaten away by rust.   Not all of the car, just one wheel well.   But it bothers me.   A process I can’t stop.   Time claims all things.   Nothing really lasts.   Moths and rust – nature’s tools to break down and reclaim.  Jesus reminded us of this in His Sermon on the Mount.   He told us to be careful about what we...