Vicar at Mount Olive

Because Jesus has been raised, we have been given a living hope. Knowing Jesus leads us to live out that hope in the rest of our lives.

Vicar Erik C. Nelson
April 12, 2026
Texts: Acts 2:14, 22-32; Psalm 16; 1 Peter 1:3-9; John 20:19-31

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

This morning, in about 20 pulpits across the Twin Cities, there are college students who are getting up to preach. Most of them for the first time, some of them for only the second or third time.

These are students from the Lutheran Campus Ministry at the University of Minnesota who have been sent out for one of their annual traditions, where the students get to go out and preach and connect with the congregations that support the campus ministry.

When I was an intern serving with that ministry, I loved to go back and watch the live streams of my students talking about the difference that the campus ministry made in their lives. Over and over, I would hear stories about how they knew that Jesus is alive because they saw him in the lives of their friends and classmates.

They carry a living hope with them because of their own encounter with Christ and his people.

With this in mind, I have even more sympathy for Thomas in today’s Gospel reading. People have made a big deal about doubting Thomas and whatever else they want to read in this, but I think it kind of makes sense for him to be skeptical of the claims that he’s hearing from his friends for many reasons, but especially because of their actions.

As much as they might be afraid of the authorities, if they really saw Jesus in the flesh among them, risen from the dead, then they would have this real proof that the impossible is possible with God.

And you’d think this would mean that they wouldn’t have to stay hiding. They would be able to leave the building and love their neighbors boldly.

But instead, when Thomas comes back, he finds the doors still locked. He finds them still hiding in fear. He finds them living like their encounter with Jesus didn’t make a difference.

Their words said that Jesus was alive … their actions said they still had to hide. Their actions didn’t match their beliefs.

When the world looks at the church, do they see our actions matching our beliefs? When they see our behavior and listen to us speak, do they have any reason to believe what we say?

It would be easy to point to other branches of the Christian family and talk about their issues. We all know about that. But we have to get the log out of our own eyes first.

As I’m looking ahead to the end of my internship, working pages and pages of paperwork and thinking about upcoming interviews in the first call process, I’ve been thinking a lot about the ways that our own church, the ELCA and other mainline denominations, isn’t practicing what we preach.

This season of Easter is supposed to be all about resurrection, new life, the promises that God offers us.

But how often do we get wrapped up in conversations about decline and decay. How often do we get stuck in a mindset of hopelessness and despair, or even worse, apathy about these things. How often do we look only at death, forgetting we serve the Lord of Life?

I’ve spent my whole life hearing about the death of Christianity … but in my own experience, I haven’t seen it. Instead, I’ve seen lives changed. I’ve experienced the new life that comes with God’s presence. I feel the living hope, the trust that God is really with us, even in the darkest days.

I trust that God is active … God gives us a living hope and will provide for us. Decline is not inevitable. When I started at LCM, we had about 30 students worshipping with us on Wednesday nights. By the end of my time there, it was up close to a hundred.

Students encountered the risen Christ in the sacramental life of that community, in Bible studies, and in the love that they showed to one another. As people saw that living hope in action, more and more young people were drawn in.

And this isn’t about numerical growth. It’s about inviting people into our living hope.

The world is hungry for a living hope … Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, meets us here in the breaking of bread and the communion of the saints. The church is the only institution that offers that.

Yes, Christianity’s place in society is changing … but maybe the death of a transactional cultural Christianity means life for a deeper, more sincere form of our faith.

A faith this is not about who you are or what you know, but instead about what you are and who you know. You are a child of God. You are know and loved deeply by God.

Those who know God have been given that living hope and now we’re invited to live like it makes a difference.

We can stay inside, afraid of the world, stuck in anxious patterns of self-protection and self-preservation … or we can start putting ourselves out there.

We can earnestly, openly, unabashedly say, “I love Jesus, and Jesus loves you.” Because our neighbors are hearing a lot about Jesus, a lot of it bad.

But for us, who know him, who know his love and care for us, who know his embrace is wide enough for the whole world, who know that God loves everyone, no exceptions, it’s for us to tell the world about our living hope.

This is a living hope that our reading from 1 Peter says is imperishable, undefiled, unfading, kept in heaven for us … an eternal hope for all time. And also something we are receiving now. The salvation of our souls.

This living hope isn’t only something to look for at the end of days. It’s not merely a hope of heaven or a spiritual revelation. It’s a hope that is alive now, with us today, to make a difference in the world now and forever.

May it be so.

—

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

As Jesus is crucified in a garden, we are invited to look to him and see how life and death are intertwined.

Vicar Erik C. Nelson
April 3, 2026
Texts: Isaiah 52:13-53:12; Psalm 22; Hebrews 10:16-25; John 18:1-19:42

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

One of the Bible’s favorite places to take us is into gardens. The book starts with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The book ends with a description of the eternal city of God, full of trees and water and plants. The eternal city of God is not a concrete jungle, but a garden city.

The Bible starts and ends with gardens. And so does tonight’s reading. It starts with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, after he has just finished praying for his disciples. And this is the place where Judas leads the soldiers and police to arrest Jesus.

And when it gets to the end, after he’s been crucified, when he’s being taken down from the cross, it says, “there was a garden in the place where he was crucified.” Which was a surprise to me because when I think about Golgotha, or Calvary, the Place of the Skull, I often think of a barren, empty mountaintop. But John the Evangelist tells us that there was a garden right there.

Gardens are a powerful image and setting throughout Scripture because of the beauty and delight that you find there. But a garden is even more powerful tonight because it’s a place where life and death are intimately intertwined.

Think about how trees and bushes are kind of always dropping leaves. The compost we use to make plants grow is the remains of other dead plants. When you pick a flower, you kill it.

Life and death are fully co-mingled in a garden. And that’s something we often overlook because we just admire the beauty and the nice smells.

But Good Friday is a time when we can’t ignore the death in the garden. We can’t look away. Jesus Christ, the eternal God of the Universe, dies on a cross tonight. God gets the final piece of the human experience: death. In that death, we are reminded of our own death.

In that death, we are reminded of our sins that separate us from God and from one another. And we see the extreme lengths God went to overcome our separation. God entered the universe as a human being, lived a full, beautiful, complicated, difficult life, and experienced the suffering, the pain, that we all know all too well.

And even though we all know we will die, even though we know suffering, our society tries to make us forget. We don’t talk much about it. But we do talk about anti-aging creams and uploading our consciousness to the cloud and putting our bodies into cryosleep.

I think we hide from death because if we acknowledge its reality, we’re afraid we’ll just get stuck in a spiral of despair and hopelessness. If we acknowledge the reality of death and suffering, we won’t be able to stop seeing it all around us.

So we sit in our own gardens, dulling our senses and numbing out, because it’s too hard to look death in the face.

And yet this is what God invites us to tonight. As we remember our Lord’s suffering and death, we have an opportunity to be honest. To be honest about our own sin, the ways that we cut ourselves off from God and one another. The ways we don’t love our neighbors or ourselves.

We can be honest about the intolerable suffering in the world. We look at the ways that there are countless little crucifixions happening every day, in every country, every city, every neighborhood.

And that can be overwhelming and fill us with dread. But that is why God came into the universe. That is why Jesus died on the cross. That is why we’re here tonight.

Because the gardens remind us that even when there is death all around us, there is new life as well. As Jesus is dying on the cross, he sees his mother there. As he saw her heart being broken, I’m sure it broke his heart as well.

So he did a little miracle there. He brought his mother and his beloved disciple together, giving them to one other, making a new family, new life, in the midst of pain and death.

And after he died, his side was pierced, and out flowed water and blood. Many traditions have arisen connected to this moment, pointing out that blood and water also often accompany birth.

And together with the Word of God, water brings us into God’s family in baptism and wine becomes the Blood of Christ, shed for us, in the eucharist. In the midst of death, even after Jesus’ own death, he is making new life. Giving new life to us.

Because Jesus’s death was like ours but also entirely unlike ours. He died as a man, but that’s not all he is. He is the Lord of Life, the uncreated Second Person of the Trinity, the eternal Word of God. He died like us, but his death shows us that death never gets the final word. It feels dark and gloomy tonight, but the Lord of Life has something else coming.

This pain, this grief we feel tonight is familiar because we live in a world where it often feels like death is winning. It can feel like God is far off, just watching from a distance, unable or unwilling to intervene.

So I say, if you’re wondering where God is in our suffering, in this broken world, look to Jesus in the garden.

Look to Jesus in the garden, praying for us, even as we betray him. Look to Jesus in the garden, with his own broken heart, grafting his mother and his friend into one new family.

Look to Jesus in the garden, dying a death like ours, so that we might join his eternal life. Look to Jesus in the garden, being buried in a tomb … our tomb … so that death … our death … cannot have the final word.

May it be so.

An encounter with Jesus changes our lives and sends us out to serve others and tell everyone about him.

Vicar Erik C. Nelson
March 15, 2026
Texts: Jeremiah 2:4-13; Ephesians 5:8-14; John 8:46-51

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

If I had the ability to add one person to our church’s calendar, that would be Eric Norelius. And his day would be today, March 15th, the anniversary of his death.

If you aren’t familiar with Eric Norelius, he was known for being one of the founders of the Augustana Synod, which is one of the predecessor bodies of the ELCA. He was a Swedish pastor who came over to the U.S. and worked hard to help connect Scandinavian immigrants together into a network of congregations.

His work still continues to this day, through the congregations he helped start. He helped start First Lutheran in Saint Paul and Augustana in Minneapolis, both of which themselves planted several other churches, including Messiah, San Pablo, and Calvary in our neighborhood.

He also helped start Gustavus Adolphus College in Saint Peter, a school still committed to training students for leadership and service.

But one of the biggest pieces of his legacy was the children’s home he started in Vasa, Minnesota, that then grew into what we now know as Lutheran Social Services, one of the largest social service networks in the United States.

Eric Norelius’s life was marked by first knowing Jesus as a friend, as a brother, knowing the love of Jesus deeply. And then he turned to go share that love with others in a way that makes a difference in people’s lives.

In our readings today, we hear this story that we’ve heard many, many times, about the man born blind who experiences healing. In this story, we hear a similar pattern.

The man encounters Jesus, who sends him to the pool of Siloam, and after his healing, he goes out to tell people about Jesus and about the real, tangible difference that Jesus made in his life.

One thing that sticks out to me in this story is that Jesus had just left the temple grounds at the end of the previous chapter, the highest point in the city. And then he encounters this blind man and sends him to the Pool of Siloam, the lowest place in the city and back. I imagine it wouldn’t be an easy journey for anyone, especially someone who can’t see the way.

So I imagine that on that journey through the city and down the steep valley, the man probably had people helping him, maybe looking at him weird for the mud on his eyes, but letting him know which way to go. This healing, like many of Jesus’s healings, wasn’t just by one person for one person. It was with the help of many people, in order to bring this one person into the community in a new way.

He went to the pool, washed, and then came back able to see. But instead of celebrating with him, the people he encountered on his return challenged him and said that his healing was the work of demons. But I love his response.

Instead of engaging too much with the theological and philosophical debates, he simply shares his experience. “He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see.” His life was changed by an encounter with Jesus, and he just wants to share it with others.

And I love the line that, after managing their theologizing and debating, he sees they’re obsessed with Jesus, and he just asks if they want to follow him too.

I see this as an example of a person living with a soft heart and open hands. Someone who refuses to harden his heart, someone who does not engage in the cynicism of the world, and instead knows the love of God, and that love of God flows out through him.

He’s someone who would just be discarded, according to the ways of the world. But in the reign of Christ, the people on the outside become the insiders.

We see this again in our Old Testament reading, with this very well-known line, “For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”

Of all these brothers who could have been chosen to be the king, God chose the youngest brother, David, who was out with the sheep. He probably was stinky. He was small and young. There was nothing about him that would say that he would be a great king for the nation.

But instead, he was, as we know, from his writing in the psalms and other places, he was sensitive. Psalm 51, which we’ll sing later, “Create in me a clean heart, O God,” is attributed to David. He had a soft heart. And this is the way that God works in the world, among God’s people. With soft hearts and open hands.

God calls us to be sensitive with one another and caring. And God wants us to serve together for the good of others.

This is something we see in the life of Eric Norelius and his legacy. He and his fellow immigrants were kept at a distance and not trusted. These Swedes with their strange language and unfamiliar liturgies were the outsiders in this land.

And yet they built these congregations and institutions for the good of their neighbors, for their city, for the state and the whole country. LSS isn’t only for Swedes. It’s for everyone. And think about how many millions of dollars of grocery and rental assistance have flowed through San Pablo, Augustana, Calvary, and Messiah in the last several months. Think about how many immigrants and marginalized Americans that LSS has helped in the last 150 years.

Today’s reading is a reminder that God does care about our lives. God cares about the ways we physically encounter the world and one another. And God’s hand of healing is always extended to us.

Thanks be to God.

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

Worthless Things

Vicar Erik C. Nelson
Texts: Jeremiah 2:4-13; John 8:46-51

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Last week I encouraged this congregation to refuse to harden your hearts. I talked about the importance of living with a soft heart and open hands. I talked about all the forces in the world that conspire to harden our hearts, cutting us off from the love God pours out upon us and from being able to share that love with others.

I talked about how having a soft heart makes you vulnerable. Cynicism and apathy can be a powerful armor, and if you want to stay safe, maybe that’s the way to go. But refusing to harden your heart means that in spite of the risk of loss and pain, your earnestness matters.

An essential part of having a full life with a soft heart is a commitment to honesty and integrity.

So I have to be honest with you today, in this pulpit, about how I’ve wrestled with today’s readings. In our gospel reading, Jesus has one of his most intense clashes with the Pharisees, which ends with them picking up rocks to stone him. In our first reading, we have Jeremiah speaking for God, calling the nation to repentance in a truly brutal way. I can’t stop thinking about the line that says that the nation “went after worthless things and became worthless themselves.”

I can’t shake this line, as it shakes the foundations of my vision of God. I know God to be merciful and compassionate, looking at us with total delight, seeing us as having infinite value, such great worth that God himself took on human flesh and lived among us.

So I hear this, and the prophetic hyperbole stops me in my tracks. These incisive words from Jeremiah are meant to catch us off guard, to get us thinking about our own lives. What are we doing with our lives? What worthless things are we pursuing? What are we putting before God in our life?

How are we undermining our own worth in that pursuit?

I can’t stop thinking about the fact that for the last eleven days, our own country has been pulled into yet another illegal war for oil. This war shows us again, the gods of this nation. The idols that we lift up that threaten our relationships with God and with one another.

These idols are money and oil and weapons. And these idols are different from the idols Jeremiah is speaking against. But what our idols have in common is that they all demand blood. Especially the blood of children.

A challenge to our soft hearts is the fact that in the opening volley of this war, 175 students and staff at a girls’ school were killed by American weapons. Since then, seven American soldiers have been killed, leaving families without their mom, their brother, their dad, their uncle. 1200 Iranians so far have been killed.

And in the continued attacks, the destruction of refineries has resulted in hellish conditions in the cities of Iran, with the gutters full of burning fuel and the air full of smoke and ash. Children’s lungs are full of these toxic fumes and they will have to live with the consequences for the rest of their lives.

What’s happening there is catastrophic now and will be for decades. So when I hear today’s scripture lesson, these extreme words from God’s prophet, it strikes at my heart.

It hits me where I’m most burdened. Our country is pursuing worthless things. I hope we’re not becoming worthless in the process.

It would be easy to preach a lighter sermon, one that only briefly touches on these things, but these are heavy texts, and they call for a serious wrestling.

And we live in the context of our faith being contorted to justify this war.

From the beginning of the war, religious liberty watchdogs have received hundreds of reports from our soldiers of commanders and leaders telling them that this is a holy war. Leaders of our military and defense structure have been using their interpretation of scripture to say that by bombing a girls’ school, they are bringing about the return of Jesus.

But the Bible is very clear about idolatry. The Bible consistently rails against any attempt or effort to put something else in God’s place in our lives.

And this condemnation of idolatry comes up in our gospel reading today. This dispute between Jesus and the Jewish leaders ends with Jesus making a claim to be God, and so the leaders pick up rocks to stone him.

Even if these leaders were wrong, not recognizing Jesus as the Son of God, their intentions were right, resisting what they saw as idolatry and the wrongful use of God’s name.

Violence was the wrong response to that, but we must respond in some way. We don’t have the right to remain silent when we see or hear our scriptures and beliefs being twisted to justify violence and Christian nationalism. We must resist it.

These holy days, when Lent and Ramadan coincide, we have an opportunity to slow down and see our neighbors as truly our siblings. We have an opportunity to live in solidarity.

We saw in our city’s resistance to federal occupation that when God’s people come together to resist tyranny, even the darkest of days can be overcome.

In the gospel reading today, Jesus promises that whoever keeps his word will never see death. Whoever listens to him will see eternal life.

We have an opportunity to listen to him when he says, “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.”

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”

“If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.”

“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

When we live with soft hearts and open hands, these things that Jesus says, they start to make sense. The violence and idolatry of the world is laid bare. We see the emptiness of the messages we receive that make us see one another as enemies to be conquered or a means to an end.

When we live with soft hearts and open hands, we become conduits for God’s love, the living water that Jesus pours out for us.

This living water that Jesus gives us is not a tame, quiet puddle. But it is active and rushing and moves us into action, for the sake of the world.

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

Soft Hearts, Open Hands

Vicar Erik C. Nelson
Texts: Hebrews 3:12-14; John 3:17-21

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

One of the phrases I live by, that I often repeat to myself, is “refuse to harden your heart.” I have it printed out on a card, hanging on my bulletin board at home. I have it in my Facebook bio. I don’t remember exactly when I picked it up but it has served me through the last decade.

My whole adult life, since I graduated high school in 2015, has been full of violence and cruelty and pandemic and insurrection and federal occupation and all sorts of things that could easily sweep us into despair and cynicism.

These things, among others, are some of the things our readings today might call the “deceitfulness of sin.”

If sin is whatever separates us from God, our neighbors, and ourselves, and the love of God, love of our neighbors, and love of ourselves, all these events of the last decade seem designed to harden our hearts and wrap us up in sin.

When we see violence and cruelty, we can be tempted to respond with our own violence and cruelty. Or we can turn inward, trying to protect ourselves but ultimately cutting ourselves off from one another.

When we stumbled into the pandemic, we saw a rise of a radical form of individualism, that didn’t care if people lived or died, but only cared that our individual rights and freedoms were protected, at any cost.

When the imperial boot has come down and military forces have been deployed into our streets, we can find it hard to see the humanity and dignity of the person on the other end of the rifle.

And yet, when we refuse to harden our hearts, we remain open to God’s way.

We forgive those who do violence against us. We pray for our persecutors. We open ourselves up to each other in self-giving love. We can see the humanity of even an ICE agent and invite them to open up their heart to love.

The deceitfulness of sin hardens us and turns us away from God and one another. It makes us cynical and jaded. It makes us ashamed and makes us want to hide.

Refusing to harden our hearts keeps us away from the cynicism of the world and keeps us in God’s light.

The Message Translation of our John reading conveys the urgency of this problem when it says, “This is the crisis we’re in: God-light streamed into the world, but men and women everywhere ran for the darkness. They went for the darkness because they were not really interested in pleasing God. Everyone who makes a practice of doing evil, addicted to denial and illusion, hates God-light and won’t come near it, fearing a painful exposure”

The thing about refusing to harden your heart is that it makes you vulnerable. When others see the God-light shining on you and through you, people will call you naive and or too earnest, or say you’re unrealistic. If you’re young, you’ll hear people say you just need some more real-world experiences, that’ll rough you up.

I hope that I stay soft, even as life experiences rough me up. I hope that I continue to love the God-light, seeking it out, staying away from denial and illusion.

I think the real acts of denial and illusion are whenever we accept what God says is unacceptable. Whenever we say that violence is justifiable. Whenever we say that a life is expendable, or a person is illegal, or an enemy can be discarded, we run from the God-light, and buy into that practice of doing evil, becoming addicted to denial and illusion.

When we get wrapped up in those lies about others, about ourselves, when we forget that every person is a precious child of God, made in God’s own image, we start to get lost in that darkness.

It’s been said that the most dangerous person is the one who thinks that they are beyond saving, that they are utterly hopeless and helpless. If someone thinks there’s no going back after what they’ve done, they can then justify to themselves doing even worse things.

But the message of the Gospel reminds us that it’s never too late. Jesus didn’t come to the world to condemn the world, but to save the world.

The way to live in the world without hardening your heart is to have confidence in this truth.

The good that we do and the bad that we do can’t undo Jesus’s saving work in the world.

When we know that before and beyond anything we do or don’t do, we are loved, we are forgiven, and we are claimed by Christ forever, then we can live with soft hearts and open hands.

This is the kind of new life that Jesus invited Nicodemus into when he told him he must be born again. Again and again, Jesus tells anyone who listens that they must become like children if they are to inherit the Kingdom of God.

And this isn’t about becoming an actual child, but it’s about keeping a soft heart and an active spirit, trusting God’s promises to us. Trusting in God’s presence among us. Trusting that God’s truth, God’s compassion, God’s mercy, will always triumph over judgment, cruelty, and violence.

Refusing to harden your heart is a radical act that resists empires, pushes back the devil and the forces of hell, and helps each of us to live more fully into the people who God has made us to be.

God help us.

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

Saint Elisabeth Fedde

Week 1: Sharing our Suffering, Easing Anxiety

Vicar Erik C. Nelson
Texts: Hebrews 5:5-10; Matthew 6:25-27

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today our church commemorates Sister Elisabeth Fedde, a Norwegian immigrant known for her life of caring for the poor and outcast, especially through her efforts to build hospitals.

When Elisabeth Fedde was 13, her mother died, leaving her an orphan, and she entered the workforce as a maid. She worked for a shoemaker in Stavanger, Norway. She was impressed by her employers’ deep faith and life of service, and prayed that she also could live a life of faith and service.

Some years later, a visiting seamstress encouraged her to become a deaconess, and Elisabeth recognized her call from God, and joined Oslo’s Deaconess Motherhouse when she was 23.

This was the beginning of a lifelong effort to work for the good of others. The wife of the Norwegian consul in New York City put out a call, hoping someone would come help the poor Norwegian immigrants in New York. Sister Elisabeth responded, and with the support of some local pastors in New York, she set up a Deaconess hospital in Brooklyn.

Later, she came to Minneapolis and set up a Deaconess hospital here as well.

Sister Elisabeth was someone who lived fully into her baptismal identity. She lived a life of care and service, motivated by her faith in Jesus and relationship with God.

In spite of many challenges, she knew who she was called to be. She knew that her call came from God. God called her beloved, and God called her to service, and no one could challenge that.

Some Christians take the words of today’s readings, “don’t worry about your clothing; God will provide. Don’t worry about your food; God will provide,” and they use it as an excuse or a proof-text to talk their way out of doing good works.

Sister Elisabeth would have heard these words, and I think she would have known her place in them. She would know that yes, God provides, so we don’t need to be anxious about tomorrow. But she would know that very often, God provides through us. We are the only hands and feet God has in the world.

I think about our neighbors who have been hidden in their homes for the last few months, too afraid to venture out for food and other necessities. I can only imagine how much anxiety and worry they’re living with.

And so I have so much gratitude and love for the people in this congregation who have become the hands and feet of God for these neighbors. Every time you load up a truck of groceries, bring it here, pack it into boxes, and send it out to be delivered, you are the fulfillment of Jesus’s words.

You are the ones who God in heaven is sending out to feed and care.

This is how the people of God are called to live in the world. Remembering how the waters of baptism still cover us. These waters quench our thirst and soothe our pain and send us out for service.

When Jesus was baptized, he didn’t just stay there in the river. He brought that water with him into the wilderness.

And so that’s what we do. Everywhere we go, we bring that water of life with us.

But as our calendar brings us into Lent, I can’t help but feel like we’ve already been wandering in the wilderness. Since December, our lives have been full of these disciplines of Lent.

Maybe we’ve already been fasting, whether we realize it or not, as we rearrange our schedules, stepping away from some things we love, to make time for mutual aid and neighborhood patrols and supporting our neighbors. My own prayer life has been more active in the last couple months than it has been in years. And the money this congregation has raised for neighbor support is breathtaking.

This church knows about fasting, prayer, and almsgiving.

You don’t need me to tell you how to do the Lenten disciplines. So I will invite you, this year, to live into the reality that God has called you Beloved. Live into the truth that you are not defined by what you do or don’t do. I want to invite you to this Lent to live into your baptism in ways that maybe don’t feel like Lent.

I have great admiration for Sister Elisabeth, obviously. The hospitals she started live on today in the Fairview Medical System here and the NYU Medical System in New York. She also helped set up hospitals in Chicago and Grand Forks. She distributed food and clothing and cash to destitute Norwegian immigrants. Her work saved and improved countless lives.

But when you read her diaries and her autobiography, her utter exhaustion comes through clearly. Her life came with a heavy burden. After 13 years in America, her health gave out and she had to return to Norway.

If you feel today, at the end of your rope, if you feel like you’ve been burning the candle at both ends. Maybe Lent is an opportunity for you to slow down. Take a breath. Take a weekend away just by yourself, for yourself. Trust that others will hold the line for you.

Trust that God in heaven loves you deeply and dearly, more than anything else in the universe. God loves and cares for you. God doesn’t expect you to crawl over broken glass or wear yourself out. God invites us to abundant, eternal life.

This Lent, as we rest in the knowledge that we are God’s beloved, maybe there are some things it would be okay for you to let go of, to trust to God’s care.

Maybe if Sister Elisabeth had a community like Mount Olive around her, a community that really knows how to love and care, she would have lasted longer.

Maybe this is the year we do what we can, in a way that’s sustainable, in a way that doesn’t wear us out, and trust that God can handle the rest.

Thanks be to God.

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen