JSTACK – Salvaged Faith

This Is Love: Friends of God

Posted on May 19, 2019Leave a comment

Text: John 15:9-17

On the last day of school in seventh or eighth grade, six friends walked home from school together. Some of us had known each other since kindergarten. Others came into our lives along the way.
But our friendship was forged in those awkward and complicated years of middle school. The drama of boyfriends. The stress of school work. The cattiness of who was in and who was out.
The six of us spent that afternoon on the last day of school planning an amazing summer and spent nearly an hour rearranging the first letters of our name to discover the perfect acronym for our little group: JSTACK. Jana, Stasia, Theresa, Anna, Cara, Katie.
Together we survived high school and more than a few relationship ups and downs. We thank God every time we get together that YouTube wasn’t invented yet, because we made the silliest videos on sleepovers and no one needs to see them. We celebrated one another’s successes even as we pushed each other on.
And now, more than twenty years later, we still try to get together on a regular basis. We have busy lives, our own relationships and professions and children… but we know that those five other individuals will always be someone that we can turn to. They might live halfway across the country… but they are also only a phone call or a text away.
When I am really struggling with something… they are the first people I turn to.

Have you had friends like that in your life?
People who have always been there for you?
The ones that you have walked through fire with and come out on the other side?

When the great theologian C.S. Lewis wrote about love, he turned back to the Greek words that all get subsumed in our one English word today. In doing so, he helps us to recapture the rich complexity of relationship.
One of the types of love that he lifts up is philia, or companionship. This kind of love usually revolves around some common interest or activity that draws individuals together for a common purpose.
Think back to high school. All of the groups and cliques that formed were a result of philia, some kind of shared love. There were the jocks and the band geeks, the popular crowd and the nerds. These relationships, whether we liked it or not, were to some extent exclusive. The jocks and the nerds rarely showed up at the same parties. The very nature of philia or being drawn together for a common purpose, it means that others who don’t share in your love will not be a part of the group.

And for the most part, that’s okay because we have multiple circles of friends: our golf buddies, and the people we play cards with; our co-workers.

Philia love, however, is deeper than mere camaraderie. When you and others share philia love, you are passionate about the things you do together. You can’t wait for your next opportunity to be with one another.

In romantic love, two people stand face-to-face, eyes on one another. But in philia love, you stand shoulder-to-shoulder, facing the world. You find your place alongside others and their strengths become your strengths. You urge one another on to accomplish something larger than yourself.

In this season of Eastertide, we have been exploring the depths and heights and breadth of the love of God.

Love that is stronger than death
Love that stewards life for future generations
Love that pours out amazing grace

Today, as we dive into this passage from the farewell address of Jesus in John’s gospel, we hear about the greatest love of all: to lay down your life for your friends.
In fact, we are commanded… we are charged… we are urged to embody with one another the kind of love that Jesus has shown us.
We are invited to abide in that love… to make our home and persevere in that love.
And when we do… Jesus calls us not servants, but friends.

For a couple of weeks now, I’ve been wrestling with this passage and what it means for us to be called a friend of God.
It is an honor reserved for very few within the scriptures…
Abraham is named as a friend of God in both James 2:23 and Isaiah 41:8.
David also seems to have this very special place in God’s heart.
Were they perfect people? No
But they embodied the same spirit that Jesus invites us to embody… a spirit of obedience.
As Jesus tells the disciples in “If you keep my commands, you abide in my love.”

Keeping commandments…
Obeying orders…
These sounds to me like things that a follower, a servant, or a slave might do.
And yet it is clearly in this context that Jesus says we are NOT servants.
What gives?

I think when we go back to our experiences of friendship in this world that we find a way to navigate this difficult passage.
Friends, after all, are those people with whom we have chosen to throw in our lot with.
They are the ones that we stand with – shoulder to shoulder – facing the world.
Our friends are the ones we walk alongside through triumphs and tragedy.
Our friends know us intimately… and we know them intimately in return.

This is the kind of relationship that Christ wants to have with us.
He wants us to throw in our lot with him, to abide in him, to give 100% of our lives to this cause.
He wants to stand side-by-side with us, shoulder-to-shoulder, working to build the kingdom.
He wants to help us navigate the ups and downs of life and believes that when we walk together, our joy might truly be complete.
He knows us intimately… and he wants us to know him fully…. Every plan, every detail, every reason and rationale.

In a relationship between a master and slave, you obey out of fear or out of duty. You obey because your life or your work or your livelihood depends on it. It is an entirely self-serving and self-interested kind of response. You don’t see the bigger picture, merely the next step in front of you.

But when we see the great love that God has for this world and we choose to abide in that love, our self-interest fades away.
We see the journey of redemption and new creation that God has initiated in Jesus Christ.
We find our joy and our hope in that vision of the Kingdom of God, where all people are invited to the table, where death is no more, where we are finally free from the power of sin.
We obey not out of fear, but because we have claimed that vision and made it our own.
We obey because we, too, want to share that love with others.
We are willing to set aside our own self-interest, move out of our comfort zones, and step forward, with Jesus at our side, to share love and hope and healing and life with others.

Christ has chosen you.
He picked you out of the crowd and declared – you are my friend.
And when we respond and stand by his side, abiding in, remaining in his love,
Then we truly are friends of God.

JSTACK #NaBloPoMo

Posted on November 1, 2014Leave a comment

NaBloPoMo… National Blog Posting Month

I’ve been out of the habit of writing on a regular basis, so this is going to be a great practice for me!

Today, I’m following a prompt from RevGalBlogPals to blog about a group of friends that have been a part of my life.

I have known some of the ladies in this group since I was in Kindergarten, others since third grade and beyond. But our lifelong pact was sealed on a summer afternoon in our teenage years when we painted some initials on an old mailbox.

We were hanging out and creating a little space of our own on a friends’ property. We had walked there through the cornfields after that last day of school and were getting ready to kick off an amazing year. I’m not sure where the mailbox came from, or even what we did in the space the rest of the year, but I remember how we spent an hour rearranging the initials of our names to finally find the perfect word: JSTACK.

Since then, we made it through high school and a few relationship ups and downs. We had similar friends and three of us took the same guy to dances at various points. We laughed and cried. We made the stupidest videos (thank God YouTube wasnt around yet). And then we graduated and went separate directions.

We never lost each other, however. And now, after 20 years of friendship, we have a yearly weekend gathering. Every time we walk in that cabin door, we pick up where we have left off. Relationships, children, graduate school, moves, career changes… Through it all, we know who will always be there for us. No matter what.

Pen Pals and Pinky Promises

Posted on January 3, 2014Leave a comment

I have never been great at long-distance relationships. I have no idea how my husband and I made it for two years apart at two different times in our dating life… except for the fact we made a really, really intentional effort to talk once a day on the phone and racked up a lot of credit card debt buying plane tickets.

When I was younger, we occasionally had the opportunity to have an overseas pen pal and I think I sent a grand total of one letter. My grandma and I have sent letters back and forth, but when it really comes down to it, she does a lot more of the writing than I do. Writing letters has never really been my thing. Emailing back and forth to keep in touch was somehow easier, but even then, I was hardly the person to initiate the conversation.

Heck, I don’t even really like to talk on the phone with people.

Give me a person to person conversation over a cup of coffee any day.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t work when you live far away from those friends and family you crave spending time and sharing stories with.

Right after Christmas, a group of my girlfriends and I got together for breakfast at a dive bar. We had huge breakfasts and a round of mimosas and after months of not seeing each other dove right into the conversation and updates. And even in three short hours, we were able to connect, go deep, and that time together was so precious.

Sometimes you need that girlfriend to laugh with about something stupid or that friend to commiserate with over a shared struggle. Sometimes we just need to get stuff off our our chest in a safe, loving, supportive space.

But when your best friends live far away, what do you do?

We committed to trying something new. We pinky-promised to text more often. It probably looked pretty funny the four of us standing in a parking lot… grown women making a pinky-promise. But that was always us… the weirdos 😉

Maybe it is a strange thing to try but we just needed to intentionally make an effort to keep in touch. Silly stuff, serious stuff, anything really. Just to keep the lines open. Any time. Any day. Just to remind one another we are here.

Good thing I have unlimited texting, because I think I have already sent/received more messages in the last week than I did all of last month. Sheesh, I missed my friends.

Saturday night with the drag queens

Posted on January 5, 2011Leave a comment

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Saturday night I had an awesome time helping my super best friend since fourth grade celebrate her impending nuptuials. AKA – Bachelorette Party!!!

If I had been wiser, I would have taken Sunday off as one of my vacation days… but I am saving one for this spring when her wedding actually occurs. As it was, I had to get up early, teach and preach the next morning. Yet I promised her sister when I wrote back to RSVP that I would be there, but that she could count on me for a designated driver.

As it worked out, I didn’t have to drive at all until the very end of the night. We had a blast stopping by the piano lounge, the downtown fieldhouse, and then making a stop at Club Basix. For those who are not familiar, Club Basix is known as a “gay club.” Which was more than obvious when we walked in the door and the drag show started.

Now, if I am being honest, I have been to more than a few drag shows in my day. We had them to raise money for the AIDS project of Central Iowa. We went to them in divinity school (as a lady… it is much more comfortable to dance at the gay clubs – less guys hitting on you all the time!) And now, I can say that I have been to one back home.

As someone leaned over and mentioned soon after it was getting started: Where else can these people go in Cedar Rapids? (more on that thought later)

The show itself had its highs and lows. There was one particular number that I was pretty appalled by… okay – it was raunchy and I had to turn away… but for the most part I enjoyed the experience. I think the best was a rendition of “Bad Romance” by a queen in mismatched pastel boots, gold knickers, a red tutu, rhinestone glasses and a tie-dye shirt… it was ah-mazing.

Later that evening, we were dancing and headed outside for a second for some fresh air. That particular queen was outside also and we struck up a conversation. My friend, Cara, had been called out at the end of the show because of our celebrations and so she was asked about the wedding. As she and I stood there, at one point, Cara replied – and she is marrying me!

It’s true. I am marrying her. Well, I’m doing the marrying. I’m doing the wedding… well, I’m a pastor – that’s what we do! However your phrase it.

So it came out that I was a minister. And not a “get a license over the internet person” who performs weddings for people who frequent establishments like Club Basix. (I was asked that.) But a genuine, ordained, main-line pastor. Out at a gay and lesbian night club at 1:30am on a Saturday night/Sunday morning.

And do you know where the conversation turned? To faith sharing. Our new friend shared with us that she was baptized Methodist. We talked for a bit about the places we came from. I was asked about gay marriage in Iowa and if I could perform those types of ceremonies. And she asked me to pray for her. And I will. I am.

My adventure at Club Basix began with a simple statement – where else can these people go in Cedar Rapids? And it ended with the realization that there are a lot of hurt and broken people in that building. Folks who have been shut out of families. Individuals who feel scared and alone. Friends who have built new families around one another… new communities of support because their churches turned them away.

What better place for a pastor to visit? What an amazing place to be able to talk, for even two minutes in the freezing cold outside, about the love of God? To leave my own comfort zone, to go and be there on their terms, to listen, and to just be Christ’s presence in that moment. There is no place that I would rather have been.

Long-Distance Friendships #reverb10

Posted on December 16, 2010Leave a comment

Being a pastor in a small town makes it really hard to build and maintain friendships.

Well, maybe that should be rephrased… makes it really hard to build and maintain the kind of friendships where you get to actually spend face to face time with one another.

In college, I lived in a small intentional community of folks with shared perspectives. We had a ton of fun – but we also studied together, we ate together, we did stuff in the community with one another.

In seminary, I had an amazing group of friends, both men and woman again, who I was surrounded by daily. There were the folks I had coffee with at Brueggers, the women I had drinks and pizza with on Tuesdays, my ministry intern colleages, my roommates, Glenn and Maggie… life was full of people my own age who were all doing the same kinds of things together.

I move to this little town back in Iowa, and suddenly I feel like my husband and I are the only single people under thirty. I know that’s not absolutely true – but I just don’t see other folks. We don’t have children, so I don’t meet them through school events, and we don’t have the same interests as parents do. As a pastor, I don’t feel comfortable going and hanging out at the bars – and to be honest, that really isn’t our style anyways. It isn’t totally appropriate to be friends and hang out with parishoners, and those are the only other folks I really get to meet.

That’s not to say that we don’t have other friendships. We have a group of guy friends (and Pam) who we hang out with pretty regularly. But the closest one of them lives 45 minutes away. Those college friends are clustered in Des Moines – an hour and a half away – and then far flung across the nation. My high school friends – who I keep in pretty regular contact with – are all across the country as well…

December 16 – Friendship How has a friend changed you or your perspective on the world this year? Was this change gradual, or a sudden burst? (Author: Martha Mihalick)

I was honored to officiate the wedding of two of those college friends this summer. And then I attended a conference in Des Moines in the fall and made a point to hang out with that same group of people. We got together for dinner. We hung out in the evenings. We laughed until our sides hurt. We told stories and caught up.

Being around those friends… watching them interact and seeing how their relationships have developed through this close knit interaction… was awesome. Every week they were together – often more frequently than that. They watched television together. They ate together. Their lives were intertwined.

When your nearest friend lives 45 minutes away… (yeah, Tree – I know you live closer on the weekends, but you have your own relationship to tend to!!) it is difficult to intertwine your life with someone. You can’t just show up on their doorstep. It takes gas money and energy and an extra hour and a half of driving just to hang out. You can’t walk home from Margarita Mondays when you have traveled that far 😉

I think watching them all interact and also being so welcomed back into that community, was a revelation for me. The switch from this life full of young people to this little town in Iowa was sudden… but I didn’t notice the changes because I was so busy adapting to a new vocation and making a home here. Being around all of them was like a burst of fresh air. We were adults, full of life, enjoying the company of good friends and the simple things in life (Captain Crunch Sushi, anyone?) I need those friends in my life again.

what it means to be a girl friend… and a pastor

Posted on August 2, 2010Leave a comment

This past weekend, I got to hang out with a ton of my friends from college. I felt almost like a completely different person while I was around them – even though I had a “pastor” hat on for a bit of the time. I had the honor and the privledge of marrying two of them while we were gathered… but at the same time, I was also just one of those crazy college roommates.

All of those people knew me before I was “Pastor Katie.” They knew me as a friend and as a girl who likes to giggle and while I was the religious life council girl back then, I was also the one who… well, what happens at the PAC house – stays at the PAC house.

But what happens now that you become a pastor? Where do you find good friends? Where do you find people that you can go to and talk about all of your problems and struggles and be really, really stupid with? Who do you stay up until 3am with?

For the most part, I have solved that dilemma because my husband gained some friends through his brother who then became my friends. Completely unchurch related friends. I can hang out without having to be professional, or worry about what might come up next. I still have to cut festivities short on a Saturday night so I can get up and preach the next morning, but I get to experience with them what I used to remember as a “normal life.”

But I think even with that bunch there is something missing, because aside from being the “pastor”, I’m also the only girl… or at least have been for a long time.

And I think I really miss the kind of companionship that a best girl friend offers. And I know that I have been lucky enough to have found some amazing best friends in the past… and right now, I really wish I had someone to shop with, and watch crappy girl movies with, and talk about girl stuff with. I miss the circle of friends who gathered every Tuesday night in seminary to have pizza. I miss the estrogen that radiated out of the upstairs of the PAC House or Bubbly Manor (the names of our in-famous college abodes). I miss the crazy antics of teenage girls… that somehow are rekindled when JSTACK has the chance to get together every year or so.

But what happens when that person doesn’t live next door to you anymore? What happens when the nearest girlfriend lives an hour away? And how do you get yourself to a place where you can find someone like that in your neighborhood, when you live in the parsonage in a small town? How do I find people my own age to hang out with… without also thinking about how I can get them involved in my church or what I might need to ask them to help out with next? How can I be a friend when pastors don’t make friends with congregation members?

you can’t please everyone…

Posted on June 20, 2010Leave a comment

I’m coming to realize that one of my greatest weaknesses is trying to please everyone. I have a very terribly hard time saying no. I agonize over the fact that I might be letting someone down by something I do or say. And lately this impulse… this attempt to please multiple people at once… has led me to double book myself, or try to fit too many things in a day when the problem would have been solved with better planning, a few no’s, and being honest about the fact that I can’t do something right this minute… but that I could possibly get to it later.

There was a conversation I had with my friend, Anna, not so terribly long ago, where we lamented the fact that we wanted to be superwomen. We wanted to have careers… but we also wanted to be moms. We wanted to be successful women and give our all to our vocation and yet still have time for ourselves and our husbands. And there was this twinge of guilt over the fact that maybe to have it all, we have to give up the very thing that we have been working so hard towards for the past 20-some years of our lives. Maybe to have the family and simplicity and well-balanced self, we really couldn’t have the jobs we had been chasing after.

Can we do it all? Can we make everyone happy? Can we be successful at our work and also be there for our spouses? Is it possible?

Today is a day when I think that the answer is no. Today is one of those days when I’m really glad that I’m not on the fast track to success, because, sheesh, my family would be left behind in the dust.

Just this afternoon, I have tried to balance time with friends, exercise, food, and going to a family funeral visitation into one four hour block.

And I realized that it wasn’t possible. And no matter how much I tried to justify one thing or another, the simple fact was that all of those things were good things. To skip any of them would be letting someone down – myself, my support network, those people I am supposed to be support to… A choice had to be made. And I really did try for about 2 hours to figure out how I could get them all fit in. And something had to go.

It’s silly that I agonize over these things. It’s silly that I am so completely indecisive about what choice is the best. Sometimes it is because I really have been disorganized and planned poorly. But other times, it is because I am blessed with too many choices. Blessed with too many people to spend time with. Blessed with work that I love and hobbies that I love. And a choice has to be made between two good things sometimes. And I need to learn to just be okay with that and know that I’m doing the best I can.

Last Fridays FF: Friends

Posted on May 22, 2009Leave a comment

Ever since I found out I could be the hostess for the third Friday Five of each month, I have not been able to get the thought of friends out of my mind. Being an only child (all growed up) who moved around a lot in my lifetime,
friends have always been very important to me. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once
wrote: “The way to have a friend is to be a friend.”

So today let’s write about the different kinds of friends we have, like childhood friends, lost friends, tennis friends, work friends, and the list goes on. List 5 different types of friends you have had in your life and what they were/are like.

1) JSTACK – there is no other way to describe this group of friends than to simply call us who we are (JSTACK is based on the first letters of our names). We are six women (well, girls at the time) who fell in together somewhere in 7th grade and haven’t fallen apart since! Think “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” meets “Now and Then” and “Stand by Me” only there are six of us and we get together regularly. We have built some amazing rituals around watching each other get married and I can’t wait until some of us start having little ones! Our kids will have five aunts to love them!!!

2) My college “activist” friends – these are my friends who would drag me to protests and who I lived with in a community house with a focus on social justice and peace and the environment. We had a blast together and I did all sorts of things that I never would have had the courage to do on my own.

3) My college “religious” friends – these are terrible distinctions to make between people, and I had quite a few friends who fit both categories, but for the most part, I had my friends in the “progressive action coalition” house and then my friends in “religious life council.” These are the friends that I talked theology with, and discerned my call with. These are the friends that held me accountable through covenant discipleship groups and I worshipped with. These are the friends who worked through parts of the ministry process with me. Five of us went to seminary out of my graduating class.

4) My seminary friends. In many ways – seminary was the opportunity to meld together the “activist” and “religious” sides of my life. My seminary was also known as the “school of the prophets” so it was no surprise that my colleagues would protest injustices and would stand up for the rights of others AND that we had deep theological discussions about why we would do so. My one regret is that I wasn’t more involved in some of the direct action things that happened while I was in Nashville. Some of my closest women friends and I also had a regular tuesday night out during this time that WAS the deepest form of self-care that I’m still trying to find here in my ministry setting.

5) My husband’s friends. Well, they are my friends too =) Since moving back to Iowa, we started hanging out with my husband’s brother and friends – mostly playing video games and watching movies and playing disc golf. And now they are the guys (and I do mean GUYS) that I see most often. In some ways I miss having really good girlfriends around, but at the same time, it’s nice to just be able to hang out with the guys and not have any of the pressure of church around.