Throughout this past summer, campers, guests, and staff associated with Lake Wapogasset Lutheran Bible Camp, Inc. had opportunities to talk and learn about their faith through an overarching theme of, ‘Claimed, Wildly Loved By God.’  At its essence, this theme tells us that God loves us wildly and unconditionally.  In a world that often makes us feel like we are ‘not enough,’ the message of God’s abounding love for us is a message of hope and assurance, and a message that we are created in God’s image and are in fact more than enough.

With this ‘Claimed’ message at the root of discussion across all three camps of LWLBC, campers, guests, and staff at Wilderness Canoe Base took an additional step and wondered together what this means for our lives.  If we have been saved by grace and if nothing we do can separate us from God’s love (or give us a higher standing in God’s eyes), then what are we called to do with our lives?  Theologians like Martin Luther, Gerhard Forde, Desmond Tutu and countless others have asked questions throughout the centuries about what our call in this world is if there is nothing that we must do in order to receive God’s love.  Essentially, the heart of the question is, ‘what will you do with your life since you don’t have to do anything to receive God’s love?’  In many ways, this question is a call to our vocation.  Because we know that God’s love is given to us unconditionally and without having to do anything at all, we are given the freedom to consider what it is that we can do with our lives.

With an eye on vocation, our bible study theme at Wilderness Canoe Base throughout the summer invited us to consider the ways that God is actively engaging with us.  Our summer theme focused on ways that God Creates, God Rests, God Organizes, God Uproots, God Liberates, and God Calls, and throughout these conversations we were given opportunities to consider the ways that we too are called to participate in God’s kingdom.

Each Sunday of the summer at Wilderness Canoe Base, we gather together for Worship as a community.  The congregation is made up of summer staff, guests from around the lake and along the Gunflint Trail, alumni, and other visitors.  We decided to focus our Sunday sermons on this question of our vocation, and this call to participate in God’s kingdom.  Each of these sermons were given by Wilderness Canoe Base Staff, summer staff, and/or alumni.  In the coming weeks ahead, we will be posting the sermons that were given, and we invite you to join us in these conversations.  And as you consider what Kristin, Ty, (Ty again), Katelyn, Beatrice, Dan, Elizabeth and Sarah preached about, we also invite you to consider the ways that you too will participate in God’s kingdom.

-Nathan Berkas, Wilderness Canoe Base Director

I’m Dan. I guide canoe trips at Wilderness Canoe Base this summer. Today, I’d like to talk about peace.

I spent the last four years studying history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I began to imagine myself as an academic historian, envisioning a life of thinking and talking and writing about the past. This might sound boring to many of you, but it was one of the most exciting moments in my life, primarily because the work helped me to begin to find my politics. History provided a framework (change over time) that has proved useful for understanding contemporary political and social issues, and it helped me begin to grapple with some of the things that matter to me in the world.

I studied nineteenth-century North America, which, as far as historical moments and places go, is a tough one, and my understanding of urgent advocacy compelled me to remember and carry with me as much of the pain and trauma of this hundred years of imperialism and colonialism, economic exploitation, systematized racism, and organized patriarchy as I could. In this work, I felt an ever-present urgency. This feeling that things need to change, right now, is understandable, and it can be productive. But rather than driving my sense of purpose, it most often made me feel hopeless, confused, and drained.

If my work in the discipline called history felt inescapably urgent, my work as a guide at Wilderness has felt inescapably peaceful. I don’t think this is because I’m not thinking about the same sorts of problems that I did when I studied history; I am. I understand guiding to be political and social work. I value the opportunity to help individuals experience a designated wilderness area for the first time, under surprisingly equitable circumstances. I savor the chance to live in community; to build confidence and work towards common goals with people who have different life experiences. Yet for some reason, I don’t carry the same sorts of mental burdens that I’ve previously associated with a political life.

The questions that have been on my mind most this summer, therefore, have to do with this feeling that I’m identifying as peace. First, why do I feel this peace? And, second, is it ok for me to feel this peace? If I feel at peace, am I doing enough in this very un-peaceful world?

The first question is easier to answer. I feel peace in my work as a canoe guide because the job is tangible. My life is grounded and bounded in physical ways. At the end of the day, my back hurts exactly in proportion to how many paddle strokes I’ve taken, how many pack straps and portage yokes I’ve hauled up onto my shoulders, and how many knobby roots have accumulated under my corner of our pitched tent. At night, I crawl quickly into my old Eureka 6p and lay on top of a damp sleeping bag, in physical and emotional alignment with half-a-dozen other tent mates, and surrounded by the hum of mosquitos and the first rustles of nocturnal critters. We’re tired and and we smell and our bellies are full and our world just makes sense to me.

I feel peace because my work occurs on a humbling scale. If, as a historian, I worked at a macro level, analyzing people and processes across across space and time, as a canoe guide, my experience is dramatically micro. I trip with, at most, 8 other people, usually for less than a week. I don’t really get to think about causality or to evaluate outcomes—in most cases, I never have the opportunity to continue the conversations that we’ve begun. Sometimes the work feels too small: how can I contemplate and address even one of the things that matters to me when all I have is a fleeting moment with a few people? But I’m reminded that I can only give my attention to one thing at a time, and that all that most of us really get is a little slice of the world in which to make a difference. I’m reminded of a quote attributed to Mother Teresa, which goes: “Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.”

However, if I think I understand why I experience my feelings of peace, I still can’t answer whether or not they’re ok. Even in voicing this question, I recognize how silly it sounds. How could it possibly not be ok for me to feel peace? I can see Jake rolling his eyes over there, and practically hear him saying “c’mon Dano, just chill out. Why do you have to over-analyze everything? Why can’t you just let it be peaceful?” But I can’t, Jake—the question keeps coming up, over and over again. Just the other evening, during a swim, as I peered across the rippling lake, surrounded and sustained by an expanse of clean water, my thoughts turned to the droughts that strike with greater intensity and frequency around the world, and that have most recently crippled parts of India and southeast Asia. I wondered with more than a bit of hopelessness, “how is it that I get to swim when so many don’t have enough to drink? How can that possibly make sense?”

It doesn’t. It can’t. I have no way to explain it. And so I turn, in my frustration, to our gospel reading for today. It’s excerpted from the Book of John, Chapter 14, during Jesus’s last meeting with the disciples before he is crucified. It seems, by all accounts, to be an exceptionally urgent, uncertain, un-peaceful moment. Jesus twice implores, “do not let your hearts be troubled,” but if you ask me, the disciples had a whole lot about which to be troubled. These people who had committed their lives to follow Jesus had just been informed that he would soon be betrayed, that he would be leaving them, and that they would probably find themselves alienated from their communities and places of worship, and maybe even killed.

And if this looming future isn’t urgent enough, Jesus begins to push a whole bunch of information at them, most of which seems unclear. I certainly don’t understand what “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may also be” means. Thomas, asking the question on everyone’s mind, says, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” And Jesus responds, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” Oh, right. Of course. No duh. Glad we’ve cleared up. Others have questions too, but Jesus dodges all of them, answering with redirection and more riddles. It’s as if Jesus himself is feeling anxious and rushed by the urgency of the situation. At this point, he’s on the clock, aware that his death is looming. He has one last opportunity to reiterate his most crucial lessons with his most important delegates, and they don’t seem to be getting it. Eventually, he punts, saying “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now,” and promises that a mysterious Advocate— a “Holy Spirit” of “truth”—will come to tell them what they need to know.

One of the few direct statements that Jesus does make in this final meeting is, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.” He repeats the message again before leaving the meeting place and going out to be crucified. Peace bookends death in this passage: later, when the risen Jesus presents himself again to the disciples, he greets them by saying “peace be with you,” and, after showing them his hands and side as proof of his identity, repeats himself: “peace be with you.”

This phrase, though used simply for greetings and goodbyes, would have had a rich, multilayered meaning for the disciples. Biblical scholar Cornelius Plantinga describes the Old Testament concept of “shalom” like this: “The webbing together of God, humans, and all creation in justice, fulfillment, and delight is what the Hebrew prophets call shalom. We call it peace but it means far more than mere peace of mind or a cease-fire between enemies. In the Bible, shalom means universal flourishing, wholeness and delight – a rich state of affairs in which natural needs are satisfied and natural gifts fruitfully employed, a state of affairs that inspires joyful wonder as its Creator and Savior opens doors and welcomes the creatures in whom they delight. Shalom, in other words, is the way things ought to be.”

He could have offered power or anger or information, but in a moment filled with urgency and gravitas, both for himself and for the disciples, Jesus proffered peace. It’s an audacious move, almost an irresponsible one. Was peace really the most logically sound thing to extend to the disciples as they prepared to carry on their political and moral work in the face of intensifying, life-threatening opposition? Maybe not. But maybe that’s the point. Peace alongside confusion—and perhaps in place of explanation. Peace that surpasses all understanding. Peace that, like the urgency that accompanies it, is divine.

A month ago, a sixth grader from Minneapolis took a canoe trip with me. He had never been camping before and he took in all of the newness quietly, standing in the back of the group with his head cocked slightly to the side. He was in my boat when we approached the first portage, and by the time I’d loaded everyone else up and sent them off, it was just me and him left, responsible for carrying a canoe and two heavy packs. When I lifted the equipment pack onto his slender shoulders and yanked the straps tight, he looked up at me, not in anger or fear, but in puzzlement, as if to ask me how I possibly thought this would work. I took the lead, and after a dozen steps, I turned around in time to see him put his left foot on the first log stair, gather himself, and attempt to take the step, the bottom of the pack bumping against his calves. Without so much as a teeter, he fell over sideways into the bushes. I put my canoe down and walked back, hauling him out of the woods by the ears of the pack. “Good stuff! Let’s give the next one a shot.” He stumbled up to the next step, lifted his other foot onto the edge, and proceeded to topple over into the woods again, this time towards the right. I helped him up the first set of stairs and then, in a rush to get off the portage, pushed on, telling him that I’d be back once I got to the other side.

I passed the rest of my trip-mates, all of them struggling, put my boat down, and went back for him. I found him about 20 yards past where we’d parted ways, on his side, mostly in the bushes, still strapped firmly into the pack. I’m not sure if he physically couldn’t get up, or if he just trusted that I was coming back. I couldn’t see his face. However, I could see the index finger of his right hand. It was poking and prodding ever-so-carefully at the base of a small ox-eye daisy. That little finger stopped me in my tracks. In the midst of a very urgent experience, on an unknown path in an unknown place, strapped into a monstrous bag that clearly weighed more than him, he’d found some peace: a thing to notice, a plant to explore. It was a hard week for him, but I kept noticing that finger. When he fell and banged his knee and curled up in the grass to cry, or when he felt so horribly homesick that he couldn’t even begin to articulate himself, the first thing that I’d see as he began to uncurl his body and rejoin the world was his finger, scratching around in the nearby grass and gravel, searching for and with a peace that is both of and beyond this Earth. In those moments, I knew that things were going to be ok.

I can’t explain whether or not I should be feeling peace. But if I can strive to ensure that my peace is not one of complacency, but of humility. If I can remember that I need to take care of myself in order to serve others, and acknowledge that all I will probably ever have is a little slice in which to make my difference. If I can recognize that this is a persistent calm that I am feeling, one that I don’t understand, but that encompasses me nonetheless. And if I can be even a fraction as graceful when I find myself pulled down in the midst of scary strangeness; if I can live into the peace that I find around and in me, extending my finger bravely to explore the unknown of the present moment, then maybe that is enough for now.

Anyone who has had a conversation with me in the last few days has probably heard me thinking out loud, often, with incredulity, and without much regard for the parameters of what we generally consider to be normal conversation, about how I can’t wrap my head around the symmetry of our reading from Exodus this morning and the news coming out of Sudan these past days and weeks.Tragically, the common thread between these two things is dead bodies in the Nile River. Yes – we are getting very serious, very quickly here. But leaning on the strength of our community and God who is the God of hope and justice, we will sit together with this difficult text buttressed against our difficult reality. And then, I hope, our community will continue the work we have already begun, which is to be the hands and feet of a God who organizes.<

For our guests who are visiting today, “God Organizes” is one of the daily themes of our programming this summer, in which our overarching theme asks campers to consider the question of “Now that we know that we don’t have to do anything at all to earn God’s favor because of God’s grace, what are we going to do?”. Our hope for this day of programming is “to understand that God equips many types of people to bring about God’s kingdom on earth, and God organizes them to work towards justice and peace. As God’s beloved, we have the privilege of taking part in this.”

Which is a lovely daily theme, right? And yet, a very reasonable person might ask what these words even mean in the face of unspeakable tragedy and violence across the globe from us. What can we do?

Which brings me back to the story of Moses’ birth in the beginning of Exodus. To set the stage before Moses was born, the Israelites were in Egypt under the rule of a Pharaoh who was literally trying to eradicate them, beginning with forcing them into slavery. Pharaoh then escalated things by commanding the midwives to kill all baby boys born to the Israelite women. The midwives ignored Pharaoh’s instructions by telling him a very good lie, which led Pharaoh to instruct all his people to throw every Hebrew baby boy into the Nile River. (As a side note, the reason that Pharaoh was particularly interested in killing boys was because the Israelites understood both their connection to their families and to their community through fathers; by killing boys, Pharaoh’s aim was to destroy the Israelites as a whole group).

Moses, who ultimately goes on to lead the Israelites out of their slavery in Egypt, should not have even been allowed to live. And this story about his birth and survival is a great illustration of how God Organizes. In fact, God starts organizing in Moses’ story before he is even born. One good sign of this is that in the story of Exodus, the first place that God is mentioned is through the context of the Hebrew midwives:  Exodus 1:17 states that “the midwives feared God.” And think about the incredible impact that the faith of these women had. It led them to work together to first of all collectively ignore the directive to kill baby boys and secondly, to come up with a united excuse as to why the babies were living (which incidentally, was that the Israelite women were so strong that the babies were already born before they had time to arrive). I have to imagine that there were more than two women involved in the care of tending to all the Israelite women giving birth, especially as the text tells us in Exodus 1:7 that “the Israelites were fruitful and prolific; they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them.” There were obviously enough of them that the Pharaoh perceived them as a significant threat to his rule. So, I think it’s safe to say that there were many women acting as midwives. And if this is so, the amount of coordination it must have taken to accomplish this level of resistance is incredible. Were they having secret midwife meetings? Did they have some kind of system like an ancient phone tree, where they planned out who would talk with who? How were they making these decisions? Did they elect leaders? Did they hold votes? Did they have a talking stick that they passed around? We may have no idea of what it actually looked like, but I feel confident in staying that they HAD to be organized to pull this off. God Organizes.

And it doesn’t stop here. Consider the women that facilitated Moses’ survival. His mother Jochebed hid him for as long as she could, and then she technically followed Pharaoh’s instructions of putting her baby boy in the Nile River but did so safely, by placing him in a basket. Then, Moses’ sister Miriam planted herself nearby the scene she surely imagined would unfold, further placing a hedge of protection around Moses. Next, Pharaoh’s daughter discovers Moses and, knowing it must be a Hebrew baby boy who should be killed, decides to rescue him anyway. And then Miriam pulls a great move; she asks the Pharaoh’s daughter whether she might want a nurse maid for Moses and then offers up Jochebed, which means that not only does Moses’ mother get to stay with him, but she is getting paid to take care of her own baby when as a slave, she should be earning nothing for her work. Considering the story of these three women, theologian Dennis Olson from Princeton Theological Seminary states, “Pharaoh allows the Hebrew girls to live; he wrongly sees them as no threat… It is a powerful cross-cultural and intergenerational alliance of three women – Moses’ Hebrew mother Jochebed (Exodus 2:1-3, 7-10; 6:20), Moses’ Hebrew sister Miriam (Exodus 2:4. 7-8; Numbers 26:59), and Pharaoh’s Egyptian daughter (Exodus 2:5-10) – who disobey Pharaoh and rescue the baby Moses. Pharaoh tries to make the Nile River, Egypt’s main source of water and life, into an instrument of death. Yet the three women allies succeed in making the river a place of rescue and life.” God Organizes.

Because I moonlight as a feminist anthropologist, this whole story brings to mind a concept coined by bell hooks in her book “From Margin to Centre” from 1984. hooks critiques the mainstream second wave feminist movement for the way in which the concerns of well-off white women are at the center, and the concerns of black women were relegated to the margins. She states, “To be in the margin is to be part of the whole but outside the main body.” hooks argues that if we want a truly and fully feminist activism, we must move the focus from the center to the margins. While hooks is talking about specific groups of people in a particular moment in American history, her frame of reference can be useful to us here today. It reminds us to pay attention to the folks whose oppressions put them out of the main focus of our stories, our attention, and our activism (or we could also say, “our organizing”). If we don’t move ourselves towards the margins, our organizing is incomplete and exclusive.

I think it’s worth mentioning that this chunk of Biblical text we are talking about covers about one and a half chapters of Moses’ story, which spans the entire 40 chapter book of Exodus and beyond. It could easily be glossed over in the entire scope of Moses’ story. But when we do pay attention, we gain so much insight. This text focuses on people who have the least amount of power in the context in which it was written: Israelite women, who live at the intersection of being women in a patriarchal system and ethnic minorities who are being enslaved by the dominant Egyptians. And it is in these women where we not only see God, but we see God organizing for peace and justice. God is with those in the margins, and it is in the margins that we see God moving God’s people towards a radical new order.

This theme of toppling oppressing regimes of power in favor of people on the margins appears elsewhere in the Bible, and is echoed in Mary’s Magnificat from our gospel reading today. Luke 1:52 says, “He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly.” Jesus similarly reiterates this theme in his Sermon on the Mount where he says “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God” (which we will hear more about on a future Sunday this summer!). He demonstrates over and over again the ways that he associates with those on the margins when he cleanses and heals, he forgives, and ultimately overcomes death on the cross.

Our theme verse for the summer from Isaiah 43 reminds us that we are redeemed, God has called us by name, and we are God’s. Nothing can separate us from God, and because of God’s immense grace, we don’t have to do anything to receive this love. So, the question I posed earlier that guides our summer theme remains: what do we do, now that we don’t have to do anything at all?

I suggest that one way we can respond is for us to try and mix up the margins and the center. And I would propose that the first step in doing this is to try and orient our attention away from the center of our society. There is a meme floating around on the internet some of you may have seen that compares the global mainstream reaction to Notre Dame burning down and the reaction to murder and violence in Sudan. After the news about Notre Dame broke, I remember seeing a wave of folks on social media sharing photos of their visits to Paris and lamenting the destruction and loss. It’s worth asking why a similar number of people don’t have photos from vacations to Sudan, or at the very least aren’t expressing similar lament, particularly when the Notre Dame fire did not result in any loss of human life whereas in Sudan the death toll is thought to be around 100 or more lives lost. It’s not hard to see which of these two world events exists in the center for our society, and which exists on the margins. Of course, we have the capacity to lament for both of these things, and many more. It’s not like we can only pay attention to one tragedy at a time. But we should be paying just as much attention to what’s happening on the margins, and that takes active work.

Because that’s where God’s organizing is happening. This is where the work of restoration and justice is happening. And if we want to be a part of it, that’s where we should be too. Just as marginalized women in Egypt in 1250 BCE were subverting the dominant power for a radical new vision of what life could be, Sudanese protesters today are fighting for a new democratic system of governance after the ousting of their authoritarian leader while being attacked by their own military forces. In the last days and weeks, it is estimated that dozens of bodies have been retrieved from the Nile River, just south of where our story in Exodus takes place. Hundreds of other civilians have been injured and raped. Let us witness and grieve these stories of violence. Because if we allow ourselves to move towards the margins, we open ourselves to a deeper understanding of how God comes to us.

And then, friends in Christ, let’s organize. How, you ask? I don’t necessarily have the answer, but during staff training, we had many, many moments where we said, “this is just the beginning of a conversation that we will continue to have.” So in that same vein I offer this as a continuing conversation starter for all of us, that we might collectively consider how we can take our gift of God’s grace out into the world and organize.

Amen