Introduction

This article is the August 2010 installment of my monthly message in the parish newsletter for Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb.

Message

In the Meantime

For the last year, this column has carried the title, “In the Meantime …,” offering a reminder that our time together as interim pastor and congregation is for now, for the time being, while the Holy Spirit guides the search for this parish’s new pastor.

This has been a good time for us, not in the sense that all moments have brought us joy, because we have shared many times of sorrow and struggle, but in the sense that our time together is good, meaning a gift and a blessing from God.

In fact, while the position you have invited me to assume in this community bears the label interim, every one of us is an interim minister. By that I mean that we have each received a calling from God to live by faith, to trust him for our lives, to turn to him in prayer, to practice stewardship of our blessings, to witness to others that Jesus Christ is Lord, and finally, to die in the confidence that we will share in our Lord’s resurrection. This is our calling—lived out in “many and various ways”—our calling as Christians in the meantime, for the interim.

Each of us can trace his or her path to the Christian faith to the witness and ministry of others who have come before us. They in turn received their invitation into God’s Church from still others who came before them. And in some fashion, we trust that we have touched others in ways that will lead them to faith. And so on.

The same pattern holds true for Christian congregations. The people who gathered to form Holy Cross Lutheran Church in 1966 came to this community from other congregations. This parish received support in its formative years from other parishes, which in turn traced their roots to still other parishes. And so on.

Tradition

When we think about traditions, we often recall the special foods we prepare for holidays, the order of meal and gifts and cake at family celebrations of birthdays—things like that. Sometimes, we come to think of a tradition as an unalterable practice carved in stone, because “we’ve always done it that way.” But the lively meaning of tradition is a little different. The word tradition traces its roots to some Latin words meaning “to give across,” or “to hand over.” If you picture a relay race, where the goal is not for any one person to cross the finish line, but for the team’s baton to make its way around the track and across the finish line first, then you get the gist of tradition. The point is that the baton finishes the race; no one person runs the whole race.

Racing for Christ

Our lives as Christians are part of a great relay race. We have received the baton of the faith from those who have run the race before us. We run now—strong and hard—with the best effort and strength and endurance we can muster, using the gifts and blessings from God. Someday it will be time to hand on the baton, to pass it to those who will run after us. And when we do, we pray for a clean hand-off, so that we do not drop the baton, and that our successors will run swiftly, with their eyes fixed on the finish line.

This is why we all live and work and witness in the meantime, why we are all interim ministers. It’s as the Apostle proclaims:

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverence the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:1–2)

My prayer is that we can embrace together the time God gives us, the calling to interim ministry he extends to us, and the faith he desires for us to pass on, and that we can rejoice in the blessing of sharing this race in the meantime, looking to Jesus Christ at every turn.

Blessings!

Pastor David M. Frye