Palm Sunday

 

March 29, 2026

 

Matthew 26.14-27.66

 

+ All through Lent I have said that following Jesus is hard.

 Following him in the good times is great actually.

 But following him when things are hard and difficult is something else.

 Today we get the full gamut of what it means to follow Jesus.

 As Jesus enters Jerusalem, the people are shouting and cheering.  

 They are singing “Hosanna!”

 They wave palms.

 They celebrate Jesus as a king.

 But this is not the kind of king they expect.

 He is not a despot.

 He’s not a warmonger.

 He’s not a conceited, self-centered fool.

 He doesn’t come into Jerusalem on a proud war horse.

 He comes on a simple donkey.

 He does not come with power and weapons.

 He comes in humility and peace.

 Even at the beginning, something is different.

 From a distance, this looks like a victory parade.

 It’s easy to follow Jesus now.

 But we know where this story is going.

 The same crowd that shouts “Hosanna!” will soon turn on him.

 They will soon cry out “Crucify him!”

 Suddenly following Jesus is not so wonderful.

 And from our perspective, this turn of events can feel terrible.

 But if we are honest, it is also very human.

 We are all capable of praise and rejection, hope and fear, love and betrayal, sometimes all at once.

 Palm Sunday is not just about being the follower of Jesus observing the crowd as a spectator.

 We sometimes part of the crowd too.

 We too can turn on a dime in our emotions and reactions.

 We too can speak out of both side of our mouths.

 As for Jesus, he know when he enters Jerusalem what is going to  happen.

 He doesn’t turn away.

 He doesn’t protect himself.

 He just keeps going.

 Why?

 Because his way is not about power over others.

 His way is now about proving who he is and what he is.

 His way is not about being the most powerful, the richest, the stongest, the winner.

 His way is about love.

 A love that refuses to give up.

 Even when it is costly.

 Even when it is rejected.

 Following Jesus means following him even here, in this moment of rejected love.

 Jesus shows us a different kind of leadership---a different kind of strength.

 It’s not about domination, but rather compassion.

 It’s not about control, but rather service to others.

 It’s not about violence, but rather self-giving love.

 Jesus aligns himself with the vulnerable, the overlooked, the ones who suffer under systems of power.

 And he refuses to play the game those systems demand.

 Palm Sunday asks us a simple but hard question:

 What kind of kingdom are we looking for?

 Are we hoping for something that keeps us comfortable and in control?

 Or are we willing to follow Jesus into a way of love that disrupts injustice and stands with those who are hurting?

 This Holy Week will take us through some dark places, places we don’t want to go.

 This Holy Week will take us into places of betrayal, violence, and death.

 And following Jesus through that is the most difficult aspect of our faith.

 But this Holy Week will also show us the depth of God’s love.

 A love that does not abandon us.

 A love that walks with us into suffering.

 A love that refuses to let death have the final word.

 Following Jesus also means following him beyond the cross to that place in which we truly experience the real depths of God’s all-encompassing love.

 So today, yes,  we are waving our palms.

 But we also preparing our hearts.

 We are following Jesus, not just in celebration, but in courage.

 Not just in comfort, but in compassion.

 Not just in words, but in the way we live our lives.

 This is what truly matters.

 Blessed is the One who comes in the name of the Lord.

 Hosanna.

 Amen.

 

 

5 Lent

 

March 22, 2026

 

Ezekiel 37.1-14; John 11.1-45

 

+ This past Tuesday, my good friend Brother Benet Tvedten died.

 

It wasn’t a surprise.

 

He had been on Hospice since January.

 

And I had heard a few days before that he was nearing the end of his life.

 

But it still struck me hard.

 

I had known Brother Benet since I was 14.

 

For those of you who follow me on social media, you probably saw my post on his death on my Facebook page.

 

But for those of you who did, here it is:

 

I first got to know Benet when I was 14 years old and was curious about the Catholic Church.

 

My Lutheran parents are very wary about nuns and monks and priests and so when they came with me to visit Blue Cloud Abbey in Marvin, SD in 1984 they had no idea what to expect (neither did I for that matter).

 

Benet was the perfect monk for the occasion.

 

With his dry wit and his genuine kindness and friendliness he put my parents at ease.

 

However when it was discovered that Benet was from Casselton, ND my mother’s interest was piqued.

 

She asked if he knew her first husband Roger Gould.

 

Benet said Roger was a year ahead of him in high school.

 

My mother then said that she attended Roger’s senior prom in 1953 and stated it was “Blue Moon” themed.

 

Benet said, “I decorated that prom.”

 

They immediately became fast friends.

We soon learned that Brother Benet was born on the same day my mother was baptized.

 

Later on, in the 1990s, Benet and the community hosted the Blue Cloud Literary Festival.

 

Although I was in my 20s, the author of maybe two books of poems at the time,  I was invited to read alongside such heavy literary hitters at Bill Holm, Mark Vinz, Thom Tammaro, Al Davis, Sharon Chmielarz, Gail Rixen, Jay Meek, Jon Hassler and many others, most of whom became dear friend.

 

Benet himself was a prolific and popular writer. In addition to a wonderful novel and several published short stories, he wrote a series of popular commentaries on monastic life, including A View From the Monastery and How to Be a Monastic and Never Leave Your Day Job.

 

 

After I was ordained I went to Blue Cloud twice a year on retreat which usually entailed spending time talking with Benet about books and films and obscure church stuff.

 

After Blue Cloud closed in 2012, Benet moved to Assumption Abbey in Richardton, ND.

 

I last visited him at the nursing home in Richardton in April 2024. Although he recognized me he was often confused. He kept asking how my mother was even though I reminded every time he asked that she had died in 2018.

 

I knew when I said goodbye to him that day I would not see him again on this side of the veil.

 

On Tuesday night, Benet slipped through that veil. It was appropriate that this faithful Irish monk with a Norwegian last name died on St. Patrick’s Day. May he rest in God’s Peace

 

 

Benet was a kind of parent figure for me---someone I knew in my formative years who was always just “there.”

 

And so his absence, although expected, has been strangely difficult for me.

 

It seems strange to be in a world in which Brother Benet is not.

 

Also on Tuesday, a classmate of mine from high school died.

 

I didn’t know him well in high school, but back in 2017, though Facebook, he reached out to me.

 

He knew I had had cancer in my 30s and he had been recently diagnosed.

 

He was in Fargo for his mother’s funeral and he came over to St. Stephen’s and we had a great conversation.

 

I assumed he had been doing well, so his death came also as a kind of surprise to me.

 

I guess Lent does not help when we are walking through a season of grief.

 

And grief is certainly no stranger to me.

 

Though, I will admit, I am consistently surprised by how deeply is affects me in unexpected moments.

 

Let’s face it.

 

I do talk a lot about death.

 

How can I not?

 

It’s a big part of my job.

 

I do a lot of funerals in a year.

 

And burying people who don’t have anyone else to do their funerals or anywhere else to be buried is an important ministry we do here at St. Stephen’s.

 

So, yeah, I am going to talk about it.

 

And yeah, I am going to think about it.

 

Probably more than a living, breathing person even should.

 

But doing so doesn’t make any of this any easier.

 

And it doesn’t protect me or any of us from feeling the effects of loss.

 

But, it is important to do.

 

And especially during Lent we are all called to take our mortality into account.

 

Certainly, two of our readings for today may seem a bit morbid.

 

Theere is no doubt that they are sobering experiences just to hear.

 

They jar us and make us sit up and take notice.

 

The first, of course, is Ezekiel’s vision of the dry bones.

 

It’s a great story in this Lenten season and it speak loudly to the theme that I’ve used this Lent on our broken selves being made whole.

 

The second reading is the raising of Lazarus.

 

Both are filled with images of the dead being raised.

 

The story that probably speaks most deeply to us though is the story of Lazarus.

 

This is, weirdly, morbidly I suppose, one of my favorite scriptural stories.

 

 

Now, at first glance, both our reading from the Hebrew scriptures and our Gospel reading seem a bit morbid.

 

These are things we don’t want to think about.

 

But the fact is, we are rapidly heading toward Holy Week.

 

Next week at this time, on Palm Sunday, we will be celebrating the triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem.

 

We will be hearing the joyful cries of the crowd as he rides forth.

 

Within 11 days from now, we will hear those cries of joy turn into cries of jeering and accusation.

 

And, within no time, we will be hearing cries of despair and mourning.

 

We, as Christians who follow Jesus, will be hearing about betrayal, torture, murder and death as Jesus journeys away from us into the cold dark shadow of death.

 

These images of death we encounter in today’s readings simply help nudge us in the direction of the events toward which we are racing.

 

During Holy Week, we too will be faced with images we might find disturbing.

 

Jesus will be betrayed and abandoned by his friends and loved ones.

 

He will be tortured, mocked and whipped.

 

He will be forced to carry the very instrument of his death to the place of his execution.

 

And there he will be murdered in a very gruesome way.

 

We commemorate this every Friday evening during Lent in the Stations of the Cross we do here at St. Stephen’s.

 

Following that death, he will be buried in a tomb, much the same way his friend Lazarus was.

 

But unlike Lazarus, what happens to Jesus will take place within the three days at that time required for a soul to make a final break from the body.

 

And this brings us back to the story of Lazarus.

 

We often make the mistake, when think about the story of Lazarus, that Lazarus was resurrected.

 

The fact is, he was not resurrected.

 

In seminary, I had a professor who made very clear to us that Lazarus was not resurrected in our Gospel reading.

 

It was not resurrection because Lazarus would eventually die again.

 

He was simply brought back to life.

 

God, working through Jesus, brought Lazarus back to life.

 

He was resuscitated, shall we say.

 

So, Lazarus truly did rise from the tomb in Bethany, but he was not resurrected there.

 

He went on to live a life somewhat similar to the life he lived before.

 

(Probably a life no doubt deep affected by what happened)

 

And eventually, he died again.

 

But Resurrection is, as we no doubt know, different.

 

Resurrection is rising from death into a life that does not end.

 

Resurrection is rising from all the things we encounter in our readings for today—dry bones, tombs, decomposition and death.

 

Resurrection is rising from grief and sorrow and loss.

 

Resurrection is rising from our own broken selves into a wholeness that will never be taken away from us.

 

Resurrection is new bodies, a new understanding of everything, a new and unending life.

 

Resurrection, when it happens, cannot be undone.

 

It cannot be taken away.

 

Resurrection destroys the hold of death.

 

Resurrection destroys death.

 

And the first person to be resurrected was not Lazarus.

 

The first person to be resurrected was, of course, Jesus.

 

His resurrection is important not simply because he was the first.

 

His resurrection is important because it, in a real sense, destroys death once and for all.

 

Yes, we will all die.

 

Yes, we will go down into the grave, into that place of bones and ashes.

 

But, the resurrection of Jesus casts new light on the deaths we must die.

 

The resurrection of Jesus shows us that God will raise us from the destruction of our bodies—and our lives—into a life like the life of the resurrected Jesus.

 

We will be raised into a life that never ends, a life in which “sorrow and pain are no more, neither sighing, but life eternal,” as we celebrate in the Burial Office of the Book of Common Prayer.

 

Because Jesus died and then trampled death, God has taken away eternal death.

 

Our bodies may die, but we will rise again with Jesus into a new and awesome life.

 

So, as we move through these last days of Lent toward that long, painful week of Holy Week, we go forward knowing full well what await us on the other side of the Cross of Good Friday.

 

We go forward knowing that the glorious dawn of Easter awaits us.

 

And with it, the glory of resurrection and life everlasting awaits us as well.

 

So, let go forward.

 

Let us move toward Holy Week, rejoicing with the crowd.

 

And as the days darken and we grow weary with Jesus, let us keep focused on the Easter light that is just about to dawn on all of us.

 

 

 

Wednesday of 4 Lent

 

March 18, 2026

 

Sheyenne Crossing

West Fargo, ND

 

 

Psalm 23

 

+ Isn’t it sometimes strange the things you take for granted.

 

For me, one of the things I have long taken for granted is the 23^rd Psalm.

 

If I had a dollar for every time I have heard the 23^rd Psalm in my life, I’d be on rich priest, let me tell you.  

 

But, let’s just think about it for one moment.

 

Think about all the times you have heard, throughout your life, the 23^rd Psalm.

 

Think of all those funerals.

 

Think of all those times when you have heard it and you could recite it by heart. 

 

Or think of all those films you may have watched in which the 23^rd Psalm was recited.

 

I remember well, in the original film of In Cold Blood, how the 23^rd Psalm is read in the powerful closing scene as the murderers are hanged.

 

Or in the film Titanic, how the psalm was recited as the ship went down.

 

Or, in the great Clint Eastwood Western, Pale Rider (a film full of Christian symbolism), how there was a great dialog version of the 23^rd Psalm in which a girl whose dog was killed by marauders recites the psalm, but then responds to the verses with comments like “But I DO want” and “But I AM afraid.”

 

In fact, that dialog version from Pale Rider is what the Psalms are all about.

 

I pray the Psalms every day—at least twice a day—when I pray Morning and Evening Prayer from the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer.

 

And there are times ways in which those psalms, or other scriptures speak to where I am in my life just at that moment.

 

When you pray the psalms in such a way, day in and day out, trust me, you often find yourself in a dialog form of prayer with them.

 

We find God speaking to us, sometimes in mysterious ways, in these psalms.

 

For me, that’s the correct way to pray the psalms.

 

If the psalms aren’t used as a kind of dialog—if they don’t become our prayers—then they’re being used incorrectly.

 

But, even for me, for someone who prays the Psalms on a daily basis and has for over twenty-five years, I also have taken the 23^rd Psalm for granted.

 

Oftentimes when something becomes so ingrained into our culture, we don’t even give it a second thought.

 

We find ourselves missing its nuances, it beauties, its depths. 

 

Because it is so popular, because we have heard it so much in our lives, we really do take the 23^rd Psalm for granted.

 

We don’t really think about it and what it means.

 

So, this morning, let’s take a close look at this psalm to which we have paid so little attention.

 

We’re going to do something this morning that we haven’t done in a while, but it’s fun to do on occasion.

 

We are going to take a line-by-line look at Psalm 23.

 

So, let us take a good, in-depth look at this psalm.

 

And there’s no better to begin, than the beginning.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. 

There’s an interesting choice of words here.

Want.

I shall not be in want.

Why?

Essentially, this line is perfect, really.

Why would I need to want anything, with God as my shepherd, as the One who leads me and guides me and provides for me.

If we are being shepherded, if we are being watched over and cared for, there is no need to want to for anything.

We are provided for by our God.

We are taken care of.

And want is just not something we have.

   [The Lord]  makes me lie down in green pastures;
[you] lead me beside still waters; 
   [you] restore my soul.

So, here we have sort of this idyllic image.

Green pastures.

Still waters.

The sense here is calmness.

For all those funerals at which this psalm has been recited, this image no doubt calls to mind images of heaven.

But, for us, right now, this image is important too.

God’s presence in our lives essentially stills whatever anxieties we might have.

God, who is our shepherd, will only find the choicest places for us, the best places.

Just as we don’t want, just as we are taken care of and cared for, so we  are led to a place of safety and beauty, because God loves us just that much.

And we will be well.

[The Lord] leads me in right paths
   for [your] name’s sake. 

Again, God the Shepherd leads.

And where does God lead?

God leads us on the right path, through the right way.

But then we come across this strange wording,

For God’s name’s sake.

Again, notice at this point how often we have taken this psalm for granted.

How many times have we recited or prayed these words?

But without asking, what does that mean?

“For his name’s sake?”

Well, for us, it shows that God’s reputation is one of goodness and mercy and rightness.

For God’s Name’s sake, in this sense, means that it is God’s will, God’s purpose, God is known for doing good things for us, for leading us on those right paths.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
   I fear no evil;
for you are with me;

Those are iconic lines if there ever were any.

Now, this is not bragging mind, you, but I, for one, know what the valley of the shadow of death is.

I have been there.

I have ventured through it more than once.

I went through it when I was diagnosed with cancer.

I went through it during my various seasons of grief.

But the valley of the shadow of death is different of each us.

I remember well my mother saying that giving birth, for her, was like walking through the shadow of death.

The shadow of death for us is the darkest, most horrendous place we can think of in life.

And for us, we know that even there we are not alone.

God is with us even in that darkness, even that close to death.

And not only with us, vaguely hovering over us.

No.

God is there to support us, to hold us, to guide us forward

Hence,

   your rod and your staff—
   they comfort me. 

God’s strength holds us up and sustains us even then.

But then, we come to this strange verse,

You prepare a table before me
   in the presence of my enemies;

Didn’t I just talk about how God only leads us into places of beauty and light?

And now, here we have God preparing a table for us in the presence of our enemies.

At first glance, this seems like something horrible, like a cruel joke.

Why would God put us at a table with our enemies?

But, if you notice, there is a bit of defiance in this verse.

Go ahead and sit with your enemies, God seems to say to us.

You can’t be protected from all harm.

There are dangers out there.

There are bad things in this world.

There is a valley of the shadow of death!

There are people who don’t like us.

Yes, we may very well have real enemies.

But don’t fear, God says in this psalm.

I am with you.

And because I am, you can even sit down at the table with your enemies and you will be fine.

Even there, in the presence of our enemies,

Our heads are anointed with oil—we are blessed and consecrated by our God,

And there, at the table in the presence of our enemies, our cup overflows with God’s goodness.

Even there, we will be all right.

Because we are following the right path.

And on that path, there is goodness and mercy following us.

Not just today.

Not just tomorrow.

But all the days of our lives.

This how God rewards those of us who are faithful in our following of God.

And at the very, we know what awaits us.

We know what the ultimate goal is in following God our Shepherd.

We know where God will lead us.

God will lead us to that place in which we dwell in the house of God, our whole life long.

See, this psalm really is amazing!

No wonder this psalm has been so important to so many people over so many years.

This psalm is our psalm.

It is a wonderful microcosm of our faith journey.

And it is a beautiful reminder to us of God’s continued goodness in our lives.

So, when we are at a funeral and we hear the 23^rd Psalm or we hear it being recited in a film, or maybe when we recite it on our own when we need a bit of comfort or reassurance, let us truly hear it for what it is.

Let it speak to us anew.

And most importantly, let it be a reminder to us of God’s goodness and mercy, of God’s care for each of us.

God is our shepherd.

God leads us and guards us and guides us.

We have nothing to fear.

And, one day, we will dwell in the house of our God forever.