Prairie Pastoral

This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.

  • Home
  • Bio
  • Books I’m Reading
  • Good Stuff

April 14, 2025 | Leave a Comment

Heading into Holy Week. Together.

Our town’s Ministerial Association has shrunk. Many of the churches in it have shrunk. So the crowds at our Friday-night Lenten worship services have shrunk too. People usually show up to their own church when hosting, but otherwise I can pretty much predict who will be there: the small huddle ofNazarenes, the little crowd of Methodists, rarely anyone (a little embarrassingly) from my own church. I can’t quite figure that out. We may have doctrinal differences with the Catholics, for instance, but they’re the loveliest of people. Oh well.

Speaking of the Catholics, the final service before Holy Week is always at their place, and it’s always the Stations of the Cross. For the last several years, it’s been Deacon Doug leading us. Every year I overcome my Protestant uncertainty–do I really have to kneel?–and follow along. On this Friday before Good Friday, it’s become my entry into Holy Week.

The Catholic Daughters handed out the prayer guides this year, while the bell ringers warmed up. They played “Near the Cross.” I whispered along.

“In the cross, in the cross; Be my glory ever. Till my raptured soul shall find, Rest beyond the river.”

I changed the lyrics in my head, though. (I am the person who sang, “Later on, we’ll perspire as we dream by the fire,” in the second verse of “Winter Wonderland” for years.)

So, “To the cross,” I whispered Friday night, “to the cross. Be my glory ever. Till my restless soul shall find, Rest beyond the river.”

We’re headed to the cross, after all. And my soul often feels restless. Someday I’ll be raptured, but not yet. First I’ve got a class to teach and three sermons to write, so the rapturing can wait for now. Restless fits me better.

We’re headed to the cross, and there I was headed to it with my Baptist and Nazarene and Methodist and Pentecostal brothers and sisters, as it should be.

I was reminded, sitting there, of reading I’d done recently in postliberal theology (big words, sorry) and a theologian by the name of George Lindbeck in particular, who believed that our best response to Christianity’s waning hold on the ethics and imagination of society is to dig into our unique identity.We’ve got to speak our language. We’ve got to love our rituals.

But it’s not enough to do this living and speaking and loving as Presbyterians apart from Baptists apart from Catholics apart from Pentecostals. We’ve got to speak as one, just as much as we can, or our witness to and in this society gets even weaker.* In other words, occasions like a small town Lenten soup supper is a chance to say well and proudly that we’re all in this together. All of us.

And that could not be more important than this week as we’re heading into when we tell the strangest of stories about a man who was God who gave up his human life and rose again to remain God-with-us forever. 

“Because by Your cross, you have redeemed the world,” we repeated fourteen times, once at each Station. 

Those are special words for a special week, and we’re not speaking them alone.

At the end of the service, we concluded with the 15th Station of the Cross: the resurrection. Deacon Doug acknowledged it was unusual but appropriate since the 15th Station includes the reciting of the Apostles Creed, or “the creed we all share,” as he put it. He’s right. Sure, I mumbled “small case ‘c’” to myself when I affirmed my faith in the holy catholic church, but the faith that unites us–minus that difference in capitalization–is far greater than anything that divides us.

The prayer books that my husband and I received on Friday night were photocopies of the printed prayer books that some others held. The problem with our photocopied prayerbooks was that the copy machine cut off about an inch of text on every right hand page.

But the great thing was–Catholics and Protestants alike–we all did a pretty good job filling in the blanks. We know Jesus, and we know His story. The words came easy. I think George Lindbeck would have been proud. And maybe Jesus too.

To the cross, friends, to the cross, with our restless souls. Let us go.

*”George Lindbeck: Theology and the Eclessial People of Witness,” in The Trial of the Witnesses: The Rise and Decline of Postliberal Theology [Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006], 57-100.

Jesus Christ, Lent, Small town Tagged: Ecumenism, Holy Week, Jesus


March 19, 2024 | Leave a Comment

Church vs church and other contests of our own making

[from a message preached at the worship of our local Ministerial Association on March 15, 2024]

My daughter–our first born–was just a few months old when I discovered that parenthood is a competitive sport, or at least it was being treated that way by a whole lot of us.I began to see how we moms quietly pitted ourselves and our kids against each other. Whose baby walked first?  Which growth percentile is our child is?  98th percentile—that’s an A+, right?  Whose toddler had the biggest vocabulary? Who could read first?  On and on and on, and it only exploded with social media.

I got tired of it by the time my kids were in high school. I sat my kids down. I said, “Here’s the thing:  I love you, and I’m grateful for your accomplishments, really, but I am dropping out of this Facebook contest with my fellow moms to see whose kid made varsity, whose kid made the honor roll, whose kid did blah blah blah blah blah. I’ll post the big stuff. When you get into college, I’ll be all over it, but, short of that, I’m out.”

Elly gave me an understanding nod, Karl just looked confused, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

I’m not claiming innocence, only exhaustion. I was a part of it too.  [Read more…]

Church, Gospel of Luke, Lent Tagged: church, Competition, Lent


April 13, 2017 | Leave a Comment

Maundy Thursday

I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.  Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them. (John 13:15-17)

“You think you’re so high and mighty.”

Circa 1978, these were fighting words at Frances J. Warren Elementary School. I have no idea how a bunch of south side kids in Tucson, Arizona, managed to adopt a phrase that I have since learned originated in medieval England.

A kid who took charge of a game on the playground:  “You think you’re so high and mighty.”

A kid who did well on his schoolwork:  “You think you’re so high and mighty.”

A kid who maybe did have the temerity to suggest that maybe we shouldn’t be digging up the school landscaping during lunch hour:  “Oh, you just think you’re so high and mighty.”

My neighborhood was poor. Poverty made us suspicious of authority, even our own, even each other’s. And we saw its abuses behind every bush.

Certainly authority is abused. Certainly we must call it out. But certainly authority, when rightly exercised in servanthood and grace, is a gift from our Savior God.

Jesus got up from the table at which sat the men who would lead his movement after his death. He would give them his authority. These would be his leaders, and so, he said, “I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.“

The example? To kneel, to serve, to be humbled.

There’s a common misconception in the church that we are elevating ourselves by asking of ourselves, as leaders in the Body, to try our best to live holy lives. We hold ourselves accountable, so we can hold others accountable, and we expect the people of the church to do the same for us.

I don’t know how to eliminate this misconception. Maybe you don’t have to be poor to be suspicious of authority. Maybe it comes naturally to us all.

“Oh, you think you’re so high and mighty,” we hear, when in fact nothing could be further from the truth. True leaders are asked to lower themselves, to submit to one another in mutual love. That’s authority, rightly exercised, in the name of Jesus, our example.

Church, Leadership, Lent Tagged: Frances J Warren Elementary School, high-and-mighty, servanthood


Next Page »
This is the day that
the Lord has made;
let us rejoice
and be glad in it.

– Psalm 118:24
Rev. Dr. MJ Romano

Categories

  • Acts
  • Adoption
  • Advent
  • Angels
  • Bible
  • Christmas
  • Church
  • Conscience
  • Courage
  • Criticism
  • Death
  • Deception
  • Discernment
  • Discipleship
  • Election
  • Encouragement
  • Evangelism
  • Expectation
  • Family
  • Fear
  • Frustration
  • God
  • Gospel of Luke
  • Gratitude
  • Hatred
  • Hope
  • Humility
  • Jesus Christ
  • Leadership
  • Legacy
  • Lent
  • Love
  • Marriage
  • Old Testament
  • Parenting
  • Patience
  • Perseverance
  • Praise
  • Prayer
  • Predestination
  • Prejudice
  • Psalms
  • Racism
  • Remembrance
  • Repentance
  • Rest
  • Sacraments
  • Science
  • Sin
  • Small town
  • Spiritual gifts
  • Spiritual maturity
  • Suffering
  • Teenagers
  • Time
  • Trust
  • Truth
  • Uncategorized
  • Work

Connect with MJ

Subscribe to Pastor MJ's Blog

Stay up-to-date with the latest posts delivered right to your inbox.

Join 402 other subscribers

Archives

Bible Verse of the Day

Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him; do not fret when people succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes.
Psalm 37:7
DailyVerses.net
LaJunta Presbyterian Church

Copyright © 2025 Rev. Dr. MJ Romano · Site design and setup by The Design Diva · Log in