A Two Goal Lead is the Most Dangerous Lead...

I am sitting in a Lunds, minding my own business, sipping on a delicious hot chocolate. The place is empty. There is a line of tables to my left, I am sitting against the wall, trying to get some tax work done, some money work done and all of those things I have to do, "have to" being the operative words there. I am sitting here just getting settled when this guy walks up to the table next to me, which doesn't have a chair at it, and unloads all his stuff. He proceeds to adjust the table for some reason, moving it within a foot of me and then walks down the line of four tables, picks up a chair and drags it to the table. I guess I am exerting a safe presence at the moment... Or maybe he has something planned for us. Anyway, he breaks open his brown bag pulls out a banana, a fresh one, so it smells pretty good and a red devil cake doughnut. After this he pulls out a plastic knife and combines his fingers and knife to cut up the doughnut and chow down. ...

The Rev. Aron Kramer First Sunday After the Epiphany January 13 th , 2013 I feel like John, John the Baptist that is. I feel like John might have felt at the transitioning of his ministry into Jesus’ own. Surrounded by expectation surrounded by people who thought he was it, he was the guy. John was baptizing and healing, preaching and teaching, and had a reputation to go with it all. Then Jesus comes and you hear from John this shift, something about being unworthy, and unquenchable fire. There’s a little bitterness in there. You have to imagine, that as the heavens were torn open, and that amazing sound, or voice comes from heaven, you have to think that John was hiding in the corner thinking to himself, “Why didn’t I think of that!” Of course I am a little off, John was probably much more gracious and generous than I can imagine, after all, he is John the Baptist. So maybe it’s not so much John that I feel like, maybe I feel more like one of John’s di...

The Rev. Aron Kramer Epiphany January 6, 2013 The word 'epiphany' means 'showing' or 'shining forth.' It has to do of course, with the manifestation of God in human flesh, the revelation to the world of God’s love for all of us. It is, to put it simply, a tectonic worldview shift in our perspective of how God is at work in the world. Think about it, this God of ours has acted out of the ordinary since the very beginning. For most cultures the deity that is at the center of their religious landscape tends to burst onto the scene, kind of like Thor and Loki from the movie Avengers, and Thor. This idea of our Gods, our deities exploding into our lives is one that we embrace quite fully to this day, yet is contrary to our own biblical understanding of how God is at work in our lives and in our world. Even in our Hebrew Scriptures God never explodes on to the scene, God is always functioning behind the scenes. Ours is a God who ch...

The Rev. Aron Kramer Advent 4 December 23 rd , 2012 I began working at St. Paul’s in Duluth in July of 2000. I had been three years in Berkeley California at Church Divinity School of the Pacific, working on my Masters of Divinity. Seasons are different in California than they are here in Minnesota, and 2001 was the first Spring I had experienced since leaving for seminary in 1997. That first Spring was amazing, I realize that spring in Minnesota tends to be muddy and, for the most part, absent these days, but in 2001, I watched each bud on all the trees in town grow with possibility and purpose. I watched as the grass went from dead brown to glorious green. The earth seemed to be birthing something new in a way I had not seen before. So, one Sunday, when I was preaching, I preached about the earth seeming to be pregnant with possibility. That this spring was filled with newness, I reflected back on this text, the approach of Mary and how in Elizabe...

This sciatica, and the pain in my leg has kept me from being able to play with Eliot and Naomi for a month now. They are getting frustrated with me, saying, “Daddy, when are you going to get your leg fixed?” It is hard not to be able to be active, to feel horrible pain with every step I take or every shift I make when I am sitting down. It is even harder to watch Eliot and Naomi play in the snow and know that I can’t run and jump and throw them around right now. But on Friday, that unfortunate feeling in my soul was one that I found myself being grateful for. Because there is no way I could imagine the pain of a parent who had just lost their child in the way that 20 families lost their own children in Connecticut.  I am still numb, I am still trying to wrap my head around the idea that a young man walked into a school and killed 20 children and 7 adults. It just doesn’t make sense. Why would someone do that? Why? I don’t have the answer, and I sure as he...