Vicar Karla Leitzman
Preaching Text: Romans 8:26-39
I graduated from Gustavus in 2013, so 15 years after the devastating tornado that tore through St. Peter, MN, destroying many campus buildings and homes in the community. But, because my parents are also Gustavus alumni and dedicated volunteers, I grew up being on campus for lots of events. It’s where I was baptized as an infant, though I have no memory of that occasion beyond being told that I cried the whole time. I do have memories of the big trees on campus that are no more, though smaller and newer trees have been growing in their places in the 28 years since the devastation. I remember being a child and getting dropped off at my grandparents’ house for a few days so my parents could join the hoards of alumni, friends, and community members who were flocking to campus and the town to help clean up.
My mom told me a story of being in Christ Chapel in the center of campus where everyone gathered to pray and share community together after the tornado. At one point, the then president of the college, said to the crowd assembled that the tornado was an act of God. Right next to my mom, the now late Reverent Richard Elvee, longtime beloved chaplain of the College exclaimed, “no, you fool, the tornado wasn’t an act of God, but how we respond to it is.” And even though I was not in attendance for this, I frequently find myself reflecting on it, especially in light of how we navigate an increasingly tumultuous and divided world, where natural disasters increase in number and severity around us, where our neighbors suffer. It can be so easy to look around and wonder, where in the world is God in all of this pain and suffering. If you look at the data, people struggling to understand how or if God moves in the midst of so much pain and grief is one of the top reasons people choose to not be part of a faith or worshipping community.
We don’t have to look too far to hear people, many of whom carry theological or spiritual authority, proclaim that suffering comes from God, that God uses suffering to teach us. Now, I’m not saying that people can’t or shouldn’t learn or grow from the challenging situations they navigate, but when we dole out proclamations like that, there is a whole lot of harm that can happen. Of course, for many of us throughout our lives, we have probably been told that God has a reason for everything and that suffering is doled out to teach lessons. When we go through suffering, it’s so easy to proclaim, “why me, God?” “What did I do wrong?” When someone we love goes through pain or trauma, we can wonder how on Earth God could possibly allow such things to happen. This is all, indeed, some of the most charged wrestling we do as people of faith.
And so I find myself coming back to a place where I actually never was where the response to a terrible natural disaster is not that the tornado itself was the act of a vengeful or angry god, but that the response to the devastation was the work of a god who guides God’s beloved children to show up when neighbors are hurting. And in the aftermath of that destruction, neighbors showed up. When the catholic church was being rebuilt, First Lutheran opened that worshipping community to use their building. They even changed their sign to read First Lutheran Catholic Church of St. Peter. Neighbors moved in with neighbors as homes were rebuilt. Students walked through town cleaning up debris without being asked.
Not that long ago, I decided to google myself to see what would come up. And to my surprise, I found a video posted by the ELCA….. of me talking. There I was in my home office, and I completely forgot that I made this video Back in 2021, when I was about to begin seminary, I applied for and received the ELCA Fund for Leaders scholarship, and it was only after I learned I’d been selected that I realized it’s actually a fairly prestigious scholarship and that I should talk about it, but my Lutheran Scandinavian sensibilities don’t lend themselves to that. I’m guessing that the ELCA asked me to reflect on why I was choosing to go to seminary. And in this video I don’t remember recording, I actually talked about how we are not promised easy days, or days without pain. We are not promised days of certainty. But, we are promised God’s grace, and we are promised God’s grace and that very often that presence and grace is made known to us through others.
In this video, since it was 2021, I referenced the beginning of the pandemic and one of the first Sundays that we found ourselves worshipping at home. Before we figured out zoom and virtual worship, my pastor at the time would send out a recording for us to watch on Sunday mornings. Pastor Carol talked about how God’s people have always been way finders, always been surprised by the intercession of the Holy Spirit in places we frequently don’t expect to look or even want to look. Fast forward to 2026, I admittedly don’t really remember making that video for the ELCA, but I do remember that early musing from Pastor Carol on being surprised by God. In those early days of the pandemic, we had no idea what we were doing, how we were going to do church. And yet, God showed up, the spirit interceded for us to move through us even though we were not in close proximity. Those days of worshipping at home, once we figured out how to do church on zoom, was actually a time when I felt the most connected to my worshipping community. I loved our coffee hours after church at home. We’d fill our coffee cups and then whoever was doing tech support for the day would put us all into random breakout rooms to visit and reflect on a prompt or a question pertaining to the lessons of the day. It was beautiful to slow down and it was quite the welcome change of pace from the oftentimes frenzied coffee hours of “normal times” when it was easy to grab your coffee after the service, talk to the same people, or move through the proverbial check list of people I needed to talk to about various things. God surprised me, and the intercession of the spirit surprised me. Finding this video that I forgot I made caused me this week to do some reflecting on our roles as wayfinders. It might be tempting to fondly look to the past for times when we thought things were simple or easy. But the reality is that we’ve always been surprised to find God present in the strangest or most unexpected places.
May we continue to look for the wonder and mystery of God’s movement. And may we ask God to send the Holy Spirit to move through us so that we might be the intercession and answer to the prayers of our neighbors.
Amen