The world runs on contracts. Perform and you're in. Stop performing and the deal is off. Loyalty, belonging, commitment, all of it conditional. All of it fragile. All of it subject to revision. 

But the Church still knows...Covenant.

A covenant is not a contract. A contract says I will if you will. A covenant says, "I will" period. It is not held together by our faithfulness. It is held together by God's faithfulness. Hebrew has a word for that quality in God, "hesed." Steadfast faithfulness. The stubborn, unbreakable commitment woven into every promise God has ever made. It isn't easily translated into English, so different translations each take a run at it, lovingkindness, mercy, steadfast love, faithful love, and none of them quite gets all the way there. The word is simply bigger than English allows.

You can trace that covenant thread through the whole of Scripture. God made a covenant with Abraham, not because Abraham had earned it, but because God is faithful. God met Israel in the wilderness again and again, not because the deserved it, but because the covenant held. The psalmists cried out from their lowest moments and found the same thing every time. 

"Give thanks to the Lord, for God is good; for God's steadfast love endures forever." (Psalm 136:1)

And then the cross. Not a contract being settled, but a covenant being fulfilled. God entering the full brokenness of the world, defeating death itself, and refusing to let anything, not even the grave, have the final word. 

The same God. The same covenant. The same faithfulness. All the way through. 

In a cynical world that has been burned by broken promises, the Church still believes some promises don't break. Not because people are reliable. We aren't. But because God is. The covenant God made is not conditional on your performance. It does not have fine print. It does not expire. It has held every failure, every doubt, every wandering, every silence. 

This is what we carry into the world. Not a contract to perform. A covenant to rest in. 

Rest in assurance that God's steadfast love for you endures forever. 

The Church still knows...covenant. 

Peace, 
Travis Segar
Pastor for Care and Community

Image: Dramatic view of the Cliffs of Moher under an overcast sky. Pexels

The church still knows something different. Grace is the thing that makes no sense by that logic, unearned, undeserved, arriving not because you finally became the right kind of person, but because God is who God is. It doesn't wait for you to get your act together. It doesn't negotiate.

Consider the woman at the well. It's the middle of the day, and she comes alone to draw water from a well outside of town. The timing tells you something. Respectable women came in the cool of the morning, together. She comes at noon, alone, and a Jewish man is sitting there who should have nothing to say to her. But Jesus asks her for a drink, and then says something that has never quite left me, and honestly, might be my favorite verse in all of scripture: "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water." (John 4:10).

If you knew. Not if you were worthy. Not if you had it together. If you only knew what was being offered, you would have asked, and it would have been given. Grace arrives before she has done a single thing to deserve it, in the middle of her complicated life, at a well in the heat of the day. 

It's worth being clear about what grace is not, though. Grace isn't cheap and it doesn't shrug at harm or wave away the real ways we've wounded each other and ourselves. It isn't a cosmic dismissal of what's broken. Grace is costly; it moves toward the broken thing rather than away from it. But here is the mystery at the center of it: the cost is real, and it is not yours to pay. Freely given doesn't mean lightly given. 

This is what the church keeps practicing, week after week, almost without thinking about it. We pour water over an infant who has done nothing yet, nothing to earn it, nothing to lose it. We set a table and say come as you are rather than come when you're ready. We speak absolution out loud, into the air, to real people carrying real weight, not because they've suffered enough to deserve relief but because that's simply what grace does. The whole rhythm of the church is built around receiving what cannot be deserved. 

The world says, "earn it." The church says, "receive it." What it would mean to actually live inside that, to let it be true not just on Sunday, but in the ordinary middle of a Thursday, that's the question grace keeps leaving open. Not demanding an answer. Just sitting with you at the well, offering water you didn't know you could ask for. 

The church still knows. 

Peace, 
Travis Segar
Pastor for Care and Community

Image: Icon of St. Photina (the Samaritan Woman), Orthodox iconography.
Artist: Nadahnuti ikonopisac
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

We're trained to spot finality. To call it. To move on. 

What we're not good at is recognizing what isn't actually over. 

The world calls it finished. The Church has learned to hesitate before using that word.

Resurrection doesn't always look like a stone rolled away. Sometimes it looks quieter than that. 

Sometimes it's a relationship that softened after years of silence. A conversation that finally happened. Words that were said that needed saying. 

Sometimes it's someone who came back to faith, to family, to themselves after everyone assumed they were gone for good. 

Sometimes it's breath after grief. Not the absence of sorrow, but the return of something you thought grief had taken permanently. Laughter, Hope. The ability to imagine a future again. 

Sometimes it's something small refusing to die. A church that keeps gathering even when the building's half empty. A person who found themselves again after years of just going through the motions. A hope you thought you'd lost. 

Resurrection isn't always dramatic. Sometimes it's just stubborn. 

The Church has always known this. We've practices the pattern for two thousand years. 

We learned to be silent because sometimes things need to die before they can live again. We learned to lament because what's lost matters, and resurrection doesn't ease grief. We learned to confess because truth clears the ground. We learned to wait because resurrection takes time, sometimes years, sometimes generation. We learned to celebrate joy because we've seen the tomb emptied and death fail to keep what it claimed. 

We know resurrection not because we read about it, but because we've lived through everything that comes before it. The dying. The waiting. The not knowing. The moment when breath returns. 

We don't manufacture resurrection. We can't force it or schedule it or make it happen on our timeline. 

We witness it. We wait for it. Sometimes we're surprised by it. 

And because of that, we are slower to give up than the world around us. We hesitate to call things finished. We keep showing up to places others have abandoned. We keep speaking to people others have stopped talking to. 

Not because we're optimistic. But because we've seen too many un-endings to be certain about any ending. 

The Church still knows this. And we're still here, still witnessing, still waiting for what looks dead to breathe again. 

Peace,
Travis Segar
Pastor for Care and Community

Image: "The Sower" by Vincent van Gogh 

We've forgotten how to experience joy.
​
I don't mean happiness. We pursue that constantly. We optimize for it, curate it, post about it. But joy? Real, wild, uncontained joy? We've buried that somewhere along the way.

Adults have learned to control everything, including our emotions. Joy has to be respectable. Appropriate. It has to look a certain way, fit within certain bounds. We can smile, we can be pleased, but we shouldn't be too much. Too loud. Too undignified. 

And we've taught our children the same thing. Sit still. Be quiet. Use your inside voice. Don't draw attention to yourself. Contain yourself. 

Somewhere along the way, we decided that growing up meant leaving behind the wild, embodied, unconscious joy we used to know. And now we can hardly remember what it felt like. 

But the Church still knows. 

I heard a story recently about a school concert. One of the students danced through most of the performance—jumping, spinning, completely lost in the music. After the concert, someone complained. The child's behavior was inappropriate, the said. Someone should have stopped it. 

But the teacher's heart broke for a different reason: because that's what joy looks like. 

Not controlled. Not respectable. Not worried about what anyone thinks. Just pure, embodied, unconscious delight. 

That child knew something the rest of us have forgotten. Joy doesn't sit still. It doesn't perform for approval. It moves. It spins. It breaks out. 

And we've learned to shut it down. 

Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them, for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs" (Mark 10:14). And later, "Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 18:3).

The children know something we've forgotten. They haven't learned yet to be embarrassed by joy. They haven't been taught that growing up means quiet, controlled, respectable. 

Maybe they're not the ones who need to learn. Maybe they're the ones showing us the way back.

Easter joy has never been respectable. 

Mary Magdalene at the tomb, weeping one moment and then running the next to tell the disciples. The women fleeing with fear and great joy. An impossible combination that only makes sense when you've seen the impossible happen. Disciples hiding behind locked doors one moment, then bursting out into the streets the next.

This isn't controlled emotion. This isn't dignified celebration. Resurrection joy breaks out. It can't be contained. It doesn't care what it looks like. 

Easter morning should be unbridled, uncontained, ridiculous with delight. Because the news is ridiculous. Death is undone. The tomb is empty. Christ is risen.

That kind of news should make us want to dance. 

That's absurd news. Impossible news. Laugh-out-loud, spin-around, can't-contain-it news. 

Maybe joy isn't something we've matured beyond. Maybe it's something we've buried. 

And it is time to let it break out again. 

The Church still knows what joy looks like. We've seen it in children who haven't learned yet to be embarrassed. We've heard it in the Easter "alleluias" that burst out after forty days of silence. We've felt it in the moments when the good news becomes so real we can't help but move. 

Real joy spins. It jumps. It dances. It doesn't care what anyone thinks because it's caught up in something bigger than approval or respectability. 

Christ is risen. The tomb is empty. Death doesn't get the final word. 

Maybe the children are showing us the way back. Maybe it's time to let ourselves be ridiculous with joy again. 

The Church still knows this. And Easter keeps reminding us. 

Peace,
Travis Segar
Pastor for Care and Community

We are Easter people. Even when the ground below us is shaking, we will not grow weary. We know that Jesus is our foundation. Christ is risen, and that truth strengthens us. It gives us courage to live, to hope and to proclaim joy.

The Rev. Yehiel Curry
Presiding Bishop
​Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

​"I'm not a smart man, but I know what love is."
​
​Forrest Gump says it to Jenny near the end of the movie, and somehow this simple character understands something our culture has forgotten. He can't articulate complex theories about love, but he knows what it is because he's lived it. He's shown up. He's been faithful. He's served without counting the cost.

We live in a world that talks about love constantly but has largely forgotten what it actually means.

Culture sees love as a feeling. A romance. A transaction. We love people who make us happy, who meet our needs, who love us back. Love is about what we get out of it - fulfillment, validation, the right kind of attention.

"Love yourself first," the world says. Make sure you're getting what you need. Protect your peace. Set boundaries. Don't give more than you receive.

And when love gets hard? When it costs us something? When it asks more than we want to give? We leave. We move on. We find someone easier to love.

The world's version of love is conditional. Transactional. Safe. And ultimately, small.

But the Church still knows what love actually looks like.

Tonight is Maundy Thursday. The night we remember Jesus washing his disciples' feet. The night he gave them a new commandment. The night before he went to the cross.

It's one of the most important nights in the Christian calendar, and most of the world has no idea it exists.

But the Church has never forgotten. We gather. We wash feet. We break bread. We remember what Jesus showed us about love on this night - love that doesn't demand or take or protect itself, but love that kneels down and serves.

In John 13, Jesus gets down on his knees. He wraps a towel around his waist. He takes a basin of water and begins washing his disciples' feet. It’s the work of a servant, the lowest task in the household.

Peter resists. "You will never wash my feet." This isn't how it's supposed to work. Teachers don't serve students. Masters don't kneel before servants. This reverses everything.

But Jesus insists. "Unless I wash you, you have no share with me." This IS how it works. This is what love looks like.

Love serves. Love goes lower. Love kneels down and washes feet. Not because it feels good or because we'll get something in return, but because this is what love does.

After he finishes washing their feet, Jesus gives them a commandment: "Love one another as I have loved you" (John 13:34).

Not "love as much as you feel like it." Not "love when it's convenient" or "love the people who are easy to love."

Love as I have loved you. Sacrificially. Completely. To the end.

This is the standard. Not our feelings. Not what we think we can manage. Not what seems fair or reasonable. Jesus' love - the love that kneels, that serves, that goes all the way to the cross.

Tomorrow is Good Friday. The day we remember where this kind of love leads.

Jesus didn't just wash feet and call it love. He went to the cross. He gave everything. This isn't cheap sentiment or warm feelings. This is love that costs something. Love that doesn't protect itself. Love that dies so others might live.

The world's version of love says, "I'll give as long as I get something back." Jesus' love says, "I'll give everything, even if it costs me my life."

That's the love the Church has been practicing for two thousand years.

Tonight, churches around the world will wash feet. They'll kneel down in front of another person and serve them. It's awkward. Vulnerable. Countercultural. And that's exactly the point.

Some of us practice this ritual. Some of us don't. But all of us gather around the table tonight and remember: "This is my body, given for you." We break bread and remember what love actually costs.

The Church has never forgotten what love is. Not a feeling. Not a transaction. But a choice to serve, to sacrifice, to give without counting the cost.

Love goes lower. Love kneels. Love gives everything.

The world has forgotten. But the Church still knows.

And we're still practicing it, year after year, because the world desperately needs to see what real love is.

Peace,
Travis Segar
Pastor for Care and Community

​For thousands of years, humans have honored their dead through various rites and rituals.
More than 40,000 years ago, Neanderthals seem to have laid their dead to rest with flowers. Ancient Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and Norse cultures (to name but a few) all honored the dead in elaborate ways that were way beyond merely disposing of the corpse. Jews, Muslims, and Christians (the Abrahamic faiths) each honor the dead and take great pains to invoke the hope for some life with God beyond death.

All of this is ending. Death is now evermore met with denial and an effort to simply dismiss the dead from our self-centered lives.

Denny Dormody, a writer and funeral director in California, wondered in a recent USA Today article, “Why I’m standing alone at more and more graveside services. Alone. By myself. Just me and the deceased and the guys with the shovels.”  He continues, “It’s all about the D-word: "denial." Back in the day, it was the R-word: "respect." Now, why bother with the epic journey to the doom-and-gloom funeral home with your argumentative sister to organize mom’s final arrangements? Today, it’s so simple. Email. Text. Docusign. Plain. Simple. Denial! So sad.”

One of the reasons this trend is increasing at an appalling rate is the cop-out phrase, “We’re so busy.” Having a funeral is just, well, inconvenient. We have important games to attend, schedules full of concerts, recitals, tournaments, not to mention season tickets and hunting season. As Dormody writes, “Let’s wait till Aunt Sofie’s birthday, which is coming up in two months. We can all get together then and have some type of memorial. We’ll text you. So, the cremated remains sit in a faded yellow cabinet at the funeral home, or if the service involves a casket with ground burial, the deceased waits in his or her casket, shelved in the mortuary’s back room. It’s no way to treat a lady, or your cherished nana.”

If even the death of a loved one cannot alter our calendars, then the calendar is our god, and our souls are suffering a deficit.

Cremation has also altered our sense of honoring the dead in unanticipated ways. The rising U.S. cremation rate is projected to hit 82% in 2045. Let me be clear: Cremation is a perfectly acceptable way to lay our loved ones to rest for some very good reasons. That said, the “convenience” of cremation can – and often does – cause an unexpected result. Cremation can encourage postponement of dealing with death. Even worse, because the ashes can be stored anywhere, the practice can promote a sense of dismissal or disposal of the dead. It can be like taking out the trash or storing discarded items in the basement or garage instead of an honored way of returning our bodies to the dust and ashes from which we came. Dormody notes that “Instant cremations have become not a way to celebrate a life, but a way to delete one. Cherished family funeral rituals are disappearing. Like paper files. Like bank tellers. Now, after a lifetime of living, after a lifetime of changing diapers, of babysitting, of driving to games and watching graduations, moms, dads, brothers, sisters, grandparents and even friends are not given this once-essential memorial ceremony. Instead, I'm afraid they're being forgotten.”

Dismissal also becomes part of the neglected rites of burial when the family claims the life of the loved one as their “property” alone, making decisions that exclude others who loved the beloved dead. I have seen the pain and grief of church members who have lived with, loved, and shared life with someone who has died and then are excluded from any presence at a service or any opportunity to grieve. Often those church members cared for the loved one as deeply, if not more deeply, than the family who could be scattered to the four corners of the earth.

Forgotten indeed! More and more families make the conscious choice to ignore the wishes of those who have died so they can deny death and dismiss honoring them.

All of this concerns me as a pastor. My biggest concern is the way all of it stokes a lie – that we can deny death. An article in Premier Christianity addresses the danger. Denying death is not helping people deal with loss, and fewer funerals will not help with this. But this is a worrying trend. Our society is one which, as the report says, “keeps death at arm’s length and out of sight.” People no longer see the point of funeral ceremonies - especially if they are not religious - and instead choose to avoid the sadness and trauma of seeing the coffin or the curtains close. Yet alongside good community and family support, these acts have traditionally helped us face the loss and finality of death. Acceptance is the first step in the grief journey, and acknowledging sadness is necessary. Death denial does not, ultimately, help us here.

As people of Christ, we worship a God who endured death instead of denying it. As people of faith, we honor the dead as part of the communion of saints which helps us move forward in truth instead of living a lie. The death rate is one per person. We all owe God a death, as Shakespeare wrote. Only when we honor our dead, embrace our mortality, and stand open to God’s promises will we truly face death’s beloved human beings.

Pax Christi,
Tim Olson – Lead Pastor
Image by Dorothée Quennesson from Pixabay

March 4, 2026
Dear siblings in Christ,
They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation; neither shall they learn war any more (Isaiah 2:4).

In our Lenten journey, we are reminded of our dependence on God, and we are sustained by hope in the future peace God has promised. As war involving the United States, Israel and Iran intensifies and spreads, we lament how far off that promise seems. We do not know how many people have been killed, but we know the number will continue to grow. Early reports indicate that more than 100 Iranian schoolgirls and several U.S. service members are among them.

The church of Jesus Christ is called to proclaim the peace of God’s eternal reign and to work for an earthly peace here and now. The ELCA social message “Living in a Time of Terrorism” states that this earthly peace is a “precious yet fragile good.” Its existence depends on leaders who prioritize diplomacy over military engagement and deterrence over war, and on citizens who hold government accountable whenever military action is considered.

With many of you, I am distressed that a robust, public discernment through congressional authorization did not occur prior to the United States’ engagement in this war. As Lutherans, we affirm that government and the order that just laws provide are gifts of God for our safety and well-being. This war does not represent the promotion of this just order but rather its failure.
 
The costs in lives and safety of this failure will be borne by those least able to avoid it — children, families and those without the means to flee.  Its deadly toll has been, and will continue to be, paid with the lives of our neighbors, including our siblings in Christ in the Middle East.

This moment underscores the urgent need for robust, well-resourced diplomatic and humanitarian efforts. Our companions in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land have asked our church to pray fervently for peace and safety and to advocate for the dignity and security of all people. ELCA Witness in Society will continue to provide opportunities for this advocacy.

As members of the body of Christ, join me in prayerful, hopeful solidarity with our siblings and neighbors who suffer today.
Together,

• We mourn the rush to war and the combatants and noncombatants who have lost their lives.
• We yearn for creation’s fulfillment in “a new heaven and a new earth” where death and pain “will be no more” (Revelation 21:1, 4).
• We strive for justice and peace in all the earth, strengthened by faith in the crucified and risen Lord to persist.
• We trust that, through God who sustains us, our weariness and fear will not overcome us.

In Christ,
The Rev. Yehiel Curry
Presiding Bishop
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

​We're all exhausted.
Running on fumes, barely keeping up, one more thing on the to-do list that never gets done. Culture tells us to hustle harder, optimize better, rise and grind. Rest is for the weak. Productivity is a virtue.

And sometimes the Church makes it worse. We've absorbed the same messages. We spiritualize the exhaustion. We tell ourselves that serving others means ignoring our own needs, that rest is selfish, that pushing through is faithfulness. We wear our burnout like a badge of honor.

But that's not what Scripture actually teaches. And it's not what God commands.

The world has forgotten that rest isn't something you earn. And the Church has sometimes forgotten too.

But the truth is still there, woven through Scripture, built into creation itself: God commands rest. Not as a reward. But as a gift. As freedom.

God commanded rest. Not suggested it. Not recommended it for those who have the luxury. Commanded it.

Sabbath is one of the Ten Commandments, right there with "do not murder" and "do not steal." It's that important. And it's not just about taking a day off. It's about remembering that we are creatures, not machines. That we have limits, and those limits aren't a design flaw. They're part of being human.

Sabbath is both freedom and rest, and the two are inseparable. You can't have one without the other.

The Exodus version of the Sabbath command roots it in creation itself: "Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy... For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day" (Exodus 20:8-11).

God rested. Not because God was tired or needed a break, but because rest is woven into the rhythm of creation. Work and rest. Making and pausing. Six days and one day. This is how life is meant to be lived.

If even God rested, who are we to think we can keep going endlessly?

Rest isn't a selfish luxury. It's part of the fabric of existence. To refuse it is to pretend we're something we're not.

The Deuteronomy version of the command gives us a different reason: "Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day" (Deuteronomy 5:15).

You were slaves. Now you are free. And free people get to rest.

Slaves don't stop. Slaves don't have agency over their own time. Slaves push through exhaustion because they have no choice. Freedom means you get to rest. Rest is the expression of freedom.

When we refuse to rest, when we drive ourselves into the ground, when we treat our bodies and souls like they're disposable, we're choosing slavery again. Even if we're the ones cracking the whip.
​
Even Jesus withdrew. Repeatedly in the Gospels, he goes off to pray, to be alone, to eat with friends. He rests. He sleeps. He takes time away from the crowds and the demands.

This wasn't abandoning his mission. It was part of sustaining it.

If the Son of God didn't see rest as optional, why do we?

The biblical witness assumes self-care. Jesus says, "Love your neighbor as yourself" (Mark 12:31). The command assumes you have some measure of care for your own well-being. Loving self and neighbor are bound together.

Paul writes, "No one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for it" (Ephesians 5:29). Care of self is assumed as part of life.

And then there's Elijah. After his burnout moment, after he's spent and afraid and ready to give up, God doesn't tell him to push through and serve others. God sends an angel with food and insists he sleep (1 Kings 19). Before Elijah can do anything else, he needs to eat and rest. That's what God provided first.

We are creatures with needs, not machines. God does not command us to run ourselves into the ground. God commands rest. Commands Sabbath. Commands us to tend to our own lives.

The good news is that Sabbath is both for the sake of our neighbor and for our own well-being. When we rest, we're freed to love others with something real, not the thin, exhausted scraps left over after we've depleted ourselves. To pretend we don't need rest is to make ourselves into machines, and that is the very slavery from which God sets us free.

The Church still knows this. We've practiced Sabbath for thousands of years. We've held onto the rhythm of work and rest, even when the world forgot. And we're still here, still reminding each other: rest is not a sin. It's a gift. It's freedom. It's the way God made us to live.
​
Peace,
Travis Segar
Pastor for Care and Community
Image: Vincent van Gogh, Rest from Work, 1890. Public domain.