Ringing Bells

by | Sep 1, 2026 | Pastor's Blog, Uncategorized

Friends of Faith,

We just had to “postpone” our church anniversary celebration due to the Hawk fire and it’s displacement of folks. It was a sad decision, but necessary with what the weekend brought to our area. Our main focus is praying that you all are ok, that our neighbors have what they need, and knowing that we can celebrate our ministry together when the time is right. So, please reach out to your council members with any needs at all — we are all in this together!

 

You’ll see, when we do observe the “70th Anniversary,” that we have bells to give away. As I think of that today (the Sunday we canceled services), it takes on a new meaning. See, I’ve been wanting to, one day, maybe have a church bell that we ring. You know how we ring that one inside for service to start and for us all to take our seats after sharing the Peace? Well, I was thinking of maybe a bigger one, and outside, so that not only do we know those moments, but maybe a few neighbors hear the ringing of the bells too — “Hey All! The church on the hill is at it again!”

I think it’s kind of cute, quaint, and “old-school.”

 

And with our theme for the 70th of “Proclaiming Faith Together,” a bell seemed like it just might ring right for the situation. 

 

All of that is still true and possible.

 

But now, on a Sunday we’ve postponed celebrating because we needed to make way for emergency vehicles and for people to figure out where they are going and what they can do next … it’s like the bell already takes on new meaning. 

 

And so does “Proclaiming Faith.”

 

Bells can be an alarm. Bells can make us alert and pay attention. Bells say: This is Important! 

 

And because we have ribbons tied to bells, and the ribbons read “Proclaiming Faith,”  I’m starting to see a deeper match there. The match of how proclaiming faith looks like us: Alert and Ready for one another—being available, meeting to tend to church and neighbor needs, and building the community together. And the match of how bells at an emergency draw us out, ready to assist. 

 

I saw that today, up at the church, and it was encouraging and beautiful. 

 

And you know what communities need? (Think of summer camp or holden village). 

 

A Bell. The bell rings and you are called together. The bell rings and your mind/spirit is brought to the present moment — “Oh, now is the time for …” The bell rings, and we meet. We meet to tackle what is next. 

 

And when we meet each other like this we take on the role of the Spirit that never leaves any of us alone and we become flesh and blood love to someone. Christ, in the here and now. 

 

Anyway, now you’re prepped for the bell. The bell that rings in celebration of all our church has walked through and accomplished and proclaimed throughout the years. And, the bell that continues to ring us together — for here and now — and for the ways we can be called out of the lull of society or sin or forgetfulness and be attuned to the spiritual work of caring Christian community. 

 

Let’s be listening,

 

+Pr Shaun

Set a Table in the Fierce World

by | Aug 3, 2026 | Pastor's Blog

The wildfires rage again this summer. I hope you’re staying safe and also still getting time outdoors and in nature. Amanda is continues to learn about areas of the Truckee Meadows, and it’s a bummer to have to explain some neighborhoods or towns by their proximity to certain ridge-lines of smoke.

“How close is Loyalton?” she’ll ask. And how should I respond?! “Not close enough where we have to evacuate.” But also, “Not far!” 

We’re homemaking in the wildness of fire season. Tending, untamed. 

And while that wasn’t Shaun’s idyllic song to Amanda about what life in Reno was going to hold … it feels ok because it feels true. Tending, untamed. Like naming the truth draws us closer to hope (and to each other) because of the clarity. Yes, clarity even in the smoke. 

And clarity in the wildness of God, too. Like a nature writer I like, Belden Lane, puts it: “There is an unaccountable solace that fierce landscapes offer to the soul.” 

Is this some clarity for the Kingdom of Heaven alive and in our world too?

I think maybe it is. Because, in God’s way, we are not aiming at an escape plan from the world we make together. We’re setting tables inside of this fierce world.

Take the gospel for this coming Sunday: When the disciples tell Jesus that they are in a deserted place (or, for instance, a desert landscape on fire) and they all need to go home to eat, to get respite from the harshness of where they are, Jesus doesn’t want to go away now. Instead he says: You feed these hungry people!

So, we set tables up. Jesus turns the fear and scarcity into abundance and joy. And I think the tables of our church keep aiming to do the same thing ever since. 

Faith Lutheran Church in Reno, NV celebrates 70 years this year. And we’ll celebrate together with worship and church BBQ on August 23rd! This building, and the people (who are the church) have been a table of Christ’s body in Reno long enough to have weathered fire seasons before this one, long enough to have held funerals and baptisms and every ordinary Sunday in between. 

A table of sustenance and welcome in this fierce world — that is the church. And we’re still Proclaiming Faith Together, celebrating the faithful past and serving into the fierce future. Tending, untamed, by the call of God. 

Thanks be to God for the table, for that ways that we are each served in the wildness of love, and for how Christ’s love is tending to this fierce world with his ever-present grace, even through us. 

Cheers to the years to come!,

+Pr Shaun

Pentecost Fire

by | May 29, 2026 | Pastor's Blog

Friends of Faith,

Blessed Pentecost to you all. It’s one of my favorite seasons of our life together — which probably tells you something about me. And whatever that says about me is true!

Pentecost is the feast of the Spirit who calls us together — who, as Luther’s Small Catechism puts it, doesn’t wait for us to find our way to God on our own, but instead “calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole church on earth.”

We don’t conjure the Spirit. We don’t make up the passion or mission. The Spirit conjures us. The Spirit connects us. The Spirit builds the church.

And this past Sunday the Spirit built us up by drawing on Sylvia Keesmaat’s poem “Pentecost and Fire.” I named three ways that Spirit moves among us:

The Spirit Ignites — like the bush that burned without consuming, calling Moses toward something he never would have chosen for himself. Passion that surprises us and issues freedom for the lost is a mark of the Spirit.

The Spirit Leads — like the pillar of fire that went ahead of wandering people through desert nights, making a way where there wasn’t one. You don’t have to see the whole path. Just the next lit step, and go there in trust.

The Spirit Refines — like the fire the prophets named, burning away what had grown hollow, calling the community back to itself and to God. That kind of fire is a gift, even when it stings.

I hope you felt some of that on Sunday. I hope you feel some of it now.

—————————————–

Here’s where that fire meets the ground:

Back in January, the council opened a conversation about mission — about who we are and where God might be calling us next. That conversation is still going, and this summer I want to continue it with you, one on one.

I’m setting aside time to sit down with you and do some listening into what’s next. Like: What do you love about this community? What are you hoping for? What needs do you see in Reno/Sparks? The Spirit moves through those kinds of honest conversations, and I don’t want to miss what you’re carrying.

There’s a sign-up sheet in the narthex. I hope you’ll add your name.

What is God’s Spirit up to among us — and what are we gifted to do together, here and now? We’re finding out, together. Blessed Pentecost life to you.

In fire and in faith, Pr. Shaun

Love’s Word is an Opening!

by | May 6, 2026 | Pastor's Blog

Friends of Faith,

We spent Lent and Holy Week watching.

We watched Jesus teach in life-changing ways. We watched him heal, watched people come alive around him — and watched others grow quietly, nervously afraid. His news of the new kingdom was a threat, and the people who benefit most from the “way things are always done” get anxious. Then, when people with power get anxious, they reach for their power as an answer.

But that power is not the end of the story. Even when that prideful power is our own, it is not the end of the story.

Alleluia, Christ is Risen.

What some tried to squash with death, God brings back to life. And what God reveals in that moment is that Love survives. Love exists beyond the reach of death. Love — stubborn, persistent, risen love — gets the last word.

And even that is not the end. Love’s word is an opening. It is, as Jesus had been saying all along, the new kingdom arriving. Not in power and dominance, but in resurrection and return.

In Easter sermons we’ve met a fictional detective (Doug Noir) trying to understand what has changed/opened. He keeps showing up at the scene of resurrection, notebook in hand, looking for witnesses. And what he keeps finding is that the witnesses won’t stay witnesses. (Love’s word is an opening!) The Life is afoot and changing things. Folks who may have just been watching, they are suddenly they’re in it. Spectators have become actors.

And that’s a key pattern to Easter’s real story with us:

All of us who watched from a distance, all of us who stood at the edge, or who still stand there at the edges of Christian discipleship, Easter Life draws us in. It means to make actors out of spectators, because Love’s Word is an Opening.

That’s where we are in May. Easter behind us, Pentecost ahead. We’ve been found by the story, gathered in from the edges, and now — like every witness Doug Noir has ever interviewed — we find we can’t quite stay neutral about it.

The kingdom was never just for the insiders. You are called a participant in the Love and Triumph of God’s mission.

May Easter life roll on!,

+Pr Shaun

Holy Week 2026

by | Apr 2, 2026 | Pastor's Blog

Friends of Faith, The beginning of this month is our church’s Holy Week. Think on that with me. This is the week that is set apart, claimed, distinguished, and observed. This is the “great week” of our faith. This is what we lift up high (“lift high the cross”). And what is it? What are we lifting up? The complete, unreserved self-giving of God in Jesus Christ. Feet washed. Bread broken. A life poured out. That is what holiness looks like when God shows it to us in the flesh. And what we’ll participate in during “Holy Week” is this very good news that we are always proclaiming. I like the mysterious and powerful way that our eucharistic liturgy puts it, quoting Paul from his first letter to the Corinthians: “when we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” That’s Holy Week’s proclamation and announcement: our Lord’s way is service, even of all of life! Paul’s point — and John’s foot-washing makes it unavoidable — is that “proclaiming” is not merely liturgical. It is bodily. It is social. You proclaim the Lord’s death when you take the servant’s position with someone whose feet are dirty. When you show up for the person no one else wants to deal with. When you absorb cost instead of passing it on. When you give what you have rather than protecting what you’ve earned. This is the theology of the cross lived outward. And our communion with God, our participation in Holy Week, forms us into people whose lives take on this shape— broken, poured out, given for the life of the world. I know it is a daunting calling. It’s been daunting for the church all along, and along all these sixteen centuries in which the church has labeled this week “Holy Week.” But the church will keep proclaiming it, this week and beyond, because we keep on receiving from this life-giving God. We are washed. We are fed. And so we are caught up in the contagion of all the grace we receive. We proclaim the Lord’s death, which is his way of life. That’s what all this is about. And so it must be what we are about. It is what makes any of this, or any of us with God, “holy.” Blessed Holy Week church, +Pr Shaun

Marching Around the House

by | Apr 1, 2020 | Pastor's Blog

Dear Friends,

When I was growing up I used to listen to Big John and Sparky on Saturday mornings. The musical theme for that show was “The Teddy Bears’ Picnic”. I remember hearing an invitation to get up and march around the house while that song was played. I don’t remember how many I times I actually took up that invitation. Obviously, however, I do remember the song and I do remember the invitation.
Right now we are living during some interesting times. In addition to approaching the culmination of Lent with the observation of Palm/Sunday of the Passion, Holy Week and finally Easter, we face the threat of placing one another in danger because of the highly infectious nature of the corona virus. In the face of that threat Faith has, let us say, made some “modifications” to our plans for these most important days of the Christian calendar.
With the experience of the last weeks of March behind us I believe that while we dare not gather together as is our wont, we can still gather, perhaps a bit more spiritually (!) through the use of technology. I am so surprised and pleased by the level of participation you have shown using Zoom to hold services that much of my concern about the viability of using it for the coming Sundays and Holy Week has been erased. So, that’s what we’re going to do.
Now, in that regard . . . . I bet you’re wondering about that opening paragraph. Well, here we go.
The vast majority of us grew up with the Sunday before Easter identified as Palm Sunday. You perhaps clearly remember sermons based on Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and the, apparent, victory that had been won. For reasons I don’t have space to address, by the 1970’s the name of the day changed to Sunday of the Passion. That recognition took place among all of the main denominations. With that name change a change in focus also took place so that the practice of many congregations today has the Passion according to Matthew, Mark or Luke narrated by the congregation. What happened to the triumphal entry?
It has been retained but it now is confined to the opening of the service. That juxtaposition of readings, if recognized, might assist us in experiencing, not just hearing, the whipsaw nature of that week. Jesus entered Jerusalem in an apparent political victory but by the end of the week he had been crucified among criminals. On a normal Sunday of the Passion we would have re-enacted that first Palm Sunday event. Forming in the narthex, waving the palms given to us, marching around the sanctuary and placing them in the chancel would have given way to a much more sobering set of readings, ending in the Passion narrative.
We’re still trying to figure out just how we might accomplish all of this but we’re working on it. Here’s the payoff. The opening hymn for that day is “All Glory, Laud and Honor to Thee Redeemer King”. When we get to that point I’m going to invite you to march around your home as we sing that hymn. This is your invitation to join us. You won’t be alone.
Peace, Stan