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Green Blades Preaching Roundtable

7th Sunday of Easter/Ascension Day

Year A
May 21, 2023
Deacon Colleen Bernu

Acts 1:6-14
Psalm 68:1-10, 32-35
1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11
John 17:1-11

“Norwegian folklore is rich in tales of wonderful happenings from the days of old. One of these stories tells of a young woman’s tireless search for her loved one - - of the assistance she received from two old women as well as from the East Wind, South Wind, West Wind and finally the North Wind. In the process the woman was taken over the seas and across the lands. There was a happy ending; she found her prince somewhere East o’ the Sun and West o’ the Moon…No matter where we are or how separated we have become, we must always remember that we’re family. Only indifference can obscure that knowledge. The family will remain.” -Del Matheson, “Reunion: East O’ The Sun,” 1978, p. xiii

 

 

My father’s maternal grandparents were from an island in Nordland, Norway - very near the Arctic Circle. My great-grandfather was the youngest of eight children. He was remembered as being adventurous and kind. He wrote life experiences in the form of poems and would set his poems to music in order to pass on family stories. At some point in his 20s, he heard God’s invitation to serve in rostered ministry. When he was 30-years-old, he sold his bumboat, purchased a suit, a suitcase, a Lutheran book of worship, and a first class ticket to the United States with the goal of earning enough money to return to Norway and pursue a seminary education. On May 21, 1892, he left his home island in order to see major sites on the mainland of Norway before setting sail to America. He boarded a ship named Gallia on May 26th, Ascension Day, bound for Ellis Island in New York. The Gallia skirted a hurricane the entire way. By the time my great-grandfather arrived in Lamberton, MN, on June 15th, he had a new name, a new perspective, and pennies in his pocket. Six years and four months later, his brother’s sister-in-law joined him because his bank account wasn’t growing fast enough for his return. They were married three days after she arrived. Both believed they’d return to Norway within a year or two. They had no way to know that they would never see the land they loved again.

 

I think of the story of my paternal great-grandparents every year when the Day of Ascension rolls around. I’ve always wondered why my grandfather felt so compelled to tour a land to which he believed he would soon return. His journals and letters to family are filled with stories of the twists and turns that that life took for him (and later his family). Twists and turns that eventually led them to northwest Wisconsin, living in a community of mostly Ojibwe people, on land that reminded my great-grandfather a great deal about the homeland that he could see only in his memories. He went out, to what probably felt like the end of the earth, and found a new way to connect with the people and the land. He wanted to be a pastor, and although the only vocations he ever knew were that of a farmer and a day laborer, his persistent and faithful witness eventually resulted in the planting of a Lutheran congregation in the mostly Catholic community he settled in. Years later during a conversation with Tink Tinker, Tink asked me how I became Lutheran. My answer started with, ‘my dad’s grandpa wanted to be a pastor…’

 

The story of Christ’s ascension that we read in the book of Acts is a story of near understanding (Acts 1:6), clarifications (Acts 1:7), reassurances and invitations (Acts 1:8), and new beginnings. Just when the disciples thought that their journey with Christ was over (Acts 1:10a), they were reminded that it had simply just begun (Acts 1:11). Without the ascension, the redemptive power of the resurrection could not have been realized. But God would not allow them to simply stand in place with their eyes gazing towards that which was no longer physically with them. God, through God’s representatives, redirected them, refocusing their attention from the heavens towards the land and reconnecting them to the earth through their feet as they walked back to Jerusalem in order to be witnesses there, “in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

 

Connection to land is important. We are spiritual beings living in the power of the Holy Spirit yet existing in human bodies that were derived from the land (Genesis 2:7). We need the land to remind us of who we are. We need the land to keep us humble. We are the land, and the land is us. Perhaps, this is why my great-grandparents chose to build their new home somewhere that reminded them of the place they’d left behind. Perhaps, this is why so many immigrant families relocate to places resembling their homelands. At some point, as followers of the way of Jesus, we all realize that God sends us out to be witnesses to all that God does in this world, and at the center of that witness is the liminal space between the resurrection and the ascension, the intersection of the spiritual and the temporal, the horizon line between the land and sky, that place somewhere East o’ the Sun and West o’ the Moon.

 

“No matter where we are or how separated we have become, we must always remember that we’re family. Only indifference can obscure that knowledge. The family will remain.” - Del Matheson, grandson of my paternal great-grandparents; my dad’s cousin.

Deacon Colleen Bernu
Deacon Colleen Bernu
Fond du Lac/Cloquet, MN

Colleen Bernu is a Minister of Word and Service in the ELCA where she serves as Director for Evangelical Mission and Synod Minister for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Northeastern Minnesota Synod. Colleen, a descendant first generation of the Fond Du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, lives on the Fond Du Lac Indian Reservation with her family and considers Solon Springs, Wisconsin, on the traditional lands of her Ojibwe community, home. Colleen is a former teacher and is dedicated to using her training and experience to expand diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging through a process of truth-telling that promotes the formation of a common memory so that communal healing may begin. Prior to her call to synod staff, Colleen served as mission developer for Together Here Ministries – a ministry that creates space for transformational change by engaging in learning, listening and relationship building between diverse people groups and communities within the Northeastern Minnesota Synod.

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