September 2010: Carl Rabbe

To the membership of Trinity and Waverly Lutheran Churches:

Greetings to you all from Pennsylvania! CPE is over now, and it is time to begin my second year of semi-nary studies. Let me first extend a hearty welcome to our intentional interim, Pr. Gerald Giese. May God be with him and us as we begin this journey together.  I learned something fascinating about healing while working as a hospital chaplain over the summer. When an injury or illness brings you to your knees, it means that your body and mind could not continue as they once were. If they were, you would not have sustained the harm. You can recover and fight off the illness or repair the damage of the wound, but you will not be biologically the same exact person you once were. You may bear a scar from a cut, but that skin will be far harder to cut a second time. You may no longer have pneumonia, but your immune system will be prepared to fight it off better should it ever come back. True healing is nearly always impossible without two things – outside support and internal change. To deal with a sickness or injury often requires medicine or surgery, or even the simple support of someone to show that they care about you. It also requires that you acknowledge (consciously or not) that you cannot go on like this.

For our parish, this September begins a new era. We are committing ourselves utterly, in a unique way, to God, and taking a radical step. By entering the interim process, we are saying that we want to grow, to learn more about who we are and where God is leading us. We are admitting that we need to become different from what we are. But we are also showing that we are thinking forward. We are declaring that we want to become stronger, to improve, to be able to do better for a longer period of time.

We have turned a corner, and laid the first cobble-stone in what will become a road to healing. In welcoming Pr. Giese among us, we are welcoming some-one who cares, who wants to help us to  grow and transform. We are bringing in rock-solid outside  support.  As we take this brave step forward, let us pray for God’s blessing, using a prayer that is often used in Lutheran  churches to begin and end the day, as well as to mark significant leaps of faith:  O God, you have called your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet un-trodden, through perils unknown. Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go, but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us. Amen

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.     

Your fellow member and pilgrim,     
Carl P. Rabbe    
The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia