United Church of Two Harbors

Joe Leeper and Lisa Hultstrom got married at United Church on Saturday, February 17, 2007. You can see photos of their wedding here. They also took some nice pictures of the church which you can see here.

Here is some footage of people around Two Harbors digging out from and having fun in the recent big snow. The video was put together by Jay Cole's Youth Video Quest.

Jesus just won't do what he's told.

He won't hate the people the crowds want him to hate. He won't condemn the people the pharisees want him to condemn. He won't heal people on the right days. And when all is said and done, when the authorities are fed up with him and decide to kill him, he won't stay dead.

There's only one word for this kind of behavior. Jesus is ornery.

My grandmother used to call me "ornery" and I always thought it was a peculiar word. She said it with a wink that said to me, "You really frustrate me sometimes, but you're okay." She also called me a "stick in the mud" and I'm still trying to figure out what that means.

Some people are under the mistaken impression that the goal of Christianity is to make people submissive and compliant to the powers-that-be. Well, they are in good company. Great thinkers like Friedrich Nietzsche thought the same. But they couldn't be more mistaken. If following Christ means to be imitators of Christ then we submit to God's will and that alone. As such we will often find ourselves on the ornery side of the government, society, the marketplace, and, yes, religious institutions.

Wendell Berry, a good Presbyterian farmer poet from Kentucky, challenges his readers in his poem "Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front" to "practice resurrection." Not just celebrate resurrection or consider the implications of resurrection or debate the veracity of resurrection, but to practice it. What does that mean? Well, I leave the interpretation up to each reader. That's what poetry is for, to challenge and provoke. But for this reader it means to remember that death is not the final word, that we answer to a power even greater than death.

This Easter, as we celebrate Christ's victory over death, may Jesus' ornery spirit be with us.