In and out of season.

Billman, Kathleen D.

When Paul Bailie submitted the thought (and heart)-provoking reflections you will read in this edition of Preaching Helps, he quipped that it was a bit of a "psychosomatic disconnect" to be sending in reflections on Advent when the temperatures were over 100 degrees. For those of us in the part of the world where we celebrate Advent and Christmas in the season one hymn-writer called "the bleak midwinter," that humorous observation may ring a bell. Perhaps it may remind us of times when we celebrated a holy day out of sync with what was happening in its season: a cold and snowy Easter, an "unseasonably" warm Christmas.

In order to participate in this edition of Preaching Helps, Pastor Bailie had to think beyond the season in which he was living and ministering, stretching to encounter and embrace God's word coming to him from a season on the far horizon. I once knew a pastor who spent a month of summer vacation reflecting on texts he would be preaching months from his vacation spot. I hope that having such a head start on some "far horizon" texts is a helpful discipline for all who undertake important opportunities to think "out of season" about the seasons of the church year. I hope it was so for Pastor Bailie, whose reflections have already been a blessing to me, and that this is true for all who read these entries in preparation for Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany.

Of course, some out-of-season moments have nothing to do with discipline, planning, or preparation. As Richard Lischer puts it so hauntingly in Stations of the Heart: Parting with a Son, you can "secretly begin to date your life from a single telephone call." (1) Your life can suddenly be discovered residing in unimagined and uncharted terrain, out of sync with all that was once planned and hoped. The texts for this season offer portraits of people confronted with earthshaking surprises or asked to prepare for them. We begin the new church year with both the reminder to get ready for the future and the reminder that there are events that may rock our anticipated futures beyond anything we could have imagined. These texts are our traveling companions in the both/and of the Christian life as both the commitment to prepare and watch and the trust that when we are in unexpected and life-altering terrain we are not alone.

Assisting us to encounter these traveling companions is a pastor who knows a considerable amount about both/and pastoral ministry. Paul Bailie is pastor of Iglesia Luterana San Lucas in Eagle Pass, Texas, a Spanish-speaking congregation near the United States-Mexico border. Perhaps the only ELCA pastor to preach in two different countries on any given Sunday, his ministry also includes Mision Luterana Cristo Rey, a preaching point in the rural outskirts of Piedras Negras, Coahuila, Mexico. A graduate of Augustana College and the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, he interned at Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church of Manhattan and previously served Amazing Grace Lutheran Church in suburban San Antonio.

"Preach the word ... in season and out of season ..." is how I first learned 2 Timothy 4:2. May God bless your preaching ministry in this holy, still-surprising season of the church year, and may your preaching deeply remind your hearers that God in Christ comes to us no matter which kind of season it is.

Kathleen D. (Kadi) Billman

Temporary Editor, Preaching Helps!