Lisa Geiger, a Virginia Synod Candidate for the Ministry of Word and Service, has accepted a call from the Virginia Synod Council to serve as the Virginia Synod Candidacy Process Administrator. Lisa will be consecrated as a Deacon in the Ministry of Word and Service on Sunday, May 6, at 3:00 PM, at St. Michael Lutheran Church in Virginia Beach. Bishop Humphrey will preside at the consecration, and Pastor Stephen Bohannon will preach.

Through her gifts of organization and administration, Deacon Geiger will provide Christ-like service to candidates and to the Candidacy Committee, as well as to those just beginning to discern God’s call. She will provide administrative oversight to the candidacy process in Virginia, assist the Candidacy Committee in their important work, and provide care and support for ministry candidates as they navigate the often-complicated candidacy process. Deacon Geiger has served as the Church Operations Manager at First Lutheran Church, Norfolk, since December 2015. She will remain at First, Norfolk, in addition to her responsibilities to the Virginia Synod Office of the Bishop.

Deacon Geiger is passionate about helping others see why Jesus matters, and is an advocate for scriptural and theological education. Since 2011, she has been an Adjunct Religion Instructor for Saint Leo University’s Center for Online Education. She is committed to finding innovative and streamlined ways to do the “work at hand” so that more space can be created for ministry development and reflection. She is also deeply committed to our Synod, the ELCA, and our ecumenical and interfaith partnerships.

I believe Deacon Geiger offers wonderful complementary skills, perspective, and experiences that will significantly expand and enhance our mission and ministry in the Virginia Synod, ELCA.

Peace +

Bishop Bob Humphrey

There are many ways to observe Holy Week—Tenebrae, foot washing, Adoration of the Cross, fasting, stripping of the altar, vigils, etc—and will all of those extra worship services and activities, most congregations require the most extra volunteers during Holy Week. However, not everyone feels gifted in areas such as music and public speaking, and so they refrain from volunteering. But there are many more ways to contribute to worship, study, and devotion during Holy Week than just leading worship.

This is one of the reasons that this year, the people of Grace Lutheran Church in Chesapeake joined together to create a set of Scriptural Stations of the Cross. At Grace, 17 artists used various mediums to produce a stunning set of 14 stations for Holy Week and the 15th station (The Resurrection), which will be displayed on Easter. In doing so, the community gets to appreciate the God-given gifts that flow through the people of Grace that we do not always get to see in worship.

To watch Bishop Eaton's Easter message, click here.

It all started with such promise – the angel announcing to Mary that the child she would bear would be called Son of the Most High; the conviction of Mary that this child would be the embodiment of God’s promised justice, that the hungry would be filled with good things and the rich sent away empty; angels announcing his birth; thousands being fed; the sick healed; the dead raised.

And then, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” It was over. The world hadn’t changed. Might still made right. How ridiculously naïve to believe that any reversal of the old order could come about. Hope is for the gullible. Looking at this broken man hanging utterly helpless, naked and broken on a cross, the powers and principalities, earthly and spiritual, death and the devil must have said, “You fool.”

This, as St. Paul reminds us, is the wisdom of the world. And the world can present plenty of hard evidence that it is right: children killing children in horrific school shootings, 60 million displaced people – all of this supported by our rebellion against God, our idolatrous claim that we are in control and the world is ours. In the face of this and all of the suffering others cause and we cause others, we, too, might cry out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

I believe that the beginning of Psalm 22 expresses the anguish of the psalmist and the anguish of our Lord, but there is more going on here. Citing the first words of a text was, in the tradition of the time, a way of identifying an entire passage. The psalm ends this way: “All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord; and all the families of the nations shall worship before him. … Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord, and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, saying that he has done it.” This is the wisdom of God. Jesus’ crucifixion is the death of our death. His innocent suffering has reconciled all of creation to God. He has done it. We stake our lives on this.

This year, Easter falls on April 1. We shall have come through the Lenten desert to the Easter garden. We shall say, “Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Alleluia!” And we shall confess this and live this in the face of worldly wisdom that is based on death. Life wins. Love wins. And if the world wants to call us April fools, we are glad to claim that title.

The Rev. Elizabeth A. Eaton

Presiding Bishop, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

All job postings can also be found online at  www.vasynod.org/job-opportunities. If you have a position opening you would like posted, please email Emily Pilat at  [email protected].