A Long Obedience in the Same Direction

Sunday Sermon: Cason UMC,  November 9, 2025,  Michael Rynkiewich (sermon title is a reference to Eugene Peterson's Classic book by the same title)

You know, this spot is a dangerous place. Jesus said that it would be better for a teacher to have a millstone tied around his neck and be thrown in the sea than for him to mislead one of these little ones. Not a millstone, actually, but a ‘great millstone’. One danger is the temptation to boast. Pray for me that, if I boast, I boast about God. (Prayer)

Elizabeth Achtemeier, an Old Testament professor at Union Theological Seminary, once said in chapel at Asbury Theological Seminary, that preachers should “tell their own story, collect up the stories of the congregation, and show how both are part of God’s larger story of salvation and transformation.” Here is a short version of what God has done for me.  

I was born in 1944, in an Army Air Force convalescent hospital in Nashville, Tennessee. Incidentally, that is where Teresa is today. Not in the hospital; in Nashville.

After the war, I was raised on my grandfather’s farm in southwestern Indiana. Then after the Korean War, my father’s job took him back to Pittsburgh, where he was from. Two very different ancestries: Scots, Irish, and English Methodist farm family; and a Lithuanian Catholic immigrant family living in downtown Pittsburgh. That was my first case of culture shock because the people and language were different from the farm. Diversity of culture and language were written into my character from the beginning; the beginning of the idea that the Gospel is for people of all nations, equally. God told Abraham that he would bless him so that his descendants would be a blessing to all nations (Genesis 12:1-3).

We attended a small church plant on the south side. In 1957, at a Youth for Christ rally at Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall in downtown Pittsburgh, I responded to an altar call, walked down the aisle, and dedicated my life to Jesus. That was not the end, that was the beginning of a long journey with God. In Romans 12:2, Paul says, “Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of the mind, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.” Transformation takes time. 

After high school, I went to Bethel College in St. Paul, Minnesota. The college’s denomination was the Baptist General Conference. Only later did I discover that the denomination had recently changed its name; it had been the Swedish Baptist Conference. So, instead of playing football in high school with Stanciks and Sakaloskis, now I was playing football with Nelsons, Olsons, Petersons, and Bjorklands. Culture shock again. That was an important step along the way where I began to get an anthropological understanding of language and cultures, as well as learned to read Greek and do basic Bible study. Paul said, “I have become all things to all people whereby I might win some.” (I Corinthians 9:22)

In 1967 I married Linda Engquist from south Minneapolis. We went together to the Marshall Islands, in the middle of the Pacific, in 1969 and 1970 so I could conduct my doctoral research. There I learned to speak Marshallese and tried to understand how they held and inherited rights in land, what little land there was on a coral atoll. Culture shock, and culture appreciation again. There I began to understand how to live in community and adjust for cultural and linguistic differences. Jesus said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 22:37-40).   

I finished my PhD in 1972 at the University of Minnesota and then taught Anthropology at Macalester College for ten years. During that time, we had two children: Adam and Tanya. I taught an adult Sunday School class of about 50 people at Central Evangelical Free Church in downtown Minneapolis, and Linda and I sang in the choir. At Macalester I started a faculty Bible Study, and I just recently noticed in the 1980-81 yearbook that I identified myself as a “Jesus Freak.”  

Always wondering what more God had for us, I moved us to our farm in Indiana. There were few jobs for an Anthropologist in a rural community, so I got a job as a Grain merchandiser, buying and selling corn, beans, and wheat at a port on the Ohio River. I did that for ten years. The business world was new, but I was a trained anthropologist, and so I learned the language and the culture, and within two years was holding seminars for farmers about how to market their grain. In this new life, I taught Sunday School at my home church, Olive Chapel United Methodist Church, and I did substitute preaching for other churches. I remembered that Jesus warned that, “As for what fell among the thorns, these are the ones who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature” (Luke 8:14).

Life went well. We were the ideal family with two children, one male and one female. Then, in 1984, Linda was struck with breast cancer. Mastectomies took care of it, we thought. Then, in October of 1985, Tuesday morning about 10:00, I was talking to a farmer on the phone when the secretary said, “Dr. Vogel is on the other line.” Linda was in the hospital with a persistent cough. He said: “I have bad news. The same cancer is back, and it is infiltrating her lungs.” Suddenly, the world changes, doesn’t it?

In God’s providence, I had a friend who had become a Vice President at Deaconess Hospital the year before. We played football together at Bethel. I went to see him because it looked like Linda and I were in for multiple trips to the hospital. He prayed with me and then offered to set up VIP admissions. So began a season of hospital stays and rounds chemotherapy.

By February 1986 it was clear that the chemo was not making a dent in aggressive lung cancer. I did not want to walk through the valley of death; but that is where Linda was walking, and I would not abandon her, and God did not abandon us. We prayed, we cried, we hoped for a different outcome; but it was not to be.

By early May, breathing had become painful even with full oxygen support, so we went to the hospital for the last time. Morphine kept her sedated and calm, most of the time. I remember the evening when Linda’s parents, who had come down to stay with us during this time, brought Adam and Tanya to the hospital room for the last time.

I had been honest with them about what was happening. This time I took them aside, when we were alone in the room, and said, “I told you that, if she got worse, she could die. She is much worse, and she is going to die.” Of course, they started to cry. But then, miraculously, Linda woke from her sleep and called Adam and Tanya to her bedside. She said, “I am not angry with God, and I do not want you to be angry. I am at peace. I love you both and I always will.” That was the last she ever said to anyone.  

What a wonderful gift she gave them. A gift of faith, a gift that has lasted a lifetime. This is the gift of a mature Christian. Paul said, “So, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God. Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God, just as I try to please everyone in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage but that of many, so that they may be saved. Be imitators of me as I imitate Christ” (I Corinthians 10:31-33).

A week later, my sister Nana and her husband George were staying overnight with me in the hospital room. At 1:00 in the morning, Nana said, “Mike, her breathing is changing.” I went over and held her hand. She was slowing down, passing away. I leaned down and kissed her and began to say, “It’s all right.” If you can, release your loved one who is ready to go. “It’s all right,” I said, “Just trust in Jesus.” I repeated it a few times, and then she stopped breathing.

Years later, my brother-in-law George asked me, “Do you remember what you did when Linda died?” I said, “Yes, I told her ‘Its all right; just trust in Jesus.” “No,” he said, “do you remember what you did after she died?” I didn’t remember. He said, “You started to sing out loud.”

Then I remembered.  At 1:00 in the morning, in a quiet hospital, I sang out loud: “When peace like a river, attendeth my way. When sorrows like sea billows roll; whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say, It is well, it is well, with my soul. It is well, with my soul; it is well, it is well, with my soul.” 

About 35 years later, just a couple of years ago now, I stood in a hospital room in Pittsburgh just about midnight, holding hands with my sister Nana and her two daughters, looking down on my brother-in-law George who had just died, and we sang; “It is well with my soul.” The gifts of the Lord just keep on giving.

After Linda died, I faced some choices.  I could have become bitter and angry. Some folks do. Some even adopt this posture for the rest of their lives. Some try to make others suffer because they have suffered. Some try to get revenge on a world that has gone wrong for them. Some think that the world owes them something because they have lost someone. I guess I could have spent the rest of my life like that trying to find some satisfaction for myself.

But, it had been 30 years since I had walked down that aisle. Thirty years in which I had submitted myself to God and let the Holy Spirit teach me through Scripture and through experience what it meant to be a Christian during those days. God had not abandoned us during our most difficult time. I also had two children without a mother now. Were they not more important than any pain I may have felt? Think of others, not yourself, Jesus said. I wondered what God would do with this suffering and grief. What more did God have in store for us?

Pastor has been preaching a sermon series about things people think are in the Bible but are not. At a funeral: ‘This too shall pass’. ‘Time heals all wounds’. ‘You’ll get over it’. These do not recognize the proper place of suffering and death in a Christian’s life, as Pastor said. It is not that suffering doesn’t matter because some day it will pass away. Rather, it is that God can use that suffering to further develop our faith and character, if we let the Holy Spirit do his work.

What do we do with grief?  Suffer it, then handle it. It doesn’t go away, but we can put it in its proper place. We do not need to dwell on it. God is doing something. What is it?

Go back to my friend at the hospital and the VIP admissions. The first time we went into the hospital after that, I called Patient Relations and they sent down a young girl who said, “Hello, I’m Teresa Trapp. I’ll take you to your room.” She took us up, Linda got in bed, and then this girl did the paperwork. When she left, I said, “Well, she was pretty, wasn’t she?” and Linda said, “Oh, she was gorgeous.” I saw her a few more times, but what I didn’t know was that it was the job of the person who did the VIP admission to visit with the patient to see how they were doing. Linda and Teresa had conversations when I was not there. Of course, I'm not in charge; am I?

Patient Relations also handled bills and insurance for VIP admissions, so after Linda died, I had occasion to talk with Teresa over the phone. When the last bill was about to be paid, I thought, “I had better ask her out.” I checked with my friend first because they went to the same church. We dated through the Fall. Soon she agreed to marry an older man and take on his two teenage children. In March 1987, we were married.

Back up a little again. Three months after Linda’s death, the District Superintendent called and said, “I have a small church that has lost their pastor under difficult circumstances, and they have asked if you could be their pastor.” I prayed about it overnight and said yes. I ended up serving as their pastor for ten years.

In 1991, the District Superintendent called again and said, “I know you want to go to seminary, so if you quit your job and sell your house, I can give you a second church and a parsonage, and then you can go to seminary. Again, we prayed about it overnight, and I said yes. So, twenty years after I got my PhD I was in the classroom again, though with my background, I finished the coursework in two years. By the time I was ordained, we had a daughter, Katie, and twin sons, Jake and Joe. 

In 1996, the District Superintendent called again saying that he was going to appoint me to a large UMC church in Madison, Indiana. But, I had been working with the General Board of Global Ministries about an appointment to the Melanesian Institute in Papua New Guinea. The GBGM was slow. The DS gave me a deadline. He would call again on a certain day in November in the afternoon. On that very day, at 11:00 in the morning, the GBGM finally called and agreed to send us to Papua New Guinea.

We spent five years as missionaries there. If I preach again, you may hear more about that. We came back in 2002 and I began a term as Professor of Anthropology in the school of mission at Asbury Seminary. In 2010, I retired.

What happened to my son Adam? He went to Bethel College too. He has a wife and three children, and he is an elder in his church in St. Paul. What happened to my daughter Tanya? She went to Bethel and then to seminary. She has served for many years as a Hospice Chaplain, and lives now with her family in Duluth. She married a man whose wife died of breast cancer and left him with two children, one boy and one girl. Ironic and amazing, how the Spirit works; isn’t it?

What happened to Mike and Teresa? Well, here we are serving at Cason UMC with our younger daughter and two sons living near us. God has been good. We are lifelong Christians. I wonder what more God has in mind for us next? You gotta stay on the path to see more and more if the amazing things that God does.

(After the song and before the Benediction).

If you walk through Bellefontaine Cemetery in Mt. Vernon, Indiana, you may see a tombstone that says on the back: “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.” (Job 13:15).

If you go around to the front of the tombstone, this is what you will see.

"Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him" (Job 13: 15).

Walk around to the front, and you will see: "Linda Jean Rynkiewich, born 1947, died 1986;" along with my name on the tombstone too.