Co-missioners,
Our aim this week is to thank God yet again for our late colleague, Lori Cornell, and then to thank God all the more for the Christ whose company she was keeping when she died a month ago today.
That was on March 25. Her funeral took place on April 11 in the Seattle area. Sherman Lee, Crossings’ executive director, travelled there from St. Louis to serve as an official face and voice of Crossings, but even more to be there as a friend. Sherman was able to offer a remembrance at the event. He shared this a few days later with members of the Crossings board. One of them, newer to Crossings, suggested that we share it more widely via Thursday Theology. So here it is.
But first a dose of Easter—or a double-dollop, as one could also put it. It’s lifted from one of the little gems that are tucked away in our Crossings website. This one was written thirty-six years ago by Robert W. Bertram, the teacher of teachers who did more than anyone to shape Lori as a pastoral theologian who knows the Gospel and tells it well. Aside from being one of the best U.S. Lutheran theologians of his day, Bertram was a wordsmith extraordinaire. He loved to make words dance. He did this a lot for Crossings in its early days as he wrote and edited the newsletter. He liked using the word CROSSINGS as an organizing acrostic for his quarterly output. The piece I found on our website is an abridgement of Bob’s work for the Easter 1990 newsletter. Entitled “Do Not Cling to Me,” it’s a meditation on the encounter between Mary Magdalene and the risen Jesus in John 20.
And wouldn’t you know, this is the very passage Lori addressed in her final Crossings text study for Easter Sunday. It first appeared in 2023. We published it a second time for Easter Sunday this year. It most certainly merits another look.
As for Bob’s 1990 reflection Lori would be the first to urge a very close reading if Easter refreshment is something you need this week. Here’s a drop to get you started—
What [Jesus] is saying to Mary is, Do not hold onto me…yet, “because I have not yet ascended to the Father.” His glorification was almost completed but not quite. Now, at this last moment, was no time to hold him back. Not only for his sake but for Mary’s as well. There would soon be time for real clinging, quite bodily clinging. But to cling now, just short of the finish, would be settling for less than the whole resurrection. To cling to only this much Christ was premature, static cling. The risen One was finally out of the woods and on the home stretch, precisely for his clingers. They must not stop him now, so close to home.
And again, since yesterday was Earth Day and next to no one would have thought to read the themes of the day through an Easter lens, here’s Bob’s Dollop #2 (again, I imagine Lori being thrilled that you get to see it)—
G is for Geo-phile, which means Earth-lover.
G could as well stand for God, the original Geophile, who, as the evangelist says, “so loved the world.” This year, 1990, the world celebrates Earth Day in the same season that Christians celebrate Easter. That figures. For a God who not only creates earth but whose only-begotten becomes an earthling personally and bodily, sharing the earth’s curse and death and surviving it still an earthling and still God, and all in order to nurse the poor earth back to health on his own flesh and blood – such a God must surely qualify as one tough environmentalist.
Not only ought we follow suit with godlike love of the environment, as if we were the center and everything else were our surroundings. No, we are the environment. To God, we are, who is the center around whom we gather, we and the sun and moon, the dew and frost, the lightning ad clouds, the beasts and cattle, the whales and all who move in the waters. Then why do we prefer to distance ourselves from the rest of God’s environment? Is it merely because we are self-centered? Isn’t it rather that we are self- centered because, as Walker Percy puts it, we feel “lost in the cosmos” and so feel threatened by the rest of creation? Yet isn’t that also why the Creator, the very Centre of all, moved in with us, at home in our flesh, Christ the earthling? Ever since, any home of his is home for us.
Thus Bob Bertram. Again, “Do Not Cling To Me.” And with that, I hand you on to Sherman.
Peace and Joy,
Jerry Burce, Co-editor
for the Crossings Community
___________________________________________________________________________
A Remembrance of Lori Cornell
“Lori, do you have 5–10 more minutes?” is something I often asked at the close of a Crossings video meeting. More often than not she said yes—and I think she eventually baked a little extra time into her calendar in anticipation.
That kind act of being proactively available, and of patiently taking whatever questions I had, may be the most Lori thing ever. From reading messages on CaringBridge and talking with others at Crossings, it’s clear that Lori had a remarkable gift. She didn’t just help, support, and guide; she listened—deeply. She was one of those rare people who made you feel seen, because with her you felt like the only other person in the room. She was fully present, whether in a personal conversation, a meeting, or presenting at a conference.
Lori once wrote and delivered a brilliant Crossings conference presentation on one of the hardest topics imaginable: how to share something as heady as “systematic theology through a Law and Gospel lens” in a way that both newcomers and seasoned veterans could appreciate. Her writing was clever, insightful, playful, and inviting. This was something she deeply appreciated in her mentor, Robert W. Bertram (who was also one of mine), and something she shared generously through her weekly editing of Crossings text study writers for nearly two decades.
Her writing—and her preaching—were also fearless. Not that she never felt fear. Rather, she did not have fear. No matter how difficult the text or the context—such as funeral sermons—Lori trusted fully in Jesus on the cross and in his resurrection. She leaned completely into that trust and invited us along, so that we, too, could “fear not,” knowing the price of our fear was already paid. It’s no small coincidence that I’ve heard more of Lori’s sermons than those of anyone outside my home congregation—all because I once listened to one of her funeral sermons on YouTube, and the algorithm faithfully let me know whenever new sermons appeared.
Lori, Chris Repp (a pastor and Crossings board member), and I were born within six months of each other. I had a romanticized notion that the three of us would co-lead a half-generation within Crossings. By the time I was ready to share that thought with Lori, she had announced her cancer diagnosis. That diagnosis—and her recent death—hit me hard, and I grieved deeply.
Over time, though, I began to notice hopeful things. I remembered how many of her sermons I had heard. And from the co-leadership perspective, I realized how much time Lori and I had spent together early in the pandemic, collaborating on a grant request to the Lilly Endowment. That grant was declined—not surprising for a first-time request—but the collaboration itself bore fruit a few years later with another foundation.
In 2023, the Neeb Family Foundation told us that additional funds were available and encouraged us to submit a proposal quickly if we had a worthy project. The challenge was that the deadline was less than a week away. I drafted a proposal, submitted it, and within another week it was approved.
That project is now in its fourth cohort: the Preaching Mentoring Program, which pairs young preachers with seasoned veterans for a semester of individualized mentoring and culminates in participation at the annual Crossings Conference. Lori served as a mentor this past year, and what a joy it was to see her there. Because her board service brought her to St. Louis twice a year, every visit after her diagnosis felt like icing on the cake.
The Preaching Mentoring Program has become one of the most successful initiatives Crossings has ever undertaken. Former participants have gone on to chair the conference planning task force, serve on committees, and one has even joined the board. In quiet, faithful ways, a new generation of Crossings leaders is being formed.
And here’s the best part: the original idea for the preaching program was one that Lori and I had brainstormed for the Lilly grant. At the time, we could submit only one proposal, and this second idea had to be set aside. Because that idea had been so carefully nurtured, I was able to submit it quickly to the Neeb Family Foundation—without even asking Lori to proofread it, as she had just received her diagnosis.
It wasn’t until after Lori died that I recognized this full chronology, and how the Holy Spirit had been guiding it all. Lori did co-lead the next generation of Crossings leaders after all. I am profoundly grateful for every one of those extra minutes she gave me.
A final note, inspired by our mentor Robert (Bob) W. Bertram. Bob was deeply attentive to words and meaning, and he often respelled “glory” as “Glow‑ry”—the love of God shining for the whole world to see. Bob and Lori both delighted in good wordplay, and so, in that spirit, I offer this: You cannot spell “Glorious” without “Lori.” God’s blessings, comfort, and love to Lori and her family, as we learn to see the world with glorious eyes.
Sherman Lee
Executive Director
The Crossings Community
