Be patient, therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Lord. – James 5:7

To Those Who Await Immanuel,

As we begin December the pace of our community life and our personal lives gets turned up a notch.  There’s always more going on that we can reasonably expect to be a part of!  The modern world has done everything in its power to make the countdown to Christmas into a frenetic free-for-all, coaxing us on hectic shopping outings, sowing the seeds of unreasonable expectation, encouraging us to believe that material goods can satisfy spiritual hungers.  Infused in all this in times of economic stress is the sense that we’ll never reach these expectations or match our experiences of the past.

News out of Portland last week of the foiled plot of a radicalized young Somali immigrant to detonate a bomb at Portland’s annual Christmas Tree lighting event adds an additional layer of fear to the season this year.  And as conflicts continue unabated around the world, and the enormous costs of war—by every measure—continue to rise, there is a mounting sense of the intractability of the challenges facing our nation and world.  Oh! That God would hasten the day when swords are beaten into plowshares and nations study war no more! (Isaiah 2:4)

Where is the antidote to this death-dealing mixture of consumerism, fear, and longing to be found?  The response to this question, for people of faith, begins with our worship life during Advent.  Gathering under the promises of God in Christ, we are summoned to hear God’s word of hope and then to act as people possessed by that hope.  Good hymnody helps us get there. One of the newer Advent hymns to which I’m drawn speaks honestly and powerfully about our human experience and the promise which keeps hope alive.  Written by William Gay, it reads:[1]

That “YET” at the beginning of the third verse is the fulcrum upon which our life as people of faith turns; that “YET” is Christ. The world tells us that the present, as uncertain as it is, is more certain than the future; that the future is up for grabs; therefore, get all you can while the getting’s good.  But the revelation of God in the Scriptures is that the future is held firmly in the grasp of the Lord of Love!  Because this is so, we can live each day of the volatile present time fully and confidently in the light of Christ’s coming reign.  Placing our trust in the God who owns the future, we find our present, too, transformed; tentativeness and fear are transmuted into confidence, peace, and joy.  Being grounded in such hope as this is the only real antidote to today’s anxieties and compulsions.

As we make and carry out holiday plans and gather with family and special friends, let us choose to keep Christ at the center of our Christmas celebrations, our eyes ever drawn to the mystery and wonder of the holy Child within the manger—God with us—now, and to the end of the ages.

Your servant in hope,

Pastor Erik

[1] Text: William Gray, alt. Music: Annabeth Gay © 1971 United Church Press.  Published in With One Voice, (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1995) hymn #628.

Beloved of God,

Daylight is growing more precious these days, as the time of the sun’s setting slips before 6pm and the sun’s angle continues its slow descent.  No more cycling after supper; no more evening walks at sunset.  One month ago the sun’s arc here rose to 39˚above the horizon; now its position is 29˚, halfway to the low point of 19˚ it will achieve on the winter solstice.  On November 7th, All Saints Sunday (and the end of daylight savings time), we’ll lose an hour’s light in one fell swoop.  It always feels like a descent to me, this movement into darkness, accentuated this year by the forecast of an El Niña winter, with plenty of lowland rain and mountain snow.  It was in large part for this reason that our gas fireplace was recently repaired.  When, in the wake of storms, the outages come, we’ll have a place of warmth to huddle around.

As a young man in Minnesota, I loved venturing out during the wildest storms Mother Nature could conjure.  Bundled in robust clothing, I trekked into the gaping maw of the beast, awed and exhilarated as the storm propelled me into the experience its dark fury.  After such a foray, returning to the light and warmth of home and hearth was a revelation.  Ah!  What grace!  What wonder!  What gratitude!  Little did I know that the vocation for which God was preparing me would lead me to traverse some of the most sublime and tortured territory of the human soul.

In his potent little book, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Life of Vocation, Parker Palmer writes:

Palmer has the Scriptures on his side.  One of the blessings of our faith tradition is the wisdom our spiritual ancestors expressed in not removing or sanitizing experiences of the dark side from the stories they preserved and passed on to us, but including them, so they can stand as markers for us as we, too, embark on this “journey toward joining the human race.” 

In the dwindling light of November we mark two feast days: All Saints Sunday, in which we recall the legacy of folks—some of whom we know—who kept the faith often through dark and turbulent times and often despite their own failures and misgivings; and Christ the King Sunday.  Ironically, the gospel text which founds our faith in Christ’s reign is the scene of Jesus’ crucifixion.  Suspended helplessly between heaven and earth, suffering, bleeding, suffocating; surrounded by mockers who can’t get enough of this comeuppance, Jesus is the antithesis of a king. Yet, even as hope vanishes and darkness descends, Jesus speaks “promise” to the shadowy criminal whose life, like his own, is about to meet an ignoble end.  “Today,” Jesus promises, “you will be with me in Paradise.” [Luke 22:43]

We don’t know much about the life of Jesus prior to his baptism and the beginning of his public ministry, but I can well imagine a young man who, like young people before him and since, had to come to terms with the “shadowy parts” of his life before he could come to that “center, full of light,” which was his true vocation. 

The One we worship as King did not count equality with God as something to be exploited but emptied himself, even to the point of death on a cross.  He has experienced human darkness in its fiercest forms.  Whatever shadows and dark places we have or will endure, we can be confident he has been there before us and will go there with us once again—to hell and back.  We do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in our hearts. 

Blessings on the way,

Pastor Erik

And the Lord said…will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night?  Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to him.  And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth? ~ Luke 18:6-8

How hard it is to offer an unequivocal YES! to God’s invitation to entrust our lives completely to him, to being Christ to our neighbor, to being the light on the hill. We like to keep our options open; to have an escape route ready in case things don’t work out.  We prefer to wait until all the data is in before we plant our feet and say “Here I stand.” The problem, of course, is that the data is never all in.  And so our “maybe” becomes “never.”

This month, on October 17th, we have an opportunity to say YES! to God and neighbor by becoming participants in Bread for the World’s Offering of Letters campaign.  Annually, the Bread for the World organization invites individuals, congregations and organizations to join together as advocates on a particular hunger related issue that impacts people in this country and around the world.  Folks are encouraged to exercise their faith and their citizenship by authoring letters to their congressional delegation in support of specific legislative initiatives.

This year the issue is taxes. (Yes, taxes.)  Specifically, changes in tax policies that address the growing poverty in the United States.  Nearly one in four children lives in a family that struggles to get enough to eat.  Because of rising unemployment, a record number of Americans are receiving help from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly called food stamps).  But in spite of this, for most families, food stamps provide only enough food to get through the first three weeks of the month. Too often, parents must choose between paying the rent and providing food for their children.  That’s why Bread for the World is urging Congress to protect and strengthen the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit. These tax credits are critical to helping families make ends meet, but they will expire this year.

Throughout the fall in the First Lessons in worship we have heard in the voices of the prophets God’s advocacy on behalf of the poor and vulnerable and God’s dismay over those who neglect them or bring them harm.  On October 17th, we will have the opportunity to educate ourselves about a specific issue, and then take action by putting pen to paper in a fundamental exercise of the rights and privileges of citizenship.  This is a first of us at Peace; an idea which grew out of the joint Peace/Calvary women’s retreat of last spring.  What a great opportunity to teach the next generations how to find and use their voices for the sake of our neighbors near and far.  I hope you’ll join us that day, beginning with an intergenerational gathering at 9:15 am in the fellowship hall.

Brueggemann’s prayer concludes:

Amen indeed!

Beloved,

As I write to you this first day of September, news of two deaths is reverberating within me:  the death last week of a spiritual mentor, Bill Smith of Luther Seminary, and the death of Peace member Ken Nordsletten early this morning.

I met Bill my senior year at seminary when I enrolled in his pastoral care class.  He was the only professor I’ve ever had who gave away his power by handing out his complete lecture notes so we could be freed up from note-taking and pay attention at the deeper level to what he was trying to teach us.  Outside of class Bill met with us in small groups to introduce us to a way of praying that could undergird our lives and ministries.  For years Bill and his wife Anita would rise early and after sharing the Eucharist together would recall the names of all Bill’s students—both past and current—looking with Christ at each of them and their families and interceding for them as a way to enter each day.  Bill has been a spiritual anchor for me through difficult times and a man who embodied God’s grace more fully than any one else I have known.  The intercessory version of the Lord’s Prayer he taught attends all my prayers for you, dear friends.  Bill’s humble, compassionate approach to life has touched the lives of generations of seminarians and church leaders.  Soli Deo Gloria!

Our brother Ken Nordsletten left us so quickly—his quiet, steady, and faithful presence at Peace will be missed greatly!  We extend our love and care to Marge and Ken’s family.  Never comfortable in the limelight, Ken was nonetheless involved in significant ways in ministry at Peace and in the larger community—particularly through the Millionair Club.  When I found out about his talent with wood, he became a “go-to” guy on various projects, including, in recent years, the candle boxes we use regularly in worship; the two credence tables which hold our communion elements each week and are used for baptisms and memorial services; the Fair Trade products shelf, and most recently the library cart which keeps our church library circulating.  All these were projects Ken undertook willingly at the request of myself and others. But the Psalmodikan, which resides in the glass case in the narthex, was Ken’s idea.  (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, find it in the narthex and read about this unique instrument and the place it held in worship for a generation of Christians.) He thought that even while the church continued to evolve new modes of worship and liturgy, we ought to maintain a connection to our heritage.

After learning about his terminal condition less than two weeks ago, Ken arrived quickly at the place where he could say: I’m ready to go…God’s will be done. He looked forward to his reunions with loved ones and his Lord. Would that all of us receive the gift of such a confident faith in the Word and promises of God! When we celebrated Holy Communion in the hospital for what became his final time I used the home communion kit he was commissioned by my wife Chris to make for me.

Danish hymnwriter Nikolai Grundtvig, whose life is commemorated on September 2, wrote hymns which have shaped the faith life of Christians for over a century: Built on a Rock, O Day Full of Grace, Bright & Glorious is the Sky, are among them.  The single stanza of his hymn God’s Word is Our Great Heritage (above) is a bold affirmation of faith in the one thing that will outlive all our earthly lives: the Word of God.  As we begin a new fall let us re-center our lives around the “life that truly is life,” celebrating with joy lives of faith which have shaped our own, and the opportunities we have been given to share Christ Jesus, God’s living Word, with the world.

Your fellow servant,

Pastor Erik

INTERCESSORY LORD’S PRAYER

Fellow Earthkeepers,

I first learned the verses above as a sung table blessing when I was a child.  They were bookends: the verses from Psalm 145 (following Brother Martin’s suggestion) served as an opening grace before we ate, with Psalm 103 following our meal as benediction.  The “all,” of course, includes not only the human species but all the creatures of earth sea and sky.  This simple prayer affirms what we know intuitively: that this world God brought into being, this “pale blue dot”[1]of a planet on which we find ourselves, contains all that is needed to “satisfy the desires of every living thing.”

According to Genesis, our first vocation as human beings is to be earthkeepers (Gen 2:15).  Recently, Kai’s kindergarten class had a shared assignment.  Each student was responsible for coming up with way of improving the habitat of an animal that lived in the vicinity of their home.  A variety of creative projects took place, several involving house pets.  Kai’s involved fixing a broken bird feeder and remounting it outside our kitchen window.  Now we eat breakfast with the sparrows once more.  You could say he and his classmates were acting out their “first vocation.” Kai’s project wasn’t graded, but it sets me to wondering—if God were handing out grades to us humans based on how we’re performing in our first vocation, what kind of marks would we get?

The ongoing drama and tragedy of the Gulf oil spill has commanded headlines for over a month now with no end in sight,[2] but there are less visible but even more ubiquitous, human-generated problems assaulting the creation. A five-mile stretch of the lower Duwamish River remains a federal superfund cleanup site due to industrial wastes embedded in its bottom soils,[3] and the constant stream of “nonpoint” source pollution running into Puget Sound threatens organisms on all scales—from the microscopic to the largest.  Example: the necropsy performed on the gray whale that washed up in April on the beach just below our home revealed stomach contents that included: more than 20 plastic bags, small towels, surgical gloves, sweat pants, plastic pieces, duct tape, and a golf ball.[4] Chemicals that can be found in Elliot Bay, such as DDT; PBDEs; and PCBs and metals such as lead, mercury, and cadmium, have found their way into human breast milk.[5] The list goes on and on.  (And I didn’t even mention global climate change!)

Are these issues worth a mention in a church newsletter article?  Do the facts above have any bearing on our life in Christ? My answer, unequivocally, is YES. Christian theology in the Western world has mostly failed, through the centuries, to connect the dots between our lives as people claimed by Christ and our lives as citizens and stewards of planet earth.  But in recent decades, awareness and the desire to focus on “first article” faith have been on the rise.  Churches all along the spectrum, from mainline to evangelical, conservative to progressive, have established initiatives and task forces that lift up the stewardship of creation.

During the month of June our worship life will focus on lifting up the sentiment and the substance of our first vocation.  Through resources and liturgies first developed by Lutheran pastor and theologian Norm Habel and his colleagues “down under,” we will celebrate a new Season of Creation.[6] Eldon Olson and I are working together with the worship planning team to bring leadership to the effort this year.  If you feel drawn to this endeavor, you are invited to join us.  The themes associated with Year C (our current year) focus on wisdom in creation, and have the following themes:  Ocean, Fauna, Storm, and Universe.  Through hymnody, spoken word and symbolic gesture we will evoke the truth to which the Psalmist testifies: that our whole lives are an exercise in honoring and tending to God’s presence and providence within creation.

Blessings,

Pastor Erik

[1] A phrase used by astronomer Carl Sagan to describe the vulnerable nature of planet earth.  See my sermon by that title at: http://www.peacelutheranseattle.org/?page_id=49&sermon_id=24

[2] http://www.seattlepi.com/business/1310ap_us_gulf_oil_spill.html

[3] For more details visit the Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition’s website: http://www.duwamishcleanup.org/

[4] For more details about the necropsy go to: http://www.cascadiaresearch.org/WSeattle-ER.htm

[5] See article by Florence Williams in New York Times Magazine: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/09/magazine/09TOXIC.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=toxic%20breast%20milk%202005&st=cse

[6] Find more information about the Season of Creation at: www.seasonofcreation.org

One day, as we were going to the place of prayer, we met a slave girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners a great deal of money by fortune telling.  While she followed Paul and us, she would cry out, “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.”  She kept doing this for many days.  But Paul, very much annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, “I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And it came out that very hour.  But when her owners saw that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them…before the magistrates saying, “These men are disturbing our city.” ~ Acts 16:16-20

Servants of God,

Motivated by the love of money, people will engage in the most selfish acts.  The recent round of Congressional inquiries into the failure of banks and the behind-the-scenes complicity and outright fraud of executives are only the most recent examples.  Greed contorts the human capacity for good judgment, common sense, and respect for the law and the neighbor. This is not a new story, but the interdependence of global financial systems around the world today means that when things go wrong, the ripples reach farther and deeper then ever before.  No doubt the debate over causes will continue to rage, but none can fail to see the effects of greatest economic recession since the Great Depression.

Jesus knew the dangers that are incubated by wealth. “No slave can serve two masters,” he told his followers, “for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.” (Lk 16:13)  St. Paul, too, took on the subject: “The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil,” he wrote in 1st Timothy, “and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.”

Notice with me that it’s not money in and of itself that the New Testament warns about, but our attitude toward it and our relationship with it. Wealth is one of those subjects about which we must be “wise as serpents and innocent as doves,” lest we become subject to its corrupting influences.

Alongside all the perils and temptations that come with money and wealth, we who follow Christ also recognize that the proper use of wealth can support God’s work in amazing ways. Without the vision of our forefathers and foremothers to educate young men and women for lives of service, and the generosity required to fund this vision, the 26 colleges and universities of our church would not exist.  Without the shared commitment of congregations like ours to join hands around the globe with the message and love of Christ, the worldwide mission of the church would dry up and wither.

While it’s true that God calls some to divest themselves completely in order to follow Christ wholly (St. Francis is an example), God calls the rest of us to a proper orientation to our wealth: to be wise and generous stewards of the resources we have been given (yes, it’s all gift!).  Indeed, the ongoing mission of our congregation is dependent on just such an attitude and conviction.

When Paul and Silas were thrown into prison for acknowledging a higher authority than the profit motive (Acts 16), they could have been overcome with fear and held captive by their dire circumstances.  But they had learned to anticipate God’s presence and power in the most unholy places, through the most unlikely means.  Through their faithful witness in word and song the Holy Spirit not only brought them freedom—the Spirit brought their jailor and his entire family into the circle of believers. God took a dire and desperate situation and turned it toward resurrection, one of God’s hallmark moves!

Financial strength in a congregation is one measure of its health, but it’s not the only one. There are other measures of vitality that are as or more important:  a strong sense of vision and purpose; a quality worship life centered on God’s gifts in Jesus Christ; a strong life of prayer in which many participate; an outward orientation that takes Jesus’ call to neighbor-love seriously by responding in specific ways; a growing number of people who are drawn to the congregation, its worship life and its mission.

There is much that is encouraging and exciting about what’s happening here at Peace! As we face up to the challenges and growing pains that come with funding our ministry vision, let’s not forget how the Spirit’s presence is being manifested in and through our congregation.  Let’s not become captive to fears; let’s not become curved in on ourselves.  Instead, let us affirm generosity as a defining characteristic of Peace. Generosity of spirit, exhibited in our caring for each other; and generosity of resources, exhibited in our support of the mission God is calling us to serve within and beyond our doors.  This attribute will enable us to continue to accomplish great things together!

As we mark the outpouring of God’s Spirit on God’s people at Pentecost, and witness five of our young people affirming their baptismal faith in the Rite of Confirmation, I am praying that the Holy Spirit will blow into our congregational life in new and powerful ways, renewing our passion for God’s work in this place.

Will you join me in that prayer?

Pastor Erik

As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on.  But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.”  So he went to stay with them.  When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them.  Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him.” ~ Luke 24:28-31

Beloved of God,

They had to get away from the city; to distance themselves from all that had taken place there in recent days.  What had begun with joyful HOSANNAS had ended in a grisly death.  Jesus had been betrayed and deserted.  Justice had been stood on its ear.  The City that once welcomed him with open arms had turned on him, chewed him up and spit him out.

They had to distance themselves, and yet, those very events were all they could talk about as they went down the road. And buried beneath their attempts to figure out this tragedy, there seems to be a deep yearning and a holy hunger.

They are on the road heading away from Jerusalem when a stranger joins them, and soon all three are caught up in a conversation about what had taken place and what it all means.  Cleopas and his companion don’t know what to make of this stranger. Something in their gut draws them to him.  There’s a yearning, a burning, a pulling at their hearts that can’t be ignored.  Yet they don’t recognize him.  Their eyes are closed.

Until he breaks the bread. With the breaking of the bread their eyes are opened, their hearts set free, their hope is reborn, and their world of death is transformed into life.

The Lent that is coming to a close as I write this column has been, for me, one of the heaviest ever.  I can’t say exactly why this is so; I’m at a loss to find words to describe it.  I only know what I’ve experienced, and the longing I feel—the holy hunger—to have this reality transformed. 

On any given day you and I, like those two disciples on the road to Emmaus, may find ourselves weighed down with our own burdens—and those of the world; our hearts burning for a connection, longing for God to quench our thirst for meaning, to lift our spirits, to satisfy our holy hunger.  There is but One who can turn our sorrow into joy, our tears to laughter—the risen Lord, who meets us on all our roads, and walks beside us as a companion, breaking open the gospel, breaking open the bread of the Eucharist, and satisfying our holy hungers in a way that keeps us coming back for more.

The pathway from death to life isn’t something we can engineer on our own, any more than we can will ourselves to rise from the grave.  It’s something we receive, something that comes to us from outside of ourselves—yet something that promises to reshape us at the very core of our being.  The Three Days (Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Vigil, April 1, 2, 3) mark the beginning of the journey, and the 50 days that follow provide us with the opportunity to deepen our experience as we journey with Christ toward the unending life which his dying and rising has secured.

Pastor Erik