I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb…Then the angel said to me, “These are they who have come out of the great ordeal…they are before the throne of God, and worship him day and night within his temple, and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them. They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” – Revelation 7:9-17, portions

Beloved of God,

November begins with our All Saints remembrance and ends with Advent’s call to new beginning.  We’ll be lifting up with gratitude four from our congregation’s roster of saints on November 7:  Esther, Betty, Mary, and Ruth.  Remembering them is important—both for keeping their legacies alive in our memory and for reminding ourselves of the destiny that awaits us, too: to be counted among those “from all tribes, peoples, and languages” who will stand before the Lamb.

Last year, in preparing for All Saints Sunday, I found a painting by John August Swanson that spoke of the vast community of saints, past and present, who walk beside us on this pilgrimage of life.  Immediately, I wanted to use his painting for the cover of our All Saints bulletin. That painting, THE PROCESSION, is on the cover this year’s All Saints Sunday bulletin as well, in honor of Mr. Swanson, who joined the saints in glory on September 23rd of this year.

In an obituary of Mr. Swanson published in America, the Jesuit Review, Cecilia González-Andrieu shares some vignettes from Mr. Swanson’s life and his evolution as an artist. [1]   His mother, Magdalena Velasquez, migrated to the United States from Mexico in 1928, fleeing violence and revolution. His father,  Sven August Svensson, left his native Sweden in a similar timeframe in search of work and landed in America.  As the Great Depression hit, “Gus” (at the Ellis Island Emigration Center he was renamed “John August Swanson,” a name he would pass on to his son) moved around as a day laborer before settling in Los Angeles where he found work as a vegetable seller and met Magdalena.  Magdalena, a gifted seamstress, found work and community with the Jewish tailors who had arrived fleeing anti-Semitic violence in Russia. She attended night school, became a voracious reader and volunteered as a grassroots organizer for labor, housing and voting rights.  But life was difficult, and Gus took to drink, abandoning the family often and forcing his young son to scour the streets and jails looking for him.  Tragically, Gus never made it to old age. The last time his son found him he was dying.

His father absent, John lived with his grandmother, mother and sister. From them he learned his Catholic faith, Mexican traditions and the insight that social justice is required of a faithful Christian life. Through a series of experiments, failures, and forays down various vocational paths, Swanson gradually acquired the skills and discerned his calling to bring together faith, justice and art.  The artist and his art were formed by his immigrant family’s wounded history.  It is this difficult life that develops into themes of loss and redemption in Swanson’s work—and intricate complexity.

The “Procession” serigraph, which he considered his grand opus, is made up of a staggering 89 layers of unique colors. Today, the original painting is in the Vatican’s Collection of Modern Religious Art, and Swanson’s works are collected by The Smithsonian, The Tate, the Art Institute of Chicago, countless universities, seminaries, monasteries, and churches of all denominations.  While he eventually achieved tremendous success and recognition, Mr. Swanson remained humble.           Doctoral student Emilie Grosvenor said of Swanson: “To meet John August Swanson was to feel seen and loved and cared for, even if the interaction lasted only a few minutes. One would be hard pressed to leave his company without some sample of his work to lend hope, and to remind the person receiving the gift where the Spirit’s beauty, justice and hope are ever to be found: in community with the other.”  My own experience of Mr. Swanson echoes her comments!

Last fall when I called the phone number given on the artist’s website to inquire about permission to use his art in our publications, who should answer but Mr. Swanson himself.  What followed was a delightful conversation in which we spoke of his work, discovered personal connections, and talked about art’s role in providing new ways of seeing and experiencing the world.   We spoke of the need for Creation care, and before we said goodbye he asked me to choose five posters from his online gallery as gifts.  When the posters arrived I found he’d thrown in two more for good measure.  Now, a year later,  I treasure that conversation I was privileged to have with Mr. Swanson.  If anything, the testimony of the body of work he leaves behind takes on even more significance for me in the wake of his death.

When news of Swanson’s illness became known thousands of messages poured in. Remarkably, hundreds of people counted him as a personal friend, and this he truly was.   The luminous and hope filled religious sensibility embodied in his work made his work appeal to a broad audience.  This sensibility, wrote González-Andrieu, arose “out of lo cotidiano, the small details of life where the sacred reveals itself.”  When I call to mind Esther, Betty, Mary, and Ruth, it’s small details from the points where our lives intersected that stand out.  God is in the details, hidden among every day encounters, humble offerings. This All Saints Sunday, as we remember those dear to us, we lift up with gratitude the work of John August Swanson and others who, through the centuries, have given us a glimpse of the joyous hope and resplendent beauty which encompasses those whom God calls to his side.  For all the saints!

[1] I quote liberally from her obituary in what follows.  The full obit can be found here: https://www.americamagazine.org/arts-culture/2021/09/23/john-august-swanson-death-art-241485

“Nothing lives on our planet without death and decay.  From this springs new life, and from this birth will come new death.  This spiral of living taught me to become a sower of seeds… a planter of seedlings, a keeper of saplings, a part of the cycle.  The forest itself is part of much larger cycles, the building of soil and migration of species and circulation of oceans. The source of clear air and pure water and good food.  There is a necessary wisdom in the give-and-take of nature—its quiet agreements and search for balance.  There is an extraordinary generosity.”

– Suzanne Simard, Finding the Mother Tree

Beloved of God,

As autumn moves to center stage (welcome and thank you, blessed RAIN!), its emblems of change playing out around us, I’ve been enjoying walks in Lincoln Park.  Both our kids have practices of one sort or another at LP multiple times each week, which gives me the chance to revisit trails both old and new.  The God’s Work—Our Hands project last month, powered by a dozen people from Peace, provided an opportunity to experience the park in a different way—to contribute to forest health by removing invasive species from “tree islands” near the park’s northeast perimeter.

Lisa McGinty, a Forest Steward with Green Seattle Partnership (GSP) who coordinates volunteers with Friends of Lincoln Park (FLiP) was our coach and guide on that beautiful fall day.  By profession an art director and graphic designer, Lisa came to Seattle 12 years ago harboring a deep love and appreciation for the forest environment.  While on a run in Lincoln Park one day she saw a group of volunteers at work tending to the forest and was immediately drawn in—“That’s what I want to do.”  After completing a ten-week Master Forester training program with GSP, Lisa began organizing and leading groups of volunteers on projects in the 135-acre park.  When our mixed-generation crew from Peace arrived on September 19th, it was clear from the get-go that Lisa loves sharing what she’s learned through her training and hands on experience.  Through word and example she gave us the tools we needed to succeed at our tasks.

Though to the casual observer it might be easy to miss, the work of volunteers over the past two decades has been essential and deeply valuable in supporting the overall health of Lincoln Park’s 80 forested acres.  In 1999 an American Forests study sounded the alarm that every forest in Seattle’s park system was threatened.  The study estimated that within 20 years, 70% of Seattle’s forested parklands would be ecological “dead zones” where invasive plants predominate, trees are dead or dying, and native wildlife habitat is gone.  That alarm drew the attention of many, including horticulturist Ann Lennartz, who provided funding through her Starflower Foundation for establishing methodologies, surveys, mapping and plant inventories that became the basis of the Green Seattle Partnership. The Foundation also provided grants that supported many early forest restoration efforts.  A long-term view of the importance of nurturing a healthy forest took root as new partners joined hands to create the GSP in 2004. Its goal: to restore 2,500 acres of park forest land by the year 2025.  Data collected in 2017 showed that under the GSP, 170 trained Forest Stewards oversaw 78,666 hours of volunteer time. They removed 8,697 ivy rings, installed 164,177 plants (of which 38,194 are trees), and over the course of the partnership, passed the one million mark in volunteer hours, which equates to $24,501,670 in volunteer leverage!  Now that is effective!

Working in Lincoln Park and following news about the growing prevalence and intensity of wildland fires has me thinking about the scale of the challenges facing forests these days and the scale of the challenges we humans face, too, as we endure twin threats of climate breakdown and a pandemic that doesn’t show signs of slowing down anytime soon.

One of my best reads over the summer was Suzanne Simard’s 2021 book on forest ecology—FINDING THE MOTHER TREE: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest.  This remarkable book—part memoir, part natural history, part primer on the scientific method—made me aware of how much forests can teach us about meeting ecological and social challenges while deepening our sense of community.  A pioneer on the frontier of plant communication and intelligence, Simard’s investigations of what makes natural forests tick has revealed startling secrets.  In her words:

“I discovered that trees are in a web of interdependence, linked by a system of underground channels, where they perceive and connect and relate with an ancient intricacy and wisdom that can no longer be denied.  I uncovered the lessons of tree-to-tree communication, of the relationships that create a forest society…. These discoveries are challenging many of the management practices that threaten the survival of our forests, especially as nature struggles to adapt to a warming world… In this search for the truth, the trees have shown me their perceptiveness and responsiveness, connections and conversations.  What started as [my familial] legacy… has grown into a fuller understanding of the intelligence of the forest and, further, an exploration of how we can regain our respect for this wisdom and heal our relationship with nature.”

Simard’s scientific work documents the “cryptic underground fugal network” which links trees throughout the entire forest floor, connecting neighbors of all species, young and old alike.  This network, a “jungle of threads and synapses and nodes,” bears a striking similarity to our human brain’s own neural network.  Her discoveries have ruffled feathers by challenging century-old forest management practices.  Her work is providing a new lens for understanding how trees have evolved to nurture coming generations, to care for infirm kin, to protect and heal themselves, and, finally, to offer all they have acquired over their considerable lifespans through extraordinary acts of generosity at life’s end.

St. Paul’s image of the church as interdependent, organically connected “members of the same body”[1] is marvelously mirrored by the natural world of the forest.  St. Francis, too, whose life and witness we celebrate this month, was profoundly affected by the resonance he perceived between the spiritual realm and natural world.  Thomas of Celano, a contemporary of St. Francis and his first biographer, wrote of the saint: “He forbade the brothers from cutting down a whole tree when they needed wood, so that the tree might have hope of sprouting again.”

Indigenous communities have long been aware of this mirroring, which is powerfully evoked in ceremonies that bind spiritual and physical elements into a sacred whole.  And this insight resides at the very core of our own Lutheran sacramental lens for viewing the world and God’s gracious activity in, with, and under it.  It must be revived in our current practice!  Surely the great Mother Trees of the forests bow their heads in recognition of the Christ who, following Creator’s design, humbled himself rather than exploit his position for personal gain, pouring out his life in an extraordinary act of generosity so that life in all its fecund abundance would become available for others.

As we, the People of Peace, seek for ways to remain connected as a faith community during a pandemic that mandates keeping our distance, I wonder: What might these ancient forest communities teach us about resilience, about sharing energy where it is most needed, about passing wisdom to the next generation, about keeping our lives and mission well rooted  within an ever-changing and challenging landscape?

With you on the Way,

Pastor Erik

[1] 1 Corinthians 12

“We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh.”   – 2 Corinthians 4:8-11

Beloved of God,

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow!  We did it together!  Our first IN-PERSON WORSHIP on August 29 went smoothly and without a hitch!  This was due in no small part to the hours of preparatory work put in by members of our Live Stream, Safe Opening, Worship Teams and other volunteers over the last month—not to mention the Holy Spirit brooding over, with, and through us.   Many thanks to every person whose care and labors both behind the scenes and in front contributed to making this day special!  As I said on Sunday, this is but the first step in what we hope will become a steady march toward renewing the ways of being together that we were forced to abandon 18 mos. ago.  The body of Christ known as Peace is not yet whole, and the coronavirus is not yet in the rearview mirror, but in spite of this, our congregation remains dedicated to its mission; RESILIENT, DETERMINED, and STRONG!  Thanks be to God!

For the time being we will continue to limit worship attendance to 75 persons and use a SIGN-UP PLATFORM as a means for you to RESERVE YOUR SPACE each Sunday.   We’re asking you to RESERVE YOUR PLACE FOR WORSHIP BY THURSDAY @ 4pm each week.  (NOTE: If you plan to come to worship alone and are willing to SHARE your half of the pew with one additional person or couple, you can indicate this on the reservation form.  This will allow us to admit more individuals while maintaining the 3ft. physical distance protocol.)  In consultation with other synod congregations, the Worship Team has been working on a method for distributing Holy Communion safely.  We look forward to celebrating Holy Communion during worship later this month.  Stay tuned for the exact date, which will be communicated as soon as it is certain.

As we continue to live stream our IN-PERSON services, there are other considerations.  For example, those attending on-Person may see their face or image showing up in the live stream recording.  If you sign up for In-Person worship, we want you to be aware of that.  We want those at home to have the experience of being among the worshipping community in the sanctuary.  This means not only showing our worship leaders on screen but other participants.  By signing up for In-Person worship, you are consenting to being part of the live stream recording, and it’s important that you are aware of this fact.

Many of you know that recently the Church Council allocated money for rekeying every lock in the building.  In the process, we also added new locks to some doors for which there hadn’t been locks before.  After the locksmith spent two days rekeying the locks we began distributing the new keys, only to find out that some of the old keys continued to allow access to the building.  So the locksmith returned a second time and went through the process all over again.  The new keys that were created as a result of the fix were still being distributed when we discovered that some of the newest keys didn’t open doors they were supposed to open!  So, as I write, we’re expecting the locksmith to return a third and (hopefully) final time.  Here’s my point: 18 months ago we entered a new world and were forced to make all kinds of adjustments to the circumstances in which we found ourselves.

Now, as we move forward into the next phase of our life together with simultaneous in-person and live stream options, we’re once again in the position of having to “recalibrate” what our life together looks like.  As we do so we’re likely to discover that some of our carefully devised protocols will prove ungainly and will not serve their intended purpose, thus we will need to adjust accordingly.  I suspect this will happen a number of times before we “get things right”—at which time some other issue or edict from the powers that be might compel us to go back to the drawing board and “re-key” once more!

In this context, patience, flexibility, and forbearance are three key spiritual gifts that will enable us to function well as we venture forth together, “not always knowing where we go,” as the prayer says, but trusting that God’s hand is leading us, God’s love is supporting us, and the Spirit is guiding us; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

With you on the Way,

Pastor Erik

“Glory to you for oceans and lakes, for rivers and streams. 

Honor to you for cloud and rain, for dew and snow. 

Praise to you for the Duwamish and Cedar and the glaciers that feed them;

for Longfellow and Fauntleroy Creeks, and the waters of the Salish Sea.

Your waters are below us, around us, above us: our life is born in you.

You are the fountain of resurrection.”

– Thanksgiving for Baptism

Beloved of God,

Rivers are on my mind these days.  And one river in particular: the Duwamish.  After reading BJ Cummings’ book:  THE RIVER THAT MADE SEATTLE: A Human and Natural History of the Duwamish, my eyes have been opened to the rich and tortured history of the Duwamish watershed and the people through time who have made it their home.  During the first three Sundays of this month we’ll be focusing our attention on the Duwamish and other watersheds and creatures that inhabit them, seeking to make connections to our faith lives during our SEASON OF CREATION: RIVERS.  And we’ll do so with the aid of special guests like watershed theologian John Rosenberg, author and river advocate BJ Cummings, and Duwamish Tribal leader and Superfund manager James Rasmussen.  We’ll go on a walking tour (June 12) along the Duwamish; we’ll visit Paulina Lopez of the Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition and learn about ongoing efforts to revitalize both the river and the communities that live adjacent to it.  Some of us will ply the river in kayaks and canoes!

The Duwamish, the Snoqualmie, the Skykomish, the Green, White, Black, Cedar and Tolt—these rivers have been ferrying fish, feeding fauna, and shaping the Westside landscape for many thousands of years.  The names themselves remind us that Native Communities had to come to terms with their seasonal behavior over thousands of years before new immigrants started calling this region home. The great rivers of this land not only return the rain and snow back to the sea, they are life-bringing highways, concentrating and distributing nutrients, feeding wildlife, irrigating crops, transporting fish, and shaping the landscape; they are the sources of the fresh water upon which all life—including our own—a depends.

In our short-sighted zeal to master rivers for human industry we have turned vital streams of life into noxious streams of death.  Industrial wastes, pesticides, fertilizers, prescription medications, leaking oil and sewage run off each contribute toxic ingredients to the mix, polluting the very marine estuaries that enable complex and complimentary life forms to thrive.  Earthkeeping calls us to a renewed understanding of our relationship to the rivers and waters of our region, and it all starts in our own backyard.  What is your relationship with the rivers and watersheds in the place you live?  This is what we’ll be exploring with the help of special guests over the first three weeks in June.

“Rivers,” says James Rasmussen, “are living things.”  The stories they tell are complex.  Our lives of faith are also complex, and too often have been lived at a remove from the natural world around us.  To be a living thing, faith must meet the challenge of the time in which it is lived.  Linkages must be made between our sacred traditions and the natural processes of the living planet we call HOME.  This is the great work of faith to which we are being called in our time.

Plenty has gone wrong with the Duwamish over the past 165+ years, culminating in the river becoming a Superfund cleanup site in 2001.  But as Eric Wagner points out, while the Duwamish may be a dirty river, a ransacked, violated and neglected river, it is not a dead river.  In his book, ONCE AND FUTURE RIVER: RECLAIMING THE DUWAMISH, Wagner writes:

“There is abundant loss and disconnection to be found.  Yet every time I settle into a kayak or wading boots and push off and away from the city’s hard ground, into the flow of  the Duwamish River, it feels like belonging… To see the evidence of injurious human choices that have been made during the past hundred years is to wonder what whose people were thinking and whether we are much different.  But to accept the evidence that wildlife and plants and people are at home on the river these days is to allow ourselves wonderment… In its present state, [the Duwamish] embodies the tensions between man-made and natural, between competing visions for the future, between dying and living.” [1]

I hope you’ll join us each week for this series—and tell a friend, too.

With you, on the Way,

Pastor Erik

[1] Essay by Eric Wagner (University of Washington Press, 2016) https://www.seattletimes.com/pacific-nw-magazine/reclaiming-the-duwamish-river-is-about-reclaiming-ourselves-theres-a-lot-left-to-save/

“Making a whip of cords, Jesus drove them out of the temple…

He told them, ‘Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!’”

– John 2:15-16

Pilgrims on the way,

Misplaced religious zeal has done much, through the ages, to dishonor the name Christian: The Crusades; the Inquisition; the witch trials; the religiously sanctioned system of racial caste; century upon century of wars in which confessors of Christ drew swords or fired weapons at one another across battle lines or, with weapons as instruments of “Manifest Destiny,” seized—as gifts from God’s hands—the lands and resources that had sustained New World peoples for thousands of years.  Such zeal continues, newly resurgent, in our own time—especially of the quasi-religious/political variety, as the Capitol insurrection of January 6 attests. All too often in the long history of humanity, being zealous has translated into being dangerous and destructive.

So we have good reason to be cautious when, partway through Lent, we come face to face with acts of zeal on the part Jesus himself.  Jesus goes to a Sacred Place, and finds instead a market place.  He sees how love of God has been replaced by a system of commerce makes relationship with God a transactional affair.  His reaction is immediate and visceral: Jesus is outraged  Filled with passionate zeal, he acts—tables fly, money scatters, and out comes a whip to drive the whole operation—man and beast—out of God’s House.  STOP MAKING MY FATHER’S HOUSE A MARKET-PLACE! he shouts.

Zeal is not a word we tend to want to associate with Jesus, much less our Lutheran selves.  Zeal may be OK for Pentecostals, or Southern Baptists. But Lutherans?  “Dogged”—that’s a good word; or “staunch.” Staunch Lutherans.  And maybe, on occasion, like our namesake Brother Martin, “bold.”  But we steer clear of “zeal,” don’t we?  And after the long history of zealous religion gone bad, we have a right—an obligation—to be more than a little cautious, don’t we?  Besides, living under the pressure of a pandemic, it seems that we have to hedge a bit on everything we do, even if that means chastening our faith’s bold feathers and clipping its sharp claws.

Here’s the question then: Is there any room in today’s church for the kind of ZEAL we see in Jesus, the kind of HOLY HAVOC that calls systems of injustice what they are and seeks to overturn them?  Is there a way to be zealous that doesn’t involve dehumanizing the other?  That doesn’t involve attacking or denigrating?  A way that doesn’t depend on violence to achieve its ends?

Nobel laureate (and Lutheran) Leymah Bgowee, who with other Liberian women—Christian and Muslim—started a movement that ultimately brought peace in their country after fifteen years of brutal civil war and the deaths of 200,000 people, tells her story in her memoir, Mighty Be our Powers.[1]  This is what she says:

“During the years that civil war tore us apart, foreign reporters often came to document the nightmare. [Their accounts] are all about the power of destruction [and inevitably focus on men.]  In the traditional telling of war stories, women are always in the background.  Our suffering is just a sidebar to the main tale… During the war in Liberia, almost no one reported the other reality—[the reality] of women’s lives.

• How we hid our husbands and sons from soldiers looking to recruit or kill them.
• How, in the midst of chaos, we walked miles to find food and water for our families.
• How we kept life going so that there would be something left to build on when peace returned.
• And how we created strength in sisterhood, and spoke out for peace on behalf of all Liberians.

“This [story I tell] is not a traditional war story.  It is about an army of women in white standing up when no one else would—unafraid, because the worst things imaginable had already happened to us.  It is about how we found the moral clarity, persistence and bravery to raise our voices against war and restore sanity to our land.”[2]

Read her story and then ask yourself, is not the zeal of Leymah Bgowee and the women in white who stared down unjust, self-serving war lords, who PRAYED THE DEVIL BACK TO HELL,[3] is not their zeal the very kind of zeal we find in our gospel?  The kind our world needs in order to get to a place it’s seldom if ever been?

Coming in the heart of Lent, Women’s History Month is an excellent time for becoming better acquainted with the lives and stories of women of faith who, like Leymah Bgowee, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Dorothy Day, Mother Teresa, Fannie Lou Hammer, Ella Baker, and on and on, lived out their calling with a zeal that was life-giving instead of life-taking.  You have names of your own to add to that list.  Some whom you know personally.  Some whom you aspire to know—and emulate.  According to the gospels, Jesus’ engagement in holy havoc set in motion his adversaries’ desire to be rid of him permanently.  What they couldn’t see is how the zeal that ultimately led to his death was a necessary step in midwifing God’s dream to birth.  What no one could see is that his death was not the final act but rather the prelude to what would take place “on the third day.”

With you on the Way,

Pastor Erik

[1] Mighty Be our Powers (New York: Beast Books, 2011)

[2] Ibid.  Prologue, p. ix, x.

[3] A film by this title tells the story of the Liberian women for peace who successfully pressured their leaders to engage in peace talks.  Bill Moyers Journal featured Leymah Bgowee and the film’s producer Abigail Disney in an interview on June 19, 2009.  Find it @ http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/06192009/watch.html The film Pray the Devil Back to Hell can be purchased through this website: http://www.forkfilmsdvdsales.com/

Artist Ric Darrell, based on Zeffirelli film,
Jesus of Nazareth

“Making a whip of cords, Jesus drove them out of the temple… He told them, ‘Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!’”

– John 2:15-16

Pilgrims on the way,

Misplaced religious zeal has done much, through the ages, to dishonor the name Christian: The Crusades; the Inquisition; the witch trials; the religiously sanctioned system of racial caste; century upon century of wars in which confessors of Christ drew swords or fired weapons at one another across battle lines or, with weapons as instruments of “Manifest Destiny,” seized—as gifts from God’s hands—the lands and resources that had sustained New World peoples for thousands of years.  Such zeal continues, newly resurgent, in our own time—especially of the quasi-religious/political variety, as the Capitol insurrection of January 6 attests. All too often in the long history of humanity, being zealous has translated into being dangerous and destructive.

So we have good reason to be cautious when, partway through Lent, we come face to face with acts of zeal on the part Jesus himself.  Jesus goes to a Sacred Place, and finds instead a market place.  He sees how love of God has been replaced by a system of commerce makes relationship with God a transactional affair.  His reaction is immediate and visceral: Jesus is outraged  Filled with passionate zeal, he acts—tables fly, money scatters, and out comes a whip to drive the whole operation—man and beast—out of God’s House.  STOP MAKING MY FATHER’S HOUSE A MARKET-PLACE! he shouts.

Zeal is not a word we tend to want to associate with Jesus, much less our Lutheran selves.  Zeal may be OK for Pentecostals, or Southern Baptists. But Lutherans?  “Dogged”—that’s a good word; or “staunch.” Staunch Lutherans.  And maybe, on occasion, like our namesake Brother Martin, “bold.”  But we steer clear of “zeal,” don’t we?  And after the long history of zealous religion gone bad, we have a right—an obligation—to be more than a little cautious, don’t we?  Besides, living under the pressure of a pandemic, it seems that we have to hedge a bit on everything we do, even if that means chastening our faith’s bold feathers and clipping its sharp claws.

Here’s the question then: Is there any room in today’s church for the kind of ZEAL we see in Jesus, the kind of HOLY HAVOC that calls systems of injustice what they are and seeks to overturn them?  Is there a way to be zealous that doesn’t involve dehumanizing the other?  That doesn’t involve attacking or denigrating?  A way that doesn’t depend on violence to achieve its ends?

Nobel laureate (and Lutheran) Leymah Bgowee, who with other Liberian women—Christian and Muslim—started a movement that ultimately brought peace in their country after fifteen years of brutal civil war and the deaths of 200,000 people, tells her story in her memoir, Mighty Be our Powers.[1]  This is what she says:

“During the years that civil war tore us apart, foreign reporters often came to document the nightmare. [Their accounts] are all about the power of destruction [and inevitably focus on men.]  In the traditional telling of war stories, women are always in the background.  Our suffering is just a sidebar to the main tale… During the war in Liberia, almost no one reported the other reality—[the reality] of women’s lives.

• How we hid our husbands and sons from soldiers looking to recruit or kill them.
• How, in the midst of chaos, we walked miles to find food and water for our families.
• How we kept life going so that there would be something left to build on when peace returned.
• And how we created strength in sisterhood, and spoke out for peace on behalf of all Liberians.

“This [story I tell] is not a traditional war story.  It is about an army of women in white standing up when no one else would—unafraid, because the worst things imaginable had already happened to us.  It is about how we found the moral clarity, persistence and bravery to raise our voices against war and restore sanity to our land.”[2]

Read her story and then ask yourself, is not the zeal of Leymah Bgowee and the women in white who stared down unjust, self-serving war lords, who PRAYED THE DEVIL BACK TO HELL,[3] is not their zeal the very kind of zeal we find in our gospel?  The kind our world needs in order to get to a place it’s seldom if ever been?

Coming in the heart of Lent, Women’s History Month is an excellent time for becoming better acquainted with the lives and stories of women of faith who, like Leymah Bgowee, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Dorothy Day, Mother Teresa, Fannie Lou Hammer, Ella Baker, and on and on, lived out their calling with a zeal that was life-giving instead of life-taking.  You have names of your own to add to that list.  Some whom you know personally.  Some whom you aspire to know—and emulate.  According to the gospels, Jesus’ engagement in holy havoc set in motion his adversaries’ desire to be rid of him permanently.  What they couldn’t see is how the zeal that ultimately led to his death was a necessary step in midwifing God’s dream to birth.  What no one could see is that his death was not the final act but rather the prelude to what would take place “on the third day.”

With you on the Way,

Pastor Erik

[1] Mighty Be our Powers (New York: Beast Books, 2011)

[2] Ibid.  Prologue, p. ix, x.

[3] A film by this title tells the story of the Liberian women for peace who successfully pressured their leaders to engage in peace talks.  Bill Moyers Journal featured Leymah Bgowee and the film’s producer Abigail Disney in an interview on June 19, 2009.  Find it @ http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/06192009/watch.html The film Pray the Devil Back to Hell can be purchased through this website: http://www.forkfilmsdvdsales.com/

“We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies…”

– Romans 8:22-23

Companions on the Way,

February is a bridge month, split between the brilliant light of Epiphany and the ensuing descent into Lent.  The last burst of Epiphany comes in a mountaintop vision of a transfigured Jesus holding council with Moses and Elijah—stand ins for Israel’s covenant and prophetic traditions.  Dazzled by the light, the three awestruck disciples who’ve made the hike with Jesus struggle to understand what it all might mean.  Peter finally settles on the idea that they ought to set up tents and stay awhile—why not let the adulation sink in!  He mistakes the martyr’s white Jesus is wearing for party attire.

I don’t blame Peter.  After all the day-by-day slogging through fear, loss, trauma and fickle internet connections the pandemic has brought upon us for twelve months running, I’m eager for a celebration, too!  The vaccines are beginning to do their thing, to slowly turn the tide.  But there is no magic by which we will be transported back to our pre-pandemic lives.  Even when the road ahead is lined with hope, the losses are real and close at hand; no inoculation can sweep them away. The bridge we cross this month moves us off the stage of luminous light and points us down the hill to the road leading to Jerusalem.  Over the threshold of that bridge are the words: “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.”  Never, in this generation, have these words bespoke such truth.

In a prose poem entitled WARNING TO THE READER, Robert Bly writes:[1]

Sometimes farm granaries become especially beautiful when all the oats or wheat are gone, and wind has swept the rough floor clean. Standing inside, we see around us, coming in through the cracks between shrunken wall boards, bands or strips of sunlight. So in a poem about imprisonment, one sees a little light.

But how many birds have died trapped in these granaries. The bird, seeing freedom in the light, flutters up the walls and falls back again and again. The way out is where the rats enter and leave; but the rat’s hole is low to the floor. Writers, be careful then by showing the sunlight on the walls not to promise the anxious and panicky blackbirds a way out!

I say to the reader, beware. Readers who love poems of light may sit hunched in the corner with nothing in their gizzards for four days, light failing, the eyes glazed . . .
They may end as a mound of feathers and a skull on the open boardwood floor . . .

On the Mount of Transfiguration, limned by such awe-full light, one could imagine—as the disciples did, as the birds in Bly’s poem did—that in those slats of light lies freedom!  But the downward wending trail of Lent testifies to the deeper truth: the only way out is down and through—through the rat’s hole.  The only true gateway to resurrection is the cross.

Our hope for this life and the next, finally, comes not from any power we have nor attribute we possess, but from trusting that we do not journey alone.  Christ journeys with us; we have each other; and are accompanied by the Spirit “who intercedes with sighs too deep for words.”  And that, dear ones, is enough.

With you on the Way,

Pastor Erik

[1] From his collection, What Have I Ever Lost by Dying? (New York: HarperCollins, 1992) p. 65