“The LORD said to Moses: Write these words;

in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel…

And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the ten commandments.”

– Exodus 34:27-28

Beloved of God,

Lent is a season of truth-telling.  And truth seems to be in short supply these days. Everything, it seems, is up for grabs.  Your point of view not getting enough love?  Find the right Facebook group, chat room, or online news source, and you’re home free.   The data don’t support your perspective?  Crunch your own data.  The science doesn’t backup your worldview?  Enlist some “alternative facts.”

Lent is an antidote to all this.  The ashes we wear are a no-holds-barred articulation of human origin and destiny in one sleek sentence: REMEMBER YOU ARE DUST, AND TO DUST YOU SHALL RETURN. In Lent we tell the truth about the way things are with us:  We are in bondage, and cannot free ourselves.  It is a hard truth; but it’s a good truth, because it disabuses us from any notion that we can get our act together if we only try harder.

During this 500th anniversary year of the Reformation, our worship planning team has us focusing on Luther’s Small Catechism during our 5 Wednesday evenings together, beginning March 8.  In his explanation of the 1st Commandment in his Large Catechism, Brother Martin says: “Anything on which your heart relies and depends, I say, that is really your God. The intention of this commandment therefore is to require true faith and confidence of the heart, which fly straight to the one true God and cling to him alone.”  If we can’t grasp this 1st command, what chance we’ll honor the others?

The season of Lent reveals truth as paradox: on the one hand, the weakness of our wills and the limits of our abilities to do what God requires; and on the other hand, the depth of God’s love for us in Jesus and the boundless ability of the Holy Spirit to transform our lives.  Contemplating this paradox is the journey of Lent.

To help us do this, we’ll see a new artful expression appear, by degrees, on the East wall of our sanctuary during this season.  This installation is inspired by 15th century Russian iconographer Andrei Rublev’s depiction of the Holy Trinity. (At right)

Franciscan Richard Rohr notes that icons like this “point beyond themselves, inviting a sense of both the beyond and the communion that exists in our midst. This icon shows the Holy One in the form of Three, eating and drinking, in infinite hospitality and utter enjoyment between themselves. The gaze between the Three shows the deep respect between them as they all share from a common bowl.”

The opening stanza of Brian Wren’s hymn on the Trinity reads:

When minds and bodies meet as one and find their true affinity,

we join the dance in God begun and move within the Trinity,

so praise the good that’s seen and done in loving, giving unity,

revealing God, forever One, whose nature is Community.[1]

The central truth the season of Lent reveals is the incessant Voice of the Triune God calling us into relationship—through the Ten Commands; through Jesus’ journey to the cross; through the Font which gave us birth; through the communion of the Table. All of these reveal the passionate longing of the Triune God to share the Divine Feast with us—to teach us the steps of the sacred Dance.  This truth is more hopeful than anything the world casts our way.  So get your toes a tapping!

With you on the Way,

Pastor Erik

[1] Brian Wren. Words © 1980, Hope Publishing Company 

Give me your tired, your poor

your huddled masses yearning to breathe free;

the wretched refuse of your teeming shore;

send these—the homeless, tempest-tossed to me;

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

– The New Colossus, by Emma Lazarus

On the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor

Beloved of God,

Many of us can remember a time in elementary school when we were assigned the task of committing a song or poem to memory.  The “50 Nifty States Song” I learned as a 4th grader at Hawthorne Elementary in Albert Lea, Minne­sota, was one of these.  I can still recall the school assembly when all of us fourth graders sang out the name of each state—in alphabetical order no less.  The song had a catchy tune, and even now as I write that tune plays in my head some 50 years later!  Things put to memory when we’re young tend to stick.  Which is another argument for committing Bible verses and hymns to memory—they’ll be accessible to us when we need them.  But that’s another topic.

Along with the “50 Nifty States Song” there is a poem I committed to memory as a youngster that has stayed with me all these years.  It’s a poem by Emma Lazarus (above).  She donated the poem in 1883 to the campaign to raise funds for the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal. It came to prominence only after her death when it was placed on the completed pedestal in 1903.  I saw it in person when our family visited Liberty Island at the end of my sabbatical in 2014.  Ms. Laza­rus entitled her poem THE NEW COLOSSUS. Having seen the place in Rome where Nero’s original COLOSSUS once stood, I had another layer of meaning to add to the content of what she wrote.

As our boat prepared to land on Liberty Island that brilliant summer day, the words which I’d put to memory in my elementary school choir came to the surface once more.  The poem, which never fails to move me, took on even greater meaning when we docked at Ellis Island.  There we stood in the very room where my grandparents Ingvald and Anna Kindem had stood with their three young children, Olaf, Halvor and Andi, on June 5, 1923, as immigrants from Norway.  In the computerized files, we were able to find their names on their ship’s manifest and even glimpse a photo of the ship itself—The Stavangerfjord—which bore them safely across the ocean to this new land.

Emma Lazarus’ poem and my own family’s immigration story have been much on my mind in the aftermath of the recent Executive Order banning the admittance of immigrants and refugees from certain countries.  Had Ingvald and Anna been turned away at Ellis Island, what would our family story have been?  We talked about that around the dinner table last night.  Our kids figured that if this had happened, they’d have been born in Norway.  “Not so fast,” Chris countered.  “If Great grandpa Ingvald and Great grandma Anna had been turned away, Grandpa Roald and Grandma Shirley would never have met; Dad (Erik) would not have been born, he and I would not have married, and therefore you two would never have been born.”  A point worth contemplating.

The President’s Executive Order is already having a direct impact on the Lutheran Church’s work with refugees, as David Duea, President and CEO of Lutheran Community Services Northwest pointed out in an email this week:

“Our Unaccompanied Refugee Minor program (URM) in Spokane was ready to welcome a 17-year-old young man, scheduled to arrive early this week. He is from Afghanistan, where his parents and sister were killed by a landmine. The boy fled Afghanistan to Indonesia, where he has been living in a shelter. He was scheduled to fly from Jakarta to Los Angeles Monday. Unaccompanied refugee minors usually fly with an escort.  We have not heard from the escort… We have no idea what to expect. This is one example of how a story being felt around the world is impacting real, individual lives.”

Another stark example concerns a 24-year-old man from Sudan who has been registered and waiting to come to the U.S. since 2010.  Mary Flynn, Refugee Program Director at Lutheran Social Services of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is worried the Sudanese refugee is in danger. His case was being expedited because he was a victim of violence and torture.  Now after 7 years of waiting, the possibility of resettlement itself seems in danger.

It has been heartening to see the many expressions of concern and solidarity, and offers of legal aid for those whose lives have been flung into turmoil as a result of the Order.   As followers of Jesus—who was himself a refugee from violence (Mt. 2:13-18)—you and I are called to stand with the vulnerable, whom Jesus called “the least of these who are members of my family.” (Mt. 25: 40)

Some of you remember the chaos that swept through Japanese immigrant communities 72 years ago this month as a result of Executive Order 9066.  The displacement and internment of people of Japanese ancestry—including many who were citizens of the United States—was driven by prejudice and fear.  It remains a dark chapter in our nation’s history.

It seems to me that the words emblazoned on the Pritchard Park Memorial on Bainbridge Island—Nidoto Nai Yoni–“Let it not happen again”— also apply to the immigrant and refugee crisis that is developing before our eyes right now.  A clear process for vetting refugees has been in place for decades and often takes years to complete.  Less than ½ of 1% of the world’s refugees will ever have the opportunity to be resettled in the United States.  When it comes to refugees, there is no such thing as a “rush to our borders.”

We join our colleagues at Lutheran Community Services Northwest and at Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services in welcoming refugees no matter what their religious background or country of origin may be. We support refugees who are fleeing dangerous and violent conditions.  Not only is our compassion needed, it is com­manded by our Lord. Faith is more verb than noun—it has legs.  Let’s seize the day by putting our legs of faith to work for the sake of refugees and immigrants.  Let’s make certain Lady Liberty’s lamp continues to shine by the golden door.  In the process, we will ourselves become the “light of the world” Jesus has called us to be.

With you on the way,

Pastor Erik

 “The voice of the LORD is upon the waters;

the God of glory thunders;

the LORD is upon the mighty waters.”

– Psalm 29:3

Beloved of God,

Chilly weather companions our passage from 2016 to 2017.  Mini-snow people have spouted on our back lawn, and Kai and Naomi, inspired by the properties of snow and ice, have been on expeditions harvesting sheets of ice from neighborhood puddles and bearing them home, like treasure, on their sled.  Watching them brings me back to the days when I did same—with icicles—during long Montana and Minnesota winters.  The bigger, the better!

Watching the snow accumulate on the Olympics and Cascades evokes sighs of gratitude within me.  In this age of climate breakdown (climate “change” is too benign a term), heavy mountain snows recall the way it’s meant to be.  A heavy snowpack plays an essential role within the annual water cycle, and translates into promising prospects for everything and everyone who calls the Northwest bioregion home.  Yet, it hasn’t always been that way, as Cynthia Barnett documents in her book, RAIN: A Natural and Cultural History.[1]

“As even tempered as it grew up to be,” she writes, “Earth started off 4.6 billion years ago as a red-faced and hellish infant…For its first ½ billion years, Earth was a molten inferno some 8,000 degrees Celsius—hotter than today’s Sun.”  Scientists aptly name this violent period in Earth’s evolution “the Hadean eon,” from the Greek word Hades, or hell.

But the same process that made Earth a molten mass also set the stage for what it would some day be.  The flaming meteors that bombarded Earth had water locked inside of them, and as they crashed and split apart, they spewed out that water in the form of vapor.  “All that water,” Barnett writes, “would prove an invisible redeemer [when]… about a half a billion years after it started, the blitzkrieg began to wind down.  As the last of the flaming chunks fell to the surface or hurtled away, the planet finally had a chance to cool.  The water vapor could condense.  At long last, it began to rain.”

We’re not talking Seattle drizzle, Midwest gully washers, or even Florida hurricanes, folks—we’re talking cataclysmic torrents that fell and were taken up again and again and again in a seemingly endless cycle; storms that went on, literally, for millions and millions of years, eventually forming the primordial oceans, aquifers, lakes, and rivers from which life itself first emerged.  Rain: the wellspring of life.  Rain: the force which has shaped the story of life on this planet, and human culture in particular, from the beginning.  Rain: which seeded whole civilizations and led to their undoing.  Rain and its wondrous offspring—clouds and rainbows—which have inspired painters, writers, and poets for thousands of years.

Seeking language to describe the ideal king, the psalmist writes: “May he be like rain that falls on the mown grass, like showers that water the earth.” (Ps 72:6)  And David’s hymn of praise, Psalm 68, extols the God who “rides upon the clouds”; the “Father of orphans and protector of widows” who sends rain in abundance, restoring the heritage of his chosen ones; the “Rider in the ancient heavens” whose “power is in the skies.”

Sacred traditions with water at their centers can be found among peoples all over the world, including our own.  In the Western church, the first Sunday after the Epiphany is celebrated as The Baptism of Our Lord, and the appointed gospel takes us to the waters of the Jordan, where people have traveled in schools to receive John’s baptism of turning.  When Jesus comes to be baptized, John is taken aback at first and suggests their roles ought to be reversed.  But after receiving reassurance from Jesus, John immerses him in Jordan’s waters.  Then—the Spirit of God like a dove, and the Voice from on high: THIS IS MY SON, THE BELOVED, WITH WHOM I AM WELL PLEASED. (Matt. 3:13-17) Ever since this encounter, baptism has been the headwaters of the Christian story, a sacred sign that we our bound to God, that we journey with Christ, and like him are companioned by the Holy Spirit.

From that moment countless eons ago when Earth’s molten surface began to cool, and the heavy vapors of H₂O that surrounded her young atmosphere began to condense, giving birth to rain, the One who called it all into being has been waiting, patiently, for the opportunity to call you to new life through these waters.   Never doubt for one moment that you were meant to belong—to be bound as, St. Patrick sang, “to the strong name of the Trinity, the Three in One and One in Three.” And when you see the snow pilling up in the mountains; when you watch the raingardens at Peace receive the sky’s liquid offering; when you collect ice offerings, muddle in puddles, cross creeks and rivers, and venture on, over, or around the Salish Sea, remember that these waters, which once fell as rain and will again, are all signs—constant and true—of God embracing and blessing you.

Walking wet with you,

Pastor Erik

[1] Cynthia Barnett. Rain. A natural and cultural history. (New York: Broadway Books, 2015)