The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would spout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle because the harvest has come. – Mark 4:26-29

Dearly Beloved,

As October begins I’m struck by the number of events and engagements that come with it. When it comes to our life of worship, education, and service October is chock-full! While trees in the northern hemisphere give up their fruit and leaves, grains are harvested, and fields turn fallow, we gear up for opportunities to learn, participate, celebrate and serve. There are reasons for this. The good news that God is with us for good in Jesus compels us to plumb this truth, and to faithfully embody it in lives of service. Events this month like WEAVING OUR STRENGTHS, the hosting of MARY’S PLACE FAMILIES, BLESSING QUILTS, WRITING LETTERS, FOOD BANK AUCTIONS, and RAINGARDEN projects provide specific opportunities for us to love neighbors (and Earth) in tangible ways. Educational opportunities bring us closer to God’s word and the application of this word to the contexts in which we live.

All this is important—all this is good! And yet, Jesus says, God is afoot via mystery. God’s work through the Spirit happens without our knowledge or consent; indeed, it is the nature of the kingdom to grow and flourish, we know not how. This seems to be another way of saying, we’re not in charge of the growth, but we get to participate in it; we’re not responsible for the kingdom, but we are included in it. Sometimes, we experience our “not-in-charge-ness” in ways that challenge and reshape our understanding.

Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you are sharing Christ’s sufferings, so that you may also be glad and shout for joy when his glory is revealed. – 1 Peter 4:12-13

The wildland fires that dominated the news here in Washington, quickening our prayers during recent months, have slid to the back pages. But even though the largest fires are now mostly contained, the consequences of these fires will exert themselves for years to come. Some of you had family near one or more of these blazes or other attachments to these areas that burned out of control for weeks on end. Many of us were glued to news about the Wolverine Fire that surrounded Holden Village. Thankfully, the Village came through the fire largely unscathed. In a recent blogpost, Holden co-directors Peg and Chuck Carpenter wrote:

The Forest Service is concerned about surrounding risks, mostly involving the road—they speak of “hazards known and unknown.” Some immediate risks will be abated by the removal of burned trees and rocks that could (and sometimes do) fall from the slopes above. That constitutes “the hazards known.” What remains to be seen are “the hazards unknown,” which will only be revealed by the autumn winds and rains, the winter snows, and the spring runoff. In the coming months, the forest will reveal its strengths and its weaknesses. It will speak to us in new ways, in new growth, soil movement, and avalanches. It will tell us what it needs and show us how to best deal with its new form.

For millions of years nature has practiced the way of renewing forests we call the forest fire. This path of renewal is not without risk. Hazards, known and unknown, and human heartache accompany this process of renewal. But there is a tenacity of spirit built into the natural cycle of life in forest and grasslands which allows new life to emerge from ground that looks for all the world to be burned out and barren. Some seed cones, in fact, germinate only after fire has released the growth potential they harbor within.

There is a tenacity of spirit built into the people of God, too, that enables us to keep on rebuilding, to keep on trying new forms of engagement, new ways of scattering seed, so that the Good News can take root. This, too, is mystery. Yet we’re not called to be casual observers; we’re called to participate in it.

One of my favorite authors died recently—Phyllis Tickle.[1] Tickle had a long career as a scholar in the publishing business, focusing on religion in America. Her pithy observations, the books she authored and the talks she gave made her one of our nation’s leading public intellectuals on all things religious.  Her book THE GREAT EMERGENCE sets our rapidly evolving Christian faith into a larger frame, allowing us to get a balcony view of where this river of faith might be running.[2]

“Christianity isn’t going to die!” she exclaimed recently, “It just birthed out a new tributary to the river.  Christianity is reconfiguring, it’s almost going through another adolescence. And it’s going to come out a better, more mature adult. There’s no question about that.”[3]

When we next visit Holden, what may stand out is what the Wolverine fire took away, we must keep our eyes peeled for what the fire gave as well—both to the human community which inhabits Railroad Creek Valley and the natural community there. God is ever at work within, among, and between us. It’s risky business—but business that God was willing to enter into without reservation in Jesus. And work God continues, through the Spirit, to be about today. And we are participants. Thanks be to God!

Pastor Erik

[1] You can read more about Phyllis Tickle in a wonderful article by David Gibson written four months before her death: http://www.religionnews.com/2015/09/22/author-phyllis-tickle-faces-death-just-enjoyed-life-dying-next-career/ Some of the material here comes from this article.

[2] Phyllis Tickle, The Great Emergence. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2008.)

[3] Ibid. David Gibson article.

You are not alone…no one is alone.”

– Into the Woods, Stephen Sondheim & James Lapine

Beloved of God,

None in our family had ever seen the musical Into the Woods,* so when I learned last spring that 12th Night Productions had chosen it for their summer theatre offering I was intrigued. My interest steadily grew as I sat through a number of church meetings at Peace while rehearsals took place downstairs. The voices from below were engaging; the energy of the players high. When we returned from vacation a single performance remained—the Sunday matinee—and Chris acquired the tickets. Now I’ve tried Sunday theater matinees before and they usually don’t work for me. On Sunday afternoons a nap is a more appealing activity than a performance. But we’d really been looking forward to this show, and so Sunday afternoon the four of us piled into the car and went.

What we experienced there in the West Seattle High Theater was absolutely transporting. From the first line of the opening song we were hooked. Hooked not only by the incredible voices from the large and uniformly talented cast, but by the level of artistry they achieved together, and most of all by the message at the heart of the show. There would be no napping through this production!

On the surface, the show is a clever and entertaining interweaving of well-known fairy tales—Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk, Rapunzel, and others. With music and verse, Sondheim and Lapine masterfully link the stories and their characters to the fundamental human experience of running up against limits, making choices whose consequences linger, and confronting loss while longing for redemption and fulfillment—the “happily ever after” that beckons to us from the other side of the woods. But we have to go “into the woods” in order to get there, and therein lies the tale. Act 1 ends with a note of joyous relief that wishes have been granted, goals have been attained and predicaments solved. Then comes Act 2, and complications ensue. What seemed black and white turns gray.

In her Director’s Note for the show, Mary Opland Springer writes:

In Act 2 we take this journey with [the characters] and realize that a journey into the woods brings as many questions as it answers. In one of the most poignant moments, Cinderella and the Baker share the wisdom they have realized as they sing No One Is Alone

Sometimes people leave you halfway through the wood.

Others may deceive you. You decide what’s good.

You decide alone. But no one is alone.

Mary goes on:

Sondheim so aptly said, “No One is Alone…is what the show has been about. No one is alone: we are all connected in some way and we are all responsible for each other’s actions.”

The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said something similar in a letter he wrote from a Birmingham jail cell:  “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”[1]

Our family of four—kids as well as adults—were entranced by the artistry of the cast and musicians in their portrayal of this masterful show. Kai and Naomi quickly pronounced it “the best play ever,” and Chris and I found ourselves profoundly moved as we recognized in the drama on stage some of our own experiences of being stuck “in the woods.” The show reminded us that this is what the journey we’re on together—all of us—is about: we are not alone. We experienced this as gospel. We have one another. And more than that, we are companioned by One who enters “the woods” by our side; who will do whatever it takes to get us through to the other side.

As the season turns and the launch of a new school year begins, we need this reminder. And the good news is, we get to hear, touch, and taste it each Sunday we come together. We need each other. We are not alone.

See you at the Table,

Pastor Erik

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* Music by Stephen Sondheim, libretto by James Lapine

[1] Find the full text of King’s letter here: http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html

“The LORD told Abram ‘GO’… And Abram went.”

Beloved of God,

Summertime has always been, for me, a time when I look forward to traveling; a time for entering new spaces and rhythms in family and congregational life; a time for visiting new and familiar landscapes and coming home renewed.   Last year at this time our family was re-entering life in the Northwest after having been on sabbatical.  We’ve been playing the “where were we a year ago?” game for the past four months, and it’s enabled us to recapture some of the experiences we shared along the way and to keep alive the prospect of returning “someday” to places and people we came to cherish along the way.

When God issues the call to Abram to leave everything he’s known—country, hometown, family—and to go to a new place that God will show him, God promises Abram that through him “all the families of the earth will be blessed.” (Gen. 12:3)  In response to this call, “Abram went.”  Historian Thomas Cahill calls these two words “two of the boldest words in all literature” for they signal a complete departure form everything that has gone before in the long evolution of culture and sensibility.  “Out of ancient humanity,” writes Cahill “comes a party traveling by no known compass.  Out of the human race…comes a leader who says he has been given an impossible promise. Out of mortal imagination comes a dream of something new, something better, something yet to happen, something—in the future.”[1]  What’s being midwifed in this encounter, according to Cahill, as a whole new concept—the concept that what lies ahead us could be different from what we’ve known before; the concept of FUTURE.

These days we take the FUTURE for granted. That is, we take the idea that tomorrow could be different than today —and different in significant ways and better ways—for granted.  The recent Great Recession, the acceleration of Climate change, and the continuing specter of terrorism may have put a chink in that armor, but by and large we (at least I) carry in my head the notion that the future is not predetermined or just a rerun of the past, but can be different; that I can change, that circumstances can improve, that the world can be better. 

Theologically speaking, Lutherans have held a dim view of the human capacity to change.  The mystery of the cross lies at the very heart of our way of seeing God at work in the world, suffering and dying and coming face to face with all that is wrong with human existence.  “We are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves,” we confess!  Yet Christ’s crucifixion is not the final act or word.  God’s final word is RESURRECTION, and it is not only a word, it is an ACT as well as a PROMISE.  What drives my conviction that my future and the world’s future can be different is my faith in the resurrection of Jesus.  On Easter morning we learn that God has something more planned for us and this world than a trajectory that ends in the graveyard.  We have a future “hidden in God,” a “better country” to look forward to; one that begins now and will reach its full embodiment when God deems it time.  Our job is to trust that truth and to live into it.  This resurrection faith gets affirmed in profound ways when I have the privilege of accompanying people of faith as they prepare to cross from this life to the next.

As I write to you, the recent death of our brother in Christ Al Drackert on June 29th is fresh in my mind.  When I last saw Al at his apartment at Daystar the day before he died, he was lying in his bed.  As I leaned over him he looked up at me, opened his eyes, smiled his crooked smile, and said, “Thanks for everything, Pastor.”  Oh, thank YOU, Al.  Later, when Chris arrived with her flute, we sang some of his favorite hymns with the members of his family who were present, and Al hummed along, chiming in “that’s a good one.”  At the edge of death Al was praising and thanking God.

Al knew the meaning of gratitude and found a way to express it on a daily basis.  One of his favorite phrases was “gracious living.”  Whether he was with his friend Bob Gains delivering Meals on Wheels, or passing the peace in worship, or reflecting on life from a hospital bed, he always steered back to that place.  His inner compass was locked on Grace, and because of that his eyes were opened to see blessings blossom all around.  “I am amazed” he would say.   As he prepared to make his final journey from this life to the next, Al seemed fully prepared to relinquish what he’d known here and to place his life with trust in the arms of the God of resurrection, the God who holds the future.  Blessed to be a blessing.

We are all blessed to be a blessing.  God’s promise to Abram is still being worked out in the lives of people of faith across the globe, in your life and mine, as we journey through this life.  Wherever our journeys take us this summer, whether near or far, we all will be given myriad opportunities to bless those we encounter; to pass God’s grace and blessing on. 

Via con Dios – Go with God!

Pastor Erik

“When you send forth your Spirit, we are renewed, we are renewed!” – Psalm 104

Beloved of God,

If you were in worship on Pentecost Sunday (May 24), you participated in a conversation break during the sermon.  The theme for Pentecost Sunday was the Spirit being unleashed on Christ’s disciple community—PUSHING THEM OUT into the public square to engage with others and share the good news of what God was bringing to the world through Jesus.  The first question folks were invited to discuss in small clusters around the sanctuary was: 

What is the chief resource of our congregation?

Your most common response was “the people.”  Many cards had modifiers attached, like “caring people” or “motivated people” or “welcoming people” or “young people.”  Other answers clustered around our building as a resource and how it is used or could be used to help the neighbor.  Still others identified the “welcoming spirit” and “friendliness.”  These answers are not surprising.  The congregational culture of Peace, its “DNA” so to speak, expresses itself in warm and welcoming hospitality.

But it’s not enough to identify what the chief resource of our congregation is; we have to make certain we utilize that resource to connect our congregation to the neighbors and neighborhoods that surround us.  To that end, folks were asked to discuss a second question:

How can we use that resource to connect to the neighbors that surround us?

To this question there were a great variety of responses.  Some of them focused on getting us OUT of the building and interacting with neighbors, or hosting events outside that supported interaction with neighbors.  Some mentioned what we’re already doing and others suggested more fully utilizing music and the arts as a means to interaction.  I hope that conversations around these questions will be ongoing ones for us.  If you have any brainstorms, please jot them down and share them with me or with Bob Wightman, our president—we’d like to hear from you!

The fact is, we are doing much to convey the message that we are a congregation that cares about its neighbors.  Whether it’s hosting Mary’s Place families, supporting local food banks, building Little Libraries, sharing our facility, building raingardens, floating seal rafts, doing biannual landscape projects in the community, serving meals at Compass Center, or going about God’s work with our hands in other ways, I believe we sense the importance of bringing our vision and our energies to birth out in the world.  Surely this is the Spirit’s call!  I believe that this, in part, is why our congregation is bucking the trend of most urban congregations and GROWING in membership rather than SHRINKING.  

The pulsing core of our mission begins in our gatherings around God’s Word, Font and Table.  Without the experience of weekly worship, our batteries run down and our motivation for service suffers.  But our worship life is only the beginning.  Our life of faith never stops here or ends here or stays here.  The Spirit propels us ever outward, just as it propelled the disciple community out of their homes and into the streets.  Wherever the Spirit propels you these coming months, I pray that it will be an enriching and rejuvenating time, and a time when you are able practice your vocation as a bearer of good news in ways that make a difference!

Yours in Christ,

Pastor Erik

Beloved of God,

I can’t say when I first heard of Pastor André Trocmé or the protestant village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, but I’ve always been drawn to people of high moral integrity.  So when I heard the story of a village in France that harbored Jewish refugees during WW2 at great risk, I was captivated by it.  When I began planning my sabbatical, Le Chambon emerged as one place I wanted to see firsthand.  I wanted my family to get as close as possible to this story and the people and principles behind it.

At first, I had limited luck in my internet searches for information about whether a museum dedicated to the heroic efforts of the people there existed.  I could only find references to a temporary museum that once existed, or to the dream that a museum might one day be built.  But then I found an article by Dr. Patrick Henry, a retired professor from Whitman College.  His article gave a brief but thorough explanation of the historical context in which this “conspiracy of goodness” took place.  As time before our departure for sabbatical was running short, I tracked down his email address and wrote him, hoping he might respond.   Not only did he write back almost immediately, sharing information that proved immensely helpful as I prepared for our visit to Le Chambon, unbeknownst to me he blind copied Nelle Trocmé Hewitt, the daughter of Pastor André and Magda Trocmé.  Within a few hours of my initial inquiry I found myself corresponding with a woman who not only knew of Le Chambon, she had been at the epicenter of these events as both a witness and participant!  Nelly provided me with information about the newly opened state-of-the-art museum in Le Chambon, Lieu de Mémoire, as well as the names of contacts she knew.  And she urged me to see Pierre Sauvage’s film Weapons of the Spirit, before I left town—which I did.  The entire series of exchanges was a Spirit-inspired gold mine!

On May 3rd you have the opportunity to hear more about this incredible story of neighbor love that took place in Le Chambon and the surrounding farms and villages of the Vivarais Plateau.  Dr. Henry will address the combined Adult and Youth classes from 9:15am to 10:15am.  Then, following worship, we’ll share a simple lunch in the Fellowship Hall, as we view the film Weapons of the Spirit and continue our conversation together.  I hope you’ll come.

Throughout the Easter season we hear stories from the book of Acts which speak to the Spirit-infested power of the gospel life, which spins good news out into the world with untamable, centrifugal force.  Old boundaries fall away in the wake of such a force; and new connections into the community of Jesus abound.  Readings from the letters of John, like the excerpt above, remind us that everything that comes from God is predicated on LOVE. “Those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen,” writes John.  Whatever fears may seek to lay hold of us, skewing or dominating our lives and keeping us curved in on ourselves, says John, as we place our trust in the God revealed to us in Jesus, God’s “perfect love casts out our fear.”  When that happens, the unknown loses its ability to keep us in bondage.  And when this happens, incredible acts follow.

In his memoire, Pastor Trocmé wrote of the important role played by the parish’s Bible study leaders and group meetings: “It was there, and not elsewhere, that answers from God came regarding the complicated problems we had to resolve for the housing and hiding of Jews…It was there that we conceived of non-violent resistance.”¹ Through their animated discussion of the Bible and its role in their lives, these groups “saved the situation” in Le Chambon.  They provided opportunities for faithful reflection and the development of strategies for sheltering those fleeing from the German and the French authorities.

The work of the Spirit continues in our own day and context, and our job is to align ourselves—individually and communally—with the Spirit’s mission.   When we keep our hearts, minds, and bodies opened to the Spirit’s breath, we will end up in some surprising places!  That’s the journey we’re on together, as we sing with the Psalmist:

“When you send forth your Spirit, we are renewed—we are renewed!”

With you on the Way,

Pastor Erik

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­^{__________________________}

¹ Alicia J. Batton, University of Sudbury, Ontario. Reading the Bible in Occupied France: Andre Trocmé and Le Chambon. p. 14.  Quoted from A. Trocmé, Autobiographie “André and Magda Trocmé Papers,” copyright Swarthmore College Peace Collection, 1960’s) 357.