“They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day.”  – Acts 10:39, 40

“The world breaks every one, and afterward, many are strong at the broken places.”

Ernest Hemingway, Farewell to Arms

Dear Easter People!

Throughout the Lenten season we have watched as the cross on the east wall of our sanctuary has gradually become the Tree of Life.  God’s act of raising Jesus from the dead transforms what the world forever intends to be the tree of crucifixion into the Tree of Life!  This is the new reality we celebrate on Easter.  The final verdict God pronounces upon us and on all creation is not a sentence of death but rather a sentence of LIFE! 

This doesn’t mean that all the woundings that life inflicts on us magically disappear on Easter—they don’t.  The risen Jesus himself reveals this truth to us.  In his appearance to the disciple community after his resurrection, both in Luke and in John, Jesus shows them his wounds.  His hands, feet, and side still bear the marks of the nails and spear.  And yet, these wounds no longer hold him captive, for they have been healed.  “The world breaks every one,” wrote Hemingway, “and afterward, many are strong at the broken places.”  The resurrection makes all who put their trust in the God of Jesus strong in the broken places.

Recently a colleague introduced me to a centuries-old Japanese art for fixing broken pottery. It’s called kintsugi or “golden joinery”.[1] Instead of discarding broken bowls, plates and vases, this approach to pottery (and to life) celebrates the artifact’s unique history by emphasizing the fractures and breaks instead of hiding or disguising them.  The pottery is bound in its broken places with a special lacquer and then dusted with powdered gold, silver, or platinum.  The result: beautiful seams of gold glint in the cracks of ceramic ware, giving it a truly unique appearance.  It is often the case that this approach to repair makes the repaired piece even more beautiful than the original, revitalizing it with new life.  The art of kintsugi, which dates back more than 500 years, is related to the Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi: finding beauty in the flawed or imperfect.

Franciscan Richard Rohrer calls imperfection “the organizing principle of the entire human spiritual enterprise.”  St. Francis, says Rohrer, wore patches on the outside of his habit so everyone would know what he was like on the inside.  “Imperfection,” says Rohrer, “is not to be tolerated, marginalized, excused, or contextualized, or even forgiven, it is the framework in which God makes the Godself known and calls us into union.”

As we celebrate the resurrection of Christ, and God’s promise that we, too, will be raised with Christ to new life, we rejoice!  For we now know that the Master Potter who formed us in the beginning will re-form us in all our broken places, repairing the fragile vessels of our lives so that they stand—even now—as emblems of beauty and grace: the broken made whole. 

Alleluia! 

Pastor Erik

Beloved of God

Trees.  They surround us in the Pacific Northwest and help define the character of this bioregion.  Great forests unbroken for hundreds of miles once blanketed this land on which our westside cities now stand.  The size and density of these stands once led us to believe that they were inexhaustible and would be with us forever.  Still today we seek out old growth groves untouched by human habitation, hoping to encounter a great cedar or Douglas Fir whose girth and height will leave us dumbfounded.

For millennia before we modern immigrants arrived here, Tribal peoples have looked to the trees of these great forests for food, shelter, clothing, transportation, utensils and utility—but also spiritual insight and insignias of spiritual identity and power; living emblems connecting the spirit world with the earth (think totem pole). 

My first Call in pastoral ministry brought my family to the Redwood Coast of Northwestern California.  I remember the excitement of exploring those ancient forests that first summer nearly three decades ago.  Driving south on Highway 101 along the Eel River we entered Humboldt Redwoods State Park, one of the last remaining refuges for the trees, and took the exit for FOUNDER’S GROVE.  Stepping out of the car in that majestic grove was like stepping into a cathedral.[1]  The sheer scale of the trees left us slack jawed and tongue-tied.  Within a ten mile radius of where we stood were some of the largest and most accessible Redwood giants on the planet—trees that towered over 350 feet, with trunks measuring 15 feet or more in diameter, some of which had begun as seedlings when Jesus was a toddler.

Ancient ancestors of this species—Sequoia sempervirens—had been reaching for the sky along the coast of the western Pacific for scores of millions of years.  Redwoods had been turning soil, air, and water into leaf, branch and trunk eons before human beings appeared on planet Earth.  So ancient is their lineage that the footfalls of dinosaurs once echoed between their trunks.[2]  Now we were standing in their shadows, craning our necks in awe, hushed and humbled by these greatest of living beings.

The greatest of the world’s remaining Redwoods have names given to them.  And a champion among champions was a tree in Founder’s Grove called The Dyerville Giant.  As tall as a 30-story building at 370 ft, with a diameter of 17 ft., a circumference of 52, and weighing perhaps a million pounds, the Dyerville Giant was one amazing plant.  As we stood there touching its trunk in 1986 it was easy to imagine it would be standing for many generations yet to come.  But after a series of heavy winter storms swept through the region in the winter of 1991, saturating soils and weakening shallow root systems, The Dyerville Giant was clipped by a younger neighbor and came crashing to the ground the night of March 24.

Word of the tree’s fall spread swiftly, and foresters and scientists moved in quickly to study the tree and to take sprigs from its crown for grafting onto healthy seedlings, thus preserving the genes of the fallen giant.  From the point of the graft onward it would be the Giant’s “super genes” at work.

Ezekiel’s message from the passage above paints a picture of a whole ecological subculture existing and even thriving under this great CEDAR transplanted by God.  It provided God’s exiled people then, and it provides us now, with an image of the expansiveness of God’s vision for the earth’s future and a new image of the Tree of Life, in whose branches all peoples and all nations shall find their true home.

As we move this month from the Season of Light to the Season of Lent, the mid-week Lenten services we share with sisters and brothers from Calvary Lutheran will invite us to contemplate images of TREES that form a “scaffolding” of sorts within the Scriptures.   Our 40 day sojourn, beginning with Ash Wednesday, February 18, is a period of spiritual renewal.  I, for one, look forward to having that renewal include walks among the trees.

Together in Christ,

Pastor Erik   

– Isaiah 55:10-11

Beloved of God,

In January of each New Year we invest some time looking back at the trail of “mission footprints” our congregation left behind during the previous 12 months; and then we turn our eyes and energies toward the future.  What will 2015 have in store for us and the mission we share?  Already there are promising signs.  During the final days of 2014 we entered into an agreement with a Korean Mission Congregation led by Pastor Chulhyuk Ko, in which we will offer our building for their use.  They held their first Sunday service at Peace on January 4th and will be using our facility twice weekly, on Sunday afternoons and Wednesday mornings.  If you’re around Peace during those times, I encourage you to introduce yourself and welcome these new sisters and brothers in Christ!  We have invited them to join us for Sunday worship and potluck on January 25th, Annual Meeting Sunday, and hopefully they will be able to come.  As we continue with our annual meeting in the fellowship hall, we may very well hear the sounds of their singing above us!

In addition to the Korean congregation, 2015 will see the expanded use of our facility by other community groups.  This is a wonderful development and confirms the goals which inspired our Capital Campaign: updated facilities that can be more fully utilized as a base for mission and interfacing with the larger community.   Additional groups we expect to welcome at Peace during 2015 include Mary’s Place, a full-service resource for homeless women and children, with whom we are in conversation about hosting homeless families; Twelfth Night Productions, a West Seattle based theatre group with whom many of us are familiar (they’re working on a new production of GODSPEL as I write); and an additional Alcoholics Anonymous 12-step group.  God’s promise through the prophet Isaiah is that God’s word and God’s purposes, like rain and snow, will indeed accomplish those tasks for which they are sent.  Our job, together, is to align ourselves with what God intends and is, in reality, already bringing about!

For me personally, this New Year is cause for additional reflection, for it was ten years ago this month that Chris and I and 6 month old baby Kai loaded up a U-Haul and headed north from our first family home in LaCenter to our new home base in West Seattle. 

It was no small move for us.  It was no small move for you.  But God had a purpose in mind, and God has been faithful in building what I feel is a splendid partnership between pastor and people over the past decade.  The words I wrote ten years ago in my first Pastor’s Pen article seem fitting to include here:

As I write, our home in La Center is a scene of chaos: half-packed boxes are strewn about and pieces of packing tape and wrapping paper litter the floor; meanwhile the opening of each closet, drawer, and cabinet evokes a sigh while simultaneously demanding more sorting and decision making…you get the picture.  Transitions are never easy.  At times like this we need the assurance that something other than our self is at work compelling the move!  And that, surely, is our conviction. 

In many ways, the story of God’s people that unfolds in the Scriptures is a story of transition.  Beginning with Abraham and Sarah, generation after generation of God’s people journeyed into unknown futures with the conviction that God was guiding them and would fulfill God’s promises to them.  As our journey together begins this month, we place our trust once more in the God who fashions order out of chaos and who faithfully accompanies those who place their trust in God’s word.  May our journey be one marked with joy, grace, and companionship!

 New Year Blessings!

Pastor Erik