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

To those who wait for Emmanuel,

During Advent we are invited to ponder all the ways we are waiting for something new to unfold in our lives.  Sometimes our waiting is purposeful and focused: we await a new job, a new child, a new opportunity or relationship.  And sometimes we find ourselves drafted into a role that is quite unexpected; a surprise which we hadn’t considered and for which we feel unprepared.  Yet, when we experience God’s presence at the root of this newness, we may be able to move from a reluctant “HUH?!” to a soulful “YES.”  So, it seems, it was for Mary.

Nearly all we know about Mary comes from the first two chapters of Luke’s gospel.  Mark’s gospel doesn’t mention her.  Matthew does—but his birth story revolves more on around Joseph than her.  John’s gospel includes Mary in scenes at the wedding in Cana and at the foot of the cross, but says nothing about the circumstances of Jesus’ birth.  So it’s here in the opening chapters of Luke’s gospel that we find our most complete portrait of her.  And still we’re left full of questions. How old was Mary the day the Messenger came?  Was she washing clothes or hanging laundry?  At the well getting the day’s supply of water?  Working in the fields?  Tending goats?  Preparing dinner?  If Luke knows, he’s not telling.  So it’s left to our imaginations to fill in the blanks, and many artists, poets and filmmakers have.

My favorite depiction of this scene in film is in Franco Zeffirelli’s 1977 classic “Jesus of Nazareth.”  In the still of the night Mary is woken from sleep by a brilliant light streaming through the small window of her peasant home.  Frightened at first by this unearthly Presence she tries to hide in the shadows.  But then, slowly and deliberately, curiosity moves her beyond fear to ask “Who are you?!”  Moving by degrees into the fullness of the light Mary is privy to a Voice she alone can hear.  As the message sinks in Mary slowly sinks to her knees and accepts her new vocation with humility and deep conviction.[1]

This scene of the Annunciation is a favorite subject of Medieval and Renaissance artists; second only to Madonna and Child.  We saw scores of versions of the scene in galleries we frequented during our sabbatical last spring.  A favorite was the depiction by Fra Angelico, which we saw at the Museo Diocesano in Cortona, Italy.   Angelico, a pioneer of three dimensional perspective in painting, places Mary and Gabriel in the foreground of a columned portico, facing one another and leaning toward each other.  The words uttered by the divine Messenger leave his mouth as streaks of gold, and Mary receives them eagerly.  In the left back corner of the canvass Angelico depicts Adam and Eve being driven from Paradise, as if to alert us that the old, old story of our estrangement from God is about to receive a new chapter.[2]

During this season of waiting for Emmanuel, we are invited to imagine this intimate encounter between Gabriel and Mary in our own minds and to imagine, too, how we would respond if God were to call our name. And make no mistake, God does call our names.  Though our encounters with the Divine may not be depicted in film or on canvas, nonetheless, in Advent we tune our ears for that Voice, and learning to receive its message with humility and grace.  During these weeks of Advent and Christmas, the message goes out once more: God has come among us and will again, in the most surprising ways.  In the words of poet Gerard Manley Hopkins:

Of her flesh he took flesh:

He does take fresh and fresh,

Though much the mystery how,

not flesh but spirit now

And makes, O marvelous!

New Nazareths in us,

Where she shall yet conceive Him,

morning noon and eve:

New Bethlems, and He born there,

evening, noon and morn.

Waiting with you,

Pastor Erik