Joyful Servants!

Over 27 years of ministry I’ve found precious few of the synod assemblies I’ve attended to be memorable.  Several have been contentious; others routine.  A number have seen the same old resolutions cycled through over and again.  Only a few have retained, for me, the sense of spiritual power and uplift that has endured beyond the weekend.  Our assembly in May falls in that rare category.

Kathleen and Bob, in the article below, have done a great job capturing some of specifics which contributed to making this assembly memorable.  The presence of our Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson was certainly part of that—what a gifted leader!  I wish you all could have been present to hear Mark, and more importantly, to sense how clearly he has his finger on the pulse of the context, the challenges, and the opportunities before us as the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America as we seek to make Christ known.  Bishop Mark brought his wit—and a sprinkle of vinegar—to the assembly, supporting and challenging us and calling us to deeper reflection of how we can be the church for and with those outside our doors.   He also brought his trust and confidence in the Spirit’s presence as he led us through the stages of electing a new synodical Bishop.

Our synod’s purposeful process, unique among the 65 synods of the ELCA, was handled superbly, and infused with prayer at every turn.  The fifteen gifted, articulate, and courageous pastors who had been nominated for the office all acquitted themselves admirably and gracefully.  As the field of candidates narrowed, and each candidate spoke about her/his core sense of where the church should go and how we might get there, I came away with a profound sense of hope for the future of the church.  I can say without hesitation, in the words of the author of Acts, “it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us” that Pastor Kirby Unti was called to the role of Bishop.  I hope you will join me in prayer in support of Kirby and his wife Kim as he makes the transition to this new office.

Delores Dufner’s hymn quoted above captures the sense of vigor to which the Spirit is calling us as God’s people in West Seattle.  I especially like the line, “to scatter joy like seed.” There’s much to be joyful about as we mark this month together:  we’ll celebrate with graduates preparing to take the next big step; we’ll witness our young people taking on leadership roles and our little ones lifting their voices to declare “Jesus loves me, this I know,” we’ll welcome new members into the fellowship of our congregation, making room for their voices, their gifts, their partnership.

Let’s not forget that the joy we experience and share between each other and within these walls is meant to be scattered—not kept! One question Bishop Hanson posed to us was this:  Would there be any noticeable impact to the neighborhood in which your congregation resides if the church were to close?  If so, what would the impact be? I’m curious how you would answer the question.  The follow up question approaches the same topic from a different angle: How is our congregation writing the next chapter in the book of Acts? Indeed, this is the core mission we must always keep before us.  And the beauty is, God has supplied us with ample talent, vision, and vigor to do just that!

Your partner in joy, Pastor Erik

People of Spirit!

The month of May is a rich one, calling for your participation and celebration on a number of fronts. Below you’ll read about EARTH CELEBRATION / ROGATION SUNDAY, May 5th.  So far, the weatherman’s forecast matches our hopes for the day:  sunny and warm!  It’s a day which will include spirited activities that activate our senses and connect us to the Earth, to our neighbors, and to one another.  Please come and be part of it!

While Peace and Calvary women are Playing with Fire on Vashon May 10-11, congregations throughout our synod will be anticipating the NW Wash. Synod Assembly at which we will elect a new Bishop.  The theme for this year’s gathering, which marks the 25th anniversary of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, is ALWAYS BEING MADE NEW.  Sixteen nominees for the office of bishop are part of the process, and each week we will continue to pray for the Spirit to brood over them—and over us who will be responsible for casting ballots during the May 16-18 Assembly.  I am grateful to Bishop Chris Boerger for the excellent leadership he has exhibited during his 12 years in this role.  He has been a faithful and articulate proclaimer of the gospel and a steady partner with the congregations and ministries of our synod during a time of great challenge and change.  I look forward to celebrating his service to our synod on Thursday evening, May 16, at Trinity Lutheran, Lynwood.  Let me know if you are interested in attending.  The Rev. Jan Nesse has been his partner during these years, and I’ll be forever grateful that she included my name with others that were given to the Call Committee of Peace in 2004.  The rest of the synod staff are such talented and generous folk—we really are blessed.  Bishop Boerger’s final column (full article published below) names the hope we share as church:

The same weekend we elect a new Bishop, the wind and flames of Pentecost will descend on us once more when five young men of our congregation affirm their baptismal covenant in the Rite of Confirmation, May 19th.  What a day of joy and blessing that will be!  At a recent breakfast, an elder told of how he marvels when he sees the continuing participation of our young people at Peace—beyond Confirmation and even beyond high school.  God is continually remaking the church, and giving us reason to hope.  As we open ourselves to God’s future, we expand the range of possibilities for our personal ministries as well.  Rooted and grounded in the love of God in Christ Jesus, there is no limit to what the Spirit can do within us and through us.

God bless your growing!

Pastor Erik

“There is no fear in love, for perfect love casts out fear.” – 1 John 4:18

Easter People!

What a joy to be on this side of the tomb—the empty tomb, that is—for Christ is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

And yet, even though the resurrection is where we belong—this place toward which God has been moving us all along—still it doesn’t take much for gravity to pull us back into the great ditch of FEAR.

The longer I live the more apparent it becomes that the decisions we human beings make, on all levels, both individually and collectively, are made not on the basis of faith in the God of resurrection and life, but rather on the basis of fear.  Political leaders use fear as a tactic for forwarding ideological agendas; interest groups use fear to motivate their constituencies; fear of losing valued relationships keeps us from having honest conversations; fear of reprisal prevents us from sharing our true experience; fear of change leads us to dig in our heels even when that change may be the prompting of God’s Spirit.  I’ve come to believe that the opposite of faith is not doubt but fear.

In each of the gospels, the first reaction of Christ’s followers to his resurrection is not joy but overwhelming fear.  Whether they find themselves facing a heavenly emissary or the Lord himself, they are terrified!  And the first words from divine messenger or risen Lord are: Be not afraid. Christ knows how paralyzing fear can be.  He knows how, when push comes to shove, trust is often the first to go.  And he knows that fear often holds controlling interest in the stock of human emotions.  So it is no surprise that when Jesus speaks to his community as their risen Lord, he begins his greeting with the words, Peace be with you.  Do not be afraid. As Easter people who have been marked with the cross of Christ forever, we are called to live our daily lives and our life in community in the context of a deep trust in our risen Savior.

So, what does that deep trust look like? It has many guises.  Like that of a prayer shawl, blessed by the fingers and prayers of those who knit it; a shawl which now rests on the shoulders of “Georgia”—as she faces a fourth surgery on a broken leg that refuses to heal; a mantle which embodies Christ’s compassionate presence and the mystery of God’s healing power.  What does that deep trust look like? Like a group of young people eagerly serving a meal to a group of homeless men at the Compass Housing Alliance, providing food for the body and conversation for the soul.  What does that deep trust look like? Like a 90 year old woman who, on death’s door, tells me she’s ready to “run to Jesus.”

The First Lessons throughout the Easter season, taken from ACTS, tell again and again of how God’s agents “wrench life from death.”  These powerful stories, says theologian William Willimon, are not so trivial as to be explained:

“The stories can only be told and heard, asserted, inserted into life as they are thrust into the flow of Acts…they proclaim that our history is not closed…they announce a new age, an age where reality is not based upon rigid logic or cause-effect circumstances but upon God’s promise…Every time a couple of little stories like these are faithfully told by the church, the social system of paralysis and death is rendered null and void.  The church comes out and speaks the evangelical and prophetic “RISE!” and nothing is every quite the same.”[1]

Easter people—and that is what we are!—look at the world and their own experience through the lens of Christ’s resurrection. We have been liberated from the shackles of fear and that liberation makes a difference in how we view ourselves, our mission, and the world.   Because of this, we are alert to signs of God’s transforming presence and responsive when God calls us to be about God’s business.

You see, when it comes to fear, God holds the trump card. God’s perfect love, enfleshed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, casts out fear.  Gets rid of it completely.  Not that fear doesn’t try to creep back in.  But when fear begins to exert influence on us, when we feel it slinking into our thoughts and trying to take hold of our minds and pull us back into the ditch, we recall the words of Jesus:  “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” And as his words of promise take hold of us, fear is once more set aside, and faith takes its place.  What a privilege it is to live in that place together!  Thanks be to God!

Pastor Erik

[1] William Willimon, Acts Interpretation Commentary, p. 85, 86.

Sojourners all,

Walt Wangerin’s observation about the kinds of mirrors we encounter in life begins in hypothetical mode.  But everything shifts with his next sentence:  “My wife is such a mirror.” Suddenly, those hypothetical “mirrors of veracity” become real, and the consequences of sin in the most intimate relationship shows itself glaringly, truthfully.

Lent is a season of mirrors.  During these 40 days the layers that insulate us from the truth about ourselves, the truth about our human species, are slowly striped away until finally, standing naked before the One who formed us from the clay and breathed life into us, we see the truth.

“Oh, what a coward I am, and what a fool!  Only when I have the courage fully to look, clearly to know myself—even the evil of myself—will I admit my need for healing.  But If I look away from her whom I have hurt, I have also turned away from her who might forgive me.  I reject the very source of my healing.”

In the ancient baptismal rite of the early church, before descending into the waters, candidates turned their faces to the West and proclaimed their rejection of all the forces of evil, the devil and all his empty promises.  Then, turning eastward, they entered into the waters of rebirth and were washed in the name of the Triune God and given new names to match their new identity.  Emerging from the pool, fragrant with oil and wrapped in the white robe of Christ’s righteousness, they were ushered into the community for their first Eucharistic feast.  It was an experience that helped to recast their lives, to form them and to graft them unto Christ the Vine.  These profound symbols and actions helped bind the newly baptized to their new way of being in the world, a way toward which the world was deeply hostile.  These same symbols still call to us, forming the core of our identity as Christians in this 21^st century.

Before we can say YES to God, we must say NO to all that would separate us from God—from within and without. The journey of Lent is, in part, about gazing into that mirror.  But that’s not its only purpose.  If we come away from this Lenten sojourn knowing only what is wrong with us, only beating our breasts in shame and sorrow, then the season will be incomplete and, finally, of little value.  The grace of this season is that this is not the only thing the mirror shows us.  Gazing into the mirror with Christ there beside us, we see the tremendous truth of his grace and forgiveness.  His self-emptying on the cross shows in fullest measure the lengths God is willing to go to embrace this errant race and turn us toward healing.  His resurrection affirms the truth that death and decay will not have the final word; that transformation is God’s ultimate goal.

As we look into the mirror this season provides, we look with an honesty born of the cross and a hope born of the resurrection.  And through this lens we see more than our shortcomings and needs—we see our gifts and our vocation.  We live toward the promise that “when anyone is in Christ there is a new creation…and everything has become new.” (2 Cor. 5:17)  This is our journey.  What a profound privilege that we can make it together.

With you on the way.

Pastor Erik

Beloved in the Lord,

Something strange caught my eye as I approached the water’s edge at Lincoln Park last month.  One hundred yards down the shore I saw what looked like a man walking parallel to the beach in chest deep water.  Was he in distress? Was he coming to the aid of someone or something else—man or beast—that I couldn’t see?  Was he some latter day Moses seeking a way to cross the sound?  Did he require rescue?  My mind raced through a dozen scenarios that might explain why someone would be wading in Puget Sound on a sub-40 degree January day. The polar bear plungers had done their thing on New Year’s Day—most of them dashing into the water and then out again in a matter of seconds.  But this guy (yes, I could see now he was a guy) seemed in no hurry whatsoever as he walked steadily further away from me in no apparent distress. Convinced that no action on my part was required (thank goodness!), my caution turned to curiosity and I simply watched him.

A few minutes later he turned and headed for shore, and then, when he hit land, began jogging on the path in my direction wearing only a t-shirt, shorts and running shoes—and, oh yes, he wore a smile on his face, too.  As he headed for the men’s bathroom, I turned to follow him—I had to find out what made this guy tick!

YOU DO THAT OFTEN? I asked him, trying to sound nonchalant as we stood in the restroom taking care of business. ABOUT ONCE A MONTH, he said; and before I could get out another question, he was out of the restroom and gone.

Since that encounter 10 days ago, I’ve been wondering what could explain how wading in water in the middle of winter brought this man such deep satisfaction.

As we begin the season of Lent this month, we hear God’s summons to Wade in the Water of baptism.  Each year, with ashes on our forehead, we respond to God’s call to return again to the basics of our spiritual lives:  to the covenant God made with us in baptism; to an acknowledgment of our earthbound existence; to the practices of prayer and fasting and acts of love and generosity which lead us back to the core of who we are and why we’re here.  The loss of four Peace elders in the first month of this year drives the truth home: dust you are, and to dust you shall return.  How, then, shall we live?  I didn’t talk long enough with the man who waded in the water of Puget Sound to find out if he was a Christian or not, but the scene of him wading there has become a new and powerful image of the baptized life—complete with smile.

Preaching to new converts preparing for baptism, 4th century Bishop Maximus tells them:

“In the baptism of the Savior the blessing which flowed down like a spiritual stream touched the outpouring of every flood and the course of every stream.  We must be baptized by the same stream as the Savior was. But in order to be dipped in the same water, we do not require the regions of the East nor the river in Jewish lands, for now Christ is everywhere and the Jordan is everywhere. The same consecration that blessed the rivers of the East sanctifies the waters of the West. Thus even if perchance a river should have some other name in this world, there is in it nonetheless the mystery of the Jordan.”

Waters threaten death and bring life. They protect us in our mothers’ wombs and then bear us out into the world. They are full of danger and full of promise.

We in the Northwest are fortunate to have plentiful water resources. When I look west on clear days and see the snow pack on the Olympics I breathe a sigh of relief.  The Earth Summit event I attended recently affirmed again that in years to come, as water resources become more and more precious, the bountiful waters of this region will draw people here as never before.  But the quantity of water isn’t the only issue. The quality of these waters, and how they support life that’s also at stake.  What St. Maximus knew in the 4th century we are coming to see now in a new way, that the waters of the Jordan—full of danger, full of promise—make all waters holy, all streams sacred, and protecting the water that fills our font and the fonts of every Christian community around the world is the vocation of every Christian congregation and community wherever they may be.

Like the man I saw in the waters of the Sound, we too are drawn, by the Spirit’s call, to wade in the waters and find our lives reinvigorated and renewed.  Our baptism isn’t something that just happened to happen to us at one time in our lives; it’s the core of who we are and whose we are now.  When Jesus was baptized, the Holy Spirit affirmed his identity as a beloved son of God and then sent him on his mission to the world.  That mission took him first through the wilderness, a 40 days sojourn that shaped his public ministry in profound ways.  Now, once again, it’s our turn. 

The water that touched us—and touches us still—is that same water, and every day, every moment it blesses our lives by calling us back to remind us who we are. Once we pass through these waters, our lives cannot remain the same, for to wade in baptismal water is to answer God’s invitation to go deep with Jesus Christ.  And when we wade in those baptismal waters, we never wade alone. Christ wades in the water with us, and gives us a name and a destiny and a community to surround us and to buoy us up when we get in above our heads.  Trusting this promise, we journey together once more.

Pastor Erik