November 16, 2025: Original Meaning of Isaiah's “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

The strong one is not the one who overcomes others by force, but the one who controls themselves when angry.”

Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), Sahih al-Bukhari 

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness, on them light has shined.

Isaiah 9:2

All of our sacred traditions whisper the same truth: the measure of a life well-lived is not what we own, but how we belong. 

This reading provides the first glimpse of our forthcoming Advent. 

If last week's Amos is the roar, Isaiah is the dawn.

Where Amos shakes the gates with divine urgency, Isaiah opens them to reveal what comes after repentance, which, by another name, is renewal. The roar that once shattered complacency now gives way to the sound of a quiet and radiant light. Both prophets speak to a God who will support humanity. The roar was never meant to destroy, but meant to awaken. And once the people awaken, the light appears.

Isaiah, too, speaks to a people bruised by empire, exiled by greed and war. He knows what it is to walk in darkness. He speaks of political darkness and social darkness He articulates the kind of despair that seeps into the bones of a nation. Yet into this darkness, he dares to announce a birth.

A child.

A fragile sign of divine possibility. The “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

This is not the language of conquest but of re-creation. The light that dawns in Isaiah’s vision does not come from palaces or armies; it shines through the most vulnerable, a child, a promise, a hope yet to be realized. If Amos exposes our systems of injustice, Isaiah imagines what healed systems could look like. The two prophets stand together: one calling us to repentance, the other calling us to hope.

Isaiah’s words invite us to believe that peace is not passive. Restoring righteousness and justice is the active work of rebuilding what injustice has broken. The “great light” is not simply divine comfort; it is divine calling. It asks us to live as children of that light, building communities where truth and mercy meet, and where leadership reflects compassion rather than control.

When Isaiah proclaims that “the yoke of their burden, the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor” will be broken, we can hear the echo of Amos’s demand for justice in the gate. God’s dream for the world is consistent: liberation, equity, flourishing life for all people. The difference is that Isaiah shows us the form that dream will take. These words envision a government of peace, an order built on righteousness. The roar of God becomes a lullaby of restoration.

In our time, when violence and division seem unrelenting, Isaiah’s vision reminds us that God’s response to human cruelty is not greater force but deeper love. The divine answer to oppression is incarnation where God enters our fragility, dwelling among us and bringing light into our particular darkness.

As a community of faith, Creator's task is to live between Amos’s roar and Isaiah’s dawn. We strain to hear the urgency of justice and embody the gentleness of peace. We protest systems that crush the poor and, at the same time, we nurture spaces where new life can grow. We celebrated that new life this Sunday at the Harvest Party. We are coming into Advent and Advent people live in that tension. We are both the ones awakened by the roar and the ones walking toward the light.

The church, when it behaves like the ecclesia, holds these two prophets in creative balance. We cry out with Amos: “Let justice roll down like waters!” And we sing with Isaiah: “For unto us a child is born.” The roar and the lullaby are not opposites; they are movements of the same divine melody, justice and mercy meeting in perfect harmony.

What I heard for the first time at our Wednesday Bible study is the style of this Isaiah 9 text echoes royal enthronement proclamations that were common across the ancient Near East, including Egypt. In Egypt and Mesopotamia, when a new king was crowned. Scribes often composed hymns or oracles praising the birth or installation of that king as a divine gift who would bring peace and order after chaos, be called by divine titles, and embody divine wisdom or justice.

For example, in Egyptian coronation hymns, Pharaoh was called “Son of Re,” “Lord of Truth,” “Bringer of Order”. All these are divine-sounding titles similar in tone to “Mighty God” and “Prince of Peace.” Also, the birth stories of kings in Egypt (like that of Hatshepsut or Amenhotep III) presented the ruler as miraculously begotten by a god to restore cosmic harmony (ma’at).

I felt the Christian filter slip away, so fundamental to how I interpreted the Advent words of “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”. Today, the original significance of these Isaiah acclamations was revealed to me for the first time. This is fitting while I discover each deeper implication involved in all the Biblical teaching of "No Kings" as it permeates and persists throughout every book of scripture.   

November 9, 2025: Amos: Building a Community of Justice and Beloved Belonging

The book of Amos opens with a thunderclap:

“The Lord roars from Zion.” 

Amos 1:2

Sermon

This image of a roaring God is not one of quiet comfort but of divine urgency. Amos, a shepherd and dresser of sycamore trees, steps out of obscurity with a prophetic message that shakes the complacent hearts of Israel’s privileged. 

The roar from Zion is not a sound of destruction for destruction’s sake. This roar is a response to humanity's wail. These words echo the cry of a God who will not remain silent in the face of exploitation and indifference. God’s voice, fierce as a lion’s, calls a community that has lost its moral bearings back to the covenant of justice and mercy.

Amos 5:14–15 moves from judgment to invitation:

“Seek good and not evil, that you may live… Hate evil and love good, and establish justice in the gate.”

Here, “the gate” refers to the center of public life. This is the place where decisions are made are enacted. For Amos, justice is not an abstract ideal or a personal virtue; it is a public practice. It lives or dies in the way a community treats its most vulnerable members. To “seek good” is to align one’s daily life with God’s dream for the world, to let love shape our politics, our economics, and our relationships.

Then comes the thunderous heart of the book:

“I hate, I despise your festivals… take away from me the noise of your songs… But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”

Amos 5:21–24

These are among the most radical words in Scripture. They reveal a God who refuses empty worship. God does not need songs without substance or prayers without compassion. In Amos’s vision, authentic worship is inseparable from social justice. The temple liturgy is judged not by its beauty but by its fruits: do the poor eat? Do the widows have shelter? Do the marginalized find dignity? If not, even the most glorious hymn becomes noise in God’s ears. Once again, as SNAP benefits are at the heart of a national debate, this is a verse that feels very relevant to consider at this moment.

Amos’s voice roars across the centuries. It reminds us that faith cannot retreat into private spirituality or polite charity. The prophet calls us into the hard, holy work of transforming the structures that perpetuate inequality. Justice is not a project for a few activists; it is the lifeblood of a community we are all struggling for that dares to embody God’s love in public.

When Amos declares, “Seek good and not evil, that you may live,” he is pointing us toward abundant life, not merely an existential survival, but communal flourishing. God’s vision is not punitive but restorative: to create a society where everyone belongs, where peace and fairness flow like an endless river.

The task before us, then, is both spiritual and systemic. To pray is to act; to worship is to work for change. Every community of faith is called to become a “justice gate”. We long for a place where decisions honor human dignity. When will the poor be lifted up? When will mercy and righteousness embrace?

When the Church behaves like the ecclesia, it remembers that it doesn’t exist for itself. It exists for the sake of the world God loves. To “behave like the ecclesia” means: To gather as one body, listen to the Spirit, live out the teachings of Jesus, practice radical love and justice, and go forth to heal a broken world — until all creation is reconciled in Christ. 

The word ecclesia (Greek: ἐκκλησία) literally means “the called-out assembly.” In the New Testament, it refers not to a building or institution, but to the gathered people of God, those called out from the world to live as the Body of Christ in the world. 

May we, like Amos, hear the roar of divine compassion in our own time.
May we let that roar awaken us to the truth that the holiest offering we can bring to God is not merely incense or song, but a people living together in righteousness and justice that flows without end.

November 7, 2025: Christa Hoven Memorial

 

Bach Arioso From Cantata no 156 Performed by Christa
https://youtu.be/jM0_LWcOBq0

Christa Hoven performs To Spring, Op. 43, No. 6 : Edvard Grieg

https://youtu.be/qNgzSp4GBqo

Eulogy - Brian, Tina, Nicole

Opening Prayer: selected by Christa Gabrielle reads

Remembrance/ Slideshow Music by Christa
Christa Hoven performs Claire de Lune by Debussy

 https://youtu.be/9ijJHV6Bck8

Scripture Reading: 

First Reading: Romans 8:38-39 & Psalm 23 Amy reads

Gospel Acclamation: R&A Gospel Acclamation: All Souls (Melody)

John 14:1-4

Homily

Hymn of the day: Music video by Christa
Christa Hoven performs Edvard Grieg - Wedding Day at Troldhaugen
https://youtu.be/S7um14M2QeU

Prayers of the people 

Lord's Prayer

Music by Christa
Christa Hoven performs Cantabile in B Minor, from Sonata, Wq.553 : Bach
https://youtu.be/FqwyVv4Orhs

PRAYER OF COMMENDATION 

Sending song:  Music by Christa
Christa Hoven performs Piano Sonata No. 13 In A Major, Op. 120, D. 664 - II. Andante : Schubert

https://youtu.be/CBEXNYJ0noA

November 2, 2025: All Saints Day: Restoring Humanity through Christ, Who Fills All In All

Our dead are never dead until we have forgotten them. 

George Elliott  

Sermon 

Ephesians 1:11–23 opens with a declaration of inheritance, which is not written in the language of property or privilege, but in the language of purpose. “In Christ we have obtained an inheritance so that we might live for the praise of God’s glory.” This isn’t about securing our place in heaven or claiming ownership over grace. This is about discovering that we already belong. We belong to one another and to God.

This passage invites us to imagine “inheritance” not as exclusion but as participation. God’s plan is "to gather up all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth.” The universe is being drawn together, not divided. God’s dream isn't a gated kingdom. It is a healed cosmos.

When Paul prays that the “eyes of your heart may be enlightened,” he reminds us that faith is not blind assent but, rather, a kind of seeing. Enlightened hearts see through systems of domination, nationalism, and fear. Enlightened hearts recognize the divine image in strangers, refugees, and those our culture often overlooks. Enlightened hearts see that God’s power, “immeasurable and great,” is not the power of conquest but the power of resurrection and of life rising again where death once ruled.

The power that raised Jesus from the dead and “seated him at God’s right hand” is the same power now animating the body of Christ here, as St. Teresa of Avila observed, in the church.  Our church cannot be confined to steeples or denominations. In a world torn by greed and violence, the church becomes every community that lives resurrection in defiance of despair. It is every act of hospitality that interrupts exclusion, every movement that lifts the lowly, every table where love breaks bread with justice.

When Paul describes Christ as “the head over all things for the church,” it is not to crown a monarch but to describe the heartbeat of a living body and “the fullness of him who fills all in all.” The life of God is pulsing through creation, still filling and still uniting. We are always called to live as if heaven and earth are already being reconciled in love.

This call is not naïve optimism. It is the daring conviction that love is the deepest law of the universe in the tension of history and the understanding of resurrection as a power constantly at work. Hope is not waiting for heaven to come; it is joining God in making heaven visible here.

One of our group members helps recipients navigate the SNAP program.We prayed that her work would be less painful. We found out today that Tina Kotek, the Governor of Oregon, is directing $5 million in state funds to support the state’s food-bank network and has declared a 60-day food security emergency so that food assistance can be coordinated while federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits are likely to be paused during the federal government shutdown   

Many local restaurants are also helping out. For example, Nan’s Taqueria (Happy Valley) has committed to feeding people affected by the SNAP suspension “no questions asked.” It is gratifying to have community solidarity and local efforts in place to provide for needs when the federal safety net is interrupted. 

This Sunday Creator celebrates All Saints' Day. In traditions around the world, from Samhain to Día de los Muertos, this is the time of year when the veil between the living and the dead is said to be at its thinnest. In ancient Celtic spirituality, it was believed that ancestors could walk among us during this liminal moment, offering guidance, warnings, blessings. In Christian practice, All Souls Day became a time to pray for those who have died. In many Indigenous cultures, this is a season of honoring the wisdom of the elders, the spirits of the land, and the continuity of life beyond death.

I remembered those Creator members who have passed recently Shirley Peterson, Scott Mattox and, most recently, Christa Hoven. who passed away on November 3rd, the day after her 88th birthday. I have a very vivid memory of her at a German-themed party after worship when we were celebrating Pastor Michelle's final service at Creator. The party was planned by congregation members, and the food and festivities were wonderful 

Christa played accordion and piano. The congregation sang German songs with her Tom with his Lederhosen and Bundhosen, and Katie in her Dirndl, danced in their traditional Tracht German costumes. People enjoyed the grilled bratwurst, sauerkraut, potato salad, root beer (of course!) , and a variety of available desserts. I also remember reading her book about her life in Germany during World War II with great curiosity and interest.

Perhaps this year, we feel that veil more tangibly than ever.  May the eyes of everyone's hearts be opened to the inheritance we share. In the end this passage makes me want to hear God's call and see through the power of Christ, who fills all in all.

October 26, 2025: God's Presence in Cloud and Fire

Josh Stromberg-Wojcik preached today about Solomon fulfilling his father David’s dream: to build a house where God’s name may dwell. 

Josh preachied that the construction and dedication of the Temple marked a transition, from a God who moves in a pillar of cloud and fire to a God who chooses to dwell in a house among the people.

When the ark is brought in, the text says:

“The cloud filled the house of the Lord, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud; for the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord.” (1 Kings 8:10–11)

The same divine presence that had led Israel through the wilderness now settles, thick and luminous, within the walls of stone and cedar. God’s movement and God’s mystery remain, but now they inhabit the heart of community life.

In Exodus, the pillar of cloud by day and fire by night is the first theology lesson for a people just liberated. It teaches that God accompanies even when the road is uncertain. Despite what we might assume, God's presence transforms danger into direction. What Josh suggested with these parallel Exodus passages was that Light and darkness are not opposites in God’s hands, but interwoven expressions of divine care, even when God's particular response can be unexpected.

in Exodus, God dwells in the “thick darkness” on Sinai (Exodus 20:21). and, in the Red Sea story, the cloud even becomes a paradoxical sign:

“The cloud was there in the darkness, and it lit up the night” (Exodus 14:20). 

Light within darkness, not apart from it. Later, in Exodus 40, the cloud fills the completed Tabernacle, the portable sanctuary, foreshadowing the later Temple scene in 1 Kings 8. Both moments mark a dwelling of divine presence, a resting of glory that both conceals and reveals.

Stromberg-Wojcik reminded us throughout Scripture, light often represents revelation, guidance, and hope; darkness can signify mystery, unknowing, or oppression but the Bible’s portrayal of “darkness” is not always negative, it’s often where God hides to heal, After all in Genesis 1, God speaks into darkness to bring forth light, but the darkness is not destroyed. Also, the darkness brought to Josh's mind a seed planted in dark, fertile soil containing its mystery of new life

This is why in 1 Kings 8:12, Solomon says: “The Lord has said that he would dwell in thick darkness.” Darkness, then, becomes the womb of revelation, not its enemy. The cloud that conceals is the same presence that comforts.

Stomberg-Wojak's sermon also brought up light and shadow as seen in the American church, which reminded me of reading Lenny Duncan's Dear Church

In his book Lenny Duncan, a Black Lutheran pastor and prophetic voice, confronts the church’s tendency to claim “light” while ignoring its complicity in systems of racism and exclusion. He calls the ELCA, and the wider white church to confess that “our light has cast shadows.”

In Dear Church, Duncan invites us to redeem darkness, not as evil, but as the place where truth is uncovered, where marginalized voices, so often dismissed as “too angry” or “too radical,” speak with the clarity that light sometimes blinds us to. In his sermon, he admitted to wrestling with that understanding.

Ducan asks: What if the church stopped equating whiteness with light, and instead allowed the Spirit to dwell in the thick cloud of God’s transforming mystery? This could be the same cloud that filled the Tabernacle and Temple. 

Recording of Today's Sermon

 

October 22, 2025 - Looking forward to Reformation Sunday: After a "No Kings" Weekend

Reading: 1 Kings 5:1–5; 8:1–13

In 1 Kings 5, Solomon begins building a temple “for the name of the Lord my God.” It is a project of immense ambition, stone by stone, cedar by cedar, the dream of a permanent dwelling for the Holy One who journeyed with Israel through wilderness and exile. 

Yet when the temple is finally complete and the Ark is brought inside (1 Kings 8), a cloud descends. The priests cannot stand to minister, for the glory of God fills the house. The moment of triumph is also a moment of holy interruption. The presence of God eclipses the power of kings.

This text meets our own moment with piercing clarity. Don't we always desire a king? When we find a leader we want to follow, isn't the temptation to think of him as king?

 For Christians, we want to make Jesus a king. Even though, starting with John 6:15, when the crowd wants to “take him by force to make him king,” Jesus withdraws to a mountain alone. And in Luke 17:20, when asked about the kingdom, he says, “The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed… For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.” Also in Mark 10:42-45 he tells his disciples, “The rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them… but it shall not be so among you. Whoever wishes to be first must be a slave of all.” 

In Portland, protesters gather beneath the banner “No Kings.” The cry is not anarchic; it is theological. It names the truth that divine presence cannot be possessed by empire or enthroned in human institutions. When the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals considers the Trump administration’s attempt to deploy the National Guard to our city this week, it is not merely a legal action. It is, in its own way, a moral pause, a reminder that peace cannot be manufactured through militarization, and that the rule of law must bend toward the rule of justice.

As to God dwells in the cloud that descends, when the winds rise and the sky darkens, our first instinct is often to seek shelter, to run from the storm. Yet in Scripture, dark clouds and the storm are sometimes the very place where God chooses to speak.

When Job demanded answers, God’s voice came out of the whirlwind (Job 38:1). When Moses met the Holy One on Sinai, the mountain shook, cloaked in cloud and thunder (Exodus 19). The God of the storm is not a destroyer, but a revealer. In the whirlwind, old certainties are swept away. In the thunder, false gods of power and control are drowned out. The dark cloud becomes both veil and revelation, hiding what we cannot bear, revealing what we most need to know: that God is not absent in darkness and turmoil, but deeply, fiercely present.

Our scriptures remind us that the line between temple and throne has always been fragile. Solomon built a house for God, but the monarchy that surrounded it grew corrupt. Power hardened into entitlement, and worship became ceremony without compassion. The prophets would later cry out that God desired mercy, not sacrifice, that the living God was not contained in any house of cedar or system of control.

The “No Kings” protest echoes those prophetic cries. It refuses to bow before the idols of nationalism and cruelty disguised as order. It insists that true authority belongs to the God who sides with the poor, who shelters the unhoused, and who weeps in the tear gas of Portland’s streets.

Sixteen days into a government shutdown, the air is thick with blame and despair. Those with power wield cruelty as policy and call it governance. Yet as Paul Tillich reminds us, the opposite of faith is not doubt, it is despair. To have faith in this season is to refuse despair’s logic. It is to claim the courage to be, to act, to speak, to love, to protest, as though another world is possible.

The theologian Dorothee Sölle called that courage “suffering with”, standing in deep solidarity with those who bear the brunt of systemic violence. God is not distant from such suffering. God is in the breadlines and jail cells, in the parks and protest marches, in the hearts of those who dare to say “No Kings” because they believe in a kingdom of justice and peace.

We are being asked now: Will we be content to worship in temples built by fear and fortified by force? Or will we, like Solomon before the cloud, fall silent before a presence that refuses to be contained, a presence that calls us out of comfort and into communion?

The Spirit still fills the house, but not the house of kings. The Spirit fills the house of the people, those who hunger for mercy, who work for justice, who stand against cruelty as a matter of faith.

To believe in God, in this moment, is to believe that what we do for the least among us matters infinitely.

While celebrating this Reformation Sunday, let's remember not only Luther’s hammer and theses but also the Spirit’s ongoing protest in our own time. Let us remember that “reformation” is not a day in October but a posture of the soul, open to repentance, resistance, and renewal. I keep in mind that every act of mercy, every march for justice, every refusal to bow to tyranny is a confession of faith:  
 

The presence still moves while the "cloud" still descends. The reign of God inevitably has no king.

October 22, 2025 - This Week's "Life Together" Reading & Trump’s Confession as an Unexpected Cracking of the Mask

Bonhoeffer on Confession: The Truth that Frees

In Life Together, Bonhoeffer insists that confession is not a private, sentimental ritual but a radical act of truth-telling, “the breaking through to community.” For him, sin isolates us, and secrecy keeps us alone. True confession means coming into the light, where grace can finally do its work. Bonhoeffer writes:

“In confession, the breakthrough to community takes place. Sin demands to have a man by himself. It withdraws him from the community. The more isolated a person is, the more destructive will be the power of sin over him.”

Bonhoeffer sees confession as the opposite of performance. It is not an act of pious display but of surrender. We do not justify ourselves before others or God; we simply stand in truth and receive mercy. In that mutual humility, community becomes real, not based on shared image or ideology, but on shared grace.

When Donald Trump says he is not sure whether he will go to heaven, it is startling. The man who once claimed he doesn’t “bring God into that picture” and said he had never asked for forgiveness admits uncertainty about his ultimate standing before God.

In one sense, this may be a rare, even grace-filled moment: a crack in the facade of self-assurance. Bonhoeffer might recognize this as the first movement toward truth, a painful but necessary awareness that we cannot secure our own righteousness.

But Bonhoeffer would also warn that confession cannot stop at vague unease. To confess “I am not sure I’ll go to heaven” without also confessing why, without naming sin, without seeking grace, without opening oneself to accountability, remains incomplete. It is awareness without transformation, self-consciousness without surrender.

Bonhoeffer’s vision calls the Christian community to a very different posture than our celebrity-driven culture. The church’s task is not to judge or to gawk at confession, but to become the place where truth can be spoken safely, where even the powerful can kneel without humiliation, and even the forgotten can rise without shame.

If Trump’s admission were met not with mockery or political commentary but with the genuine invitation to confession, it could be the beginning of something real, not only for him, but for a nation addicted to image and denial. Bonhoeffer would say: only when we cease pretending to be righteous can we truly be healed together.

Trump's honesty that he does not feel heaven-bound highlights something I felt about confession when I was reading and reflecting on this chapter. I do not have a background in confession other than the public confession in suburban Lutheran liturgies. Bonhoeffer advocates for confessing partners to personalize confession. There are components he mentions that intrigue me, although I can imagine the struggle with piety he outlines, together with the fear and reluctance to reveal too much.   

Bonhoeffer closes Life Together with communion, the shared meal that follows honest confession. It is the sign that grace has triumphed over secrecy. The table is where the forgiven gather, not the flawless.

Trump’s uncertainty about heaven echoes something all of us must face: that assurance is not found in self-confidence or moral score-keeping, but in the mercy of God made known in community.

To stand before God, uncertain yet honest, may be closer to the kingdom than to stand self-assured and untouched by grace.

“He who is alone with his sin is utterly alone,” Bonhoeffer wrote. But he also knew:“He who confesses his sin in the presence of a brother knows that he is no longer alone; he experiences the presence of God in the reality of the other person.”