April 2, 2926 The Easter Triduum (or Sacred Triduum) Maundy Thursday - Mandatum Novum

Maundy Thursday always begins at the table and never stays there 

Last year I remember Pastor Emillie gave us a poem by a favorite poet of hers, Jan Richardson. It is called Circle of Grace and captures a very particular, special piece of communion that often eludes us, and it is worth talking about on this day when we commemorate that first table. 

 Blessing the Bread, the Cup
Let us bless the bread that gives itself to us
with its terrible weight, its infinite grace.

Let us bless the cup poured out for us
with a love that makes us anew.
Let us gather around these gifts
simply given and deeply blessed.
And let us go bearing the bread, carrying the cup,
laying the table within a hungering world.

Jan Richardson’s blessing names what we are almost afraid to say aloud: the bread comes to us with a terrible weight and an infinite grace. It is not light, sentimental fellowship. It is a costly presence. This is a table already leaning toward the cross.

And yet, year after year in your reflections, what emerges most powerfully is how the table keeps reappearing as more than a ritual of remembering, but as a living, contested space.

At Creator, that space is reclaimed in small, embodied ways: hands offering bread to one another, water poured over tired feet, scripture spoken in many voices instead of one. These are not just liturgical choices; they are theological claims. They say that the commandment, mandatum novum, is not an idea to be admired but an action to be practiced. Love must take on weight. It must kneel. It must touch.

And perhaps nowhere is that clearer than in the question that keeps echoing through all the Maundy Thrusdays I have experienced. Did Jesus wash Judas’ feet?

Scholars can debate the textual history of John’s Gospel, but the deeper question is not historical. For me this question is spiritual. If the love revealed at the table excludes the betrayer, then it is no longer the love that goes to the cross. The logic of Maundy Thursday collapses unless it includes the one who will walk out into the night.

Add to this the basin and towel, which become more than symbols. They become a crisis of recognition. Who is still at the table that I might prefer to exclude?
Whose feet would I quietly pass over?

Because there are other tables being built; louder, more public ones, where the language of faith is fused with power, identity, and exclusion. Bibles wrapped in flags. Accusations hurled in the name of righteousness. Claims of persecution that echo the story of Jesus while bypassing its substance.

Here Maundy Thursday becomes clarifying.

Jesus does not seize power. He does not weaponize scripture or call down judgment; he kneels in service. Most strikingly, he offers no promise of retribution to his followers. Pastor Steve reminded us that victory over enemies comes in renewed fellowship. The risen Christ is recognized not in domination, but in the breaking of bread.

That is the quiet revolution of this night.

It exposes how easily the table can be distorted into a boundary marker, who is in, who is out, who is pure, who is condemned. And it calls the church back to something far more demanding: a table that is carried into a hungering world, not guarded against it.

This is why the stripping of the altar remains such a powerful counterpoint. Everything is taken away, ornament, certainty, even the sense of presence. What remains is absence, vulnerability, and a question: What, of all we have built, truly belongs to the love Jesus commanded?

We are living that question in real time, especially in this season of transition, of calling new leadership, of discerning what to keep and what to release. In that sense, Maundy Thursday is not just a remembrance. It is a diagnosis revealing what is essential.

And perhaps that is where Richardson’s blessing lands most deeply:

Let us go bearing the bread, carrying the cup,
laying the table within a hungering world.

Not defending it. Not branding it, but bearing it as something fragile, costly, and alive. Because the truest sign that we have understood Maundy Thursday is not what happens at the altar. It is whether, when we rise from the table, we are willing to kneel.

Tonight's Maundy Thursday service reminded me of how much Creator worship has changed our worship over the years and what we still bring to services we feel is important. Susan provided beautiful banners behind the altar. Steve  and Claudia brought a pitcher and basin as a visual aid to remember foot washing. Pastor Emillie put together a liturgy meaningful to her and the congregation. Bill added to the reverence of the night with his inspired playing. 

This is a reflection of the love Jesus commanded. 

Service Recording 

March 29, 2026 Palm Sunday 2026 John 12:14-27 Triumphal Entry

What struck me about this Palm Sunday liturgy is not just what was said, but the movement of the soul that was embodied. It journeyed through the arc of John 12: from celebration to surrender, from “Hosanna” to the shadow of the cross.

This was a joyful, festive, and engaging worship. Amy Vanacore played "I will Enter His Gates/He has Made Glad and communicated the true joy in that piece. The acclamation, “Blessed is the one who comes…” placed the congregation inside the crowd of Jesus Christ’s triumphal entry in the Procession. Simultaneously, the language subtly resists triumphalism. 

This was not the victory of the empire. The line “not with the power of empire, but in humility” did theological work here by dismantling expectations. We were invited to confront a paradox: the King arrives not on a warhorse, but on a donkey; ultimately to be crucified.

That paradox intensified through the structure. The palms were raised, symbols of victory, but they were already being reinterpreted.  Not just celebratory branches; they became expressions of participation. We prayed: “May we also…follow Him in the way that leads to eternal life.” In other words, the congregation not only remembered Palm Sunday, but we consented to walk it.

Our Land Acknowledgement in this service grounded this enactment of the cosmic drama in a particular moral reality. We proclaimed implications for justice, history, and our relationship to land. The mention of the Clackamas, Kalapuyan, Molallan, and Upper Chinookan peoples quietly aligned with the earlier claim: this is a kingdom “shaped by justice, mercy, and sacrificial love.” Those gathered collectively refused to separate worship from ethical responsibility.

Lasans Kanneh was another guest musician today that led the congregation in the chorus of Lord, Listen to Your Children Praying while he added powerful, testimonial verses with rich, resonant drumming/ Everything contributed to the heartbeat of the song.

Psalm 24 was especially meaningful. “Lift up your heads, O gates!” becomes more than poetry; it becomes a kind of spiritual architecture. The “gates” felt not only Jerusalem’s gates, but also spoke to our human hearts being lifed. Who can receive this King? Only those with “clean hands and pure hearts.” The liturgy firmly asked: Are you ready for the kind of King who is coming? That question will take us through this coming Holy Week.

And then the Gospel reading turned everything. When Jesus Christ says, “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies…”, the entire emotional register shifted. Palm Sunday here refused sentimentality. It insisted that glory is inseparable from death, that life comes through loss. This was the theological hinge of the service. The crowd’s enthusiasm is real, but incomplete. Only later, as John says, do they understand.

Lasana performed at this point Blessed Assurance with a steady confidence in what the song proclaims, He always adds to this song and infuses the congregation's vocals with that same rock-steady certainty.  

The Iona Community Creed added another deeply meaningful layer, framing belief not as abstract doctrine but as a lived commitment to a God who "offended many". This is our Palm Sunday belief. We are not simply providing passive admiration, but are actively participating in a disruptive, world-reordering love.

The prayers of the people widen the scope even further. from the individual heart to the entire cosmos. Creation itself is gathered “around the cross.” What began on a dusty road into Jerusalem culminated in something cosmic, nothing less than the healing of all creation.

And then, in the Eucharist, everything converged. He who was welcomed with palms becomes the one who is broken and given. The joyful procession leads, inevitably, to the table, and beyond the table, to the cross.

So the deep meaning of this liturgy is this: It teaches the congregation how to hold two truths at once. This service once again affirmed that the journey does not end at the cross. It continues outward, into the lives of the people.

There is the tension of paradox. Hosanna and death, glory and surrender, the table becomes a place not needing to be resolved but received. The same Jesus Christ who entered Jerusalem in humility now gives himself in humility again. physically and personally.

Then came the final, almost startling turn: Siyahamba – We Are Marching in the Light of God. which Lasana rehearsed the congregation through singing the African lyrics.   

Everything about movement became embodied in a new way. The liturgy began with a procession into Jerusalem; it ends with a procession out into the world. The palms recalled ancient footsteps. The congregation became the crowd, which became a people on the move.

The Sending Song. Siyahamba was not only a reflective hymn; it is a march. It carries echoes of struggle, liberation, and communal hope. In that sense, it answers the earlier theological claim that this kingdom is not one of empire. It is a different kind of movement altogether, one shaped by light, not domination; by shared journey, not imposed power.

The procession that began in Jerusalem never stops. Palm Sunday is always a revelation. The same voices that cry “Blessed is he” are being prepared to follow him into places where blessing looks like loss, where kingship looks like sacrifice, and where, somehow, death opens into resurrection.

And perhaps, most moving, the service insists we are in this story.

 

A History of Palm/Passion Sundays - High Points / Low Points Remembered In One Service

This special post honors the twentieth anniversary of the Creator blog. The first Creator blog post was written on March 29, 2006 Palm Sunday. Click the Holy Week - First Blog link on the right to see the entire 2006 Holy Week's posts.

Creator, like many congregations, often celebrates either Palm or Passion Sunday or Palm/Passion Sunday together on the same day. Palm/Passion Sundays together carry very different tones and purposes. The contrast is intentional, drawing us from celebration into suffering and are the most harrowing in the wild swing of emotions the congregation can experience.

On Palm Sunday celebrations, we lift our palm branches, wave them in the air like a forest bending toward one man. and lay them down reverently when we enter. We cry Hosanna without hesitation, as if we have always known what we meant by it. Palm Sunday is joyous, everything feels clear: God comes near and is recognized. Or at least, we think we do.

We welcome a king, but what kind of king? Is Jesus bringing everyone victory? Is he a restorer of order? Will he take what is broken and make it right in ways we can understand? The palms in our hands are not only symbols of praise; they are also our quiet declarations of expectation. 'Save us', we say, but have already decided what salvation looks like. This is a king like no other, and the truth of what the "Jesus way" offers can suddenly inspire or elude us. We arrive at the Passion Sunday piece.

The tone shifts, and usually the dual liturgy turns. The story deepens. What began in procession becomes confrontation. What sounded like praise begins to echo with accusation. By the time we are in the midst of a dramatic reading of the Passion, we are no longer standing at the roadside. We have been pulled into the crowd. Now we are given lines to speak as the crowd, we call out "Crucify him".

It is unsettling. We do not leave the crowd behind; we become it. The same voices that welcomed now reject. The same mouths that cried Hosanna now form the words of death to the savior. Something within us resists this. We want to step back, to say: That was them, not us. Yet the liturgy suddenly will not allow us that distance.

On Passion Sunday, like Peter, we see how thin the line is between devotion and denial. How quickly love turns when it is not met on its own terms. The palms we carried so lightly that we have strewn across the sanctuary suddenly gain a new, unfamiliar meaning. How easily we follow Jesus until he refuses to be the kind of savior so many hope for.

Today reveals that we are not only those who welcome Christ, but also those who misunderstand him. The triumph we celebrated was real, but in the end, we judged it to be incomplete. It had not yet undergone the required suffering. It did not yet reckon with the cost of the kind of kingdom he promises.

And still, Jesus enters. He does not turn away from the crowd that turns on him. He does not withdraw the gift of himself when it is refused. He continues towards betrayal, towards judgment, and towards the cross.

There is a strange mercy captured in Palm/Passion Sunday. That Christ would accept our praise is one thing. Enduring rejection is another, but that he would hold both together, that he would receive the Hosanna and the Crucify from the same lips and still go on loving that is the mystery at the heart of this day.

Perhaps the only honest prayer left to us is not the triumphant Hosanna we began with, but something quieter, more uncertain:

Lord, save us even from ourselves.

March 22, 2026 John 19:1–16a Participating In A Respectable Silence

In this week's reading, Soren Kierkegaard wrote the most frightening character in the Gospel story is not the mob. It is Pilate acting as the reasonable, respectable man.

The soldiers mock Jesus, pressing a crowned wreath of thorns into his head and draping him in a purple robe. They laugh and strike him. Violence is ugly, but it is at least honest. Brutality rarely pretends to be virtue. Then comes the quieter moment.

Pontius Pilate steps out before the crowd and says something astonishing: “I find no case against him.” Pilate knows the truth as he understands it, and John's gospel makes this unmistakably clear. He questions Jesus. He sees the absurdity of the accusations. He recognizes the envy and fear that animate the priests. He even tries, halfheartedly, to release him.

Yet knowing the truth is not the same as standing in it. Pilate hesitates, and the crowd grows louder. The accusations sharpen. The political pressure closes in. The priests speak the words that reveal the real fear beneath the moment: “If you release this man, you are no friend of Caesar.”

Suddenly, the question is no longer about justice but about consequences. Rather than refuse the crowd, or simply not act. Pilate chooses the path that history has repeated countless times: the path of respectable surrender. He simply allows the machinery of power to move forward.

This is the tragedy of the Passion: evil rarely triumphs through monsters alone. It triumphs through the cooperation of ordinary, respectable people who know better.

Søren Kierkegaard wrote that the crowd before Pilate is untruth, but the greater danger may perhaps be the individual who dissolves himself into the crowd so that he never has to bear responsibility for what he knows. Pilate represents this temptation by being cautious and politically prudent, and so he becomes the perfect instrument of injustice. He chooses safety.

Yet the Gospel reveals something terrifying: Like Peter in last week's scripture, seeking personal safety becomes betrayal. Pilate sits on the judgment seat to judge Jesus. But in the strange reversal that runs through John’s Gospel, Pilate is being revealed. The one who claims authority is shown to be captive to the fragile stability of his position.

The truth stands before him, bruised and silent. Pilate lets Christ be crucified rather than insisting on his judgment. The question this passage asks must make every reader uncomfortable because it is so close to home. Most of us will not be asked to condemn an innocent man to death, but we will face smaller moments that carry the same shape. What is essentially at stake in these "smaller moments" is rarely clear. We don't have an omniscient narrator to give us a clue as to which way is right,

In those moments, we stand in the shadow of where Pilate stood. The Gospel does not ask whether we recognize the truth. Pilate does recognize innocence as truth. Pilate's dilemma for us would be to move forward with something we don't feel is right because it is easy to follow majority rules. The question actually is whether we will stand with innocence when that standing becomes costly.

For the Passion reveals today's painful paradox: that the greatest crimes in history can often required only one thing from us. 

Our silence.

Pastor Emillie's sermon 

March 17, 2026 St. Patrick's Day Prayer

 

St Patrick panel, The Millennium Window

St. Patrick’s Cathedral (Church of Ireland) 

A time to share St. Patrick’s breastplate, an old Irish prayer of protection, also called a “lorica,” attributed to the saint. We pray these ancient words today. Some sometimes invoke “Love,” instead of or in addition to “Christ.”

Christ with me,
Christ before me,
Christ behind me,
Christ in me,
Christ beneath me,
Christ above me,
Christ on my right,
Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down,
Christ when I sit down,
Christ when I arise,
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.

March 15 , 2026 John 18:28-40 The Hidden Roots of a Different Kind of Kingdom

Morning has come, but it is not the kind of morning that brings light.

Jesus is led from the house of Caiaphas to the Roman governor’s headquarters. The priests stop at the entrance. They will not enter the building because doing so would make them ritually unclean before Passover. They remain outside, careful to preserve their purity, while the One who is truly pure is handed over to be killed.

The Gospel reveals the tragic irony: those guarding religious purity stand outside the truth.

Inside, there is Pontius Pilate, the representative of imperial power. Pilate understands kingdoms. Rome’s authority rests on legions, taxes, surveillance, and fear. Every throne Pilate has ever known is secured by violence. In the world Pilate inhabits, a king is someone who can command death.

Pilate asks the question that makes sense in his world: “Are you the King of the Jews?

Jesus answers in an unsettling way: “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my servants would be fighting…”

Two kingdoms stand starkly face to face. One kingdom is built on force. It sustains itself through fear and death, the kingdom of Rome. This stands for every system that believes power must be protected at all costs, too.

The other kingdom stands before Pilate in chains. Jesus’ kingdom has no soldiers, yet it will not be defeated. Pilate cannot understand this Jesus' power. No governor could. The logic of empire cannot comprehend the authority of sacrificial love. Pilate presses him again: “So you are a king?”

Jesus answers: “For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”

This is the heart of Christ’s kingdom: truth. Pilate’s famous reply echoes across the centuries: “What is truth?”

It is not really a philosophical question. It is the weary skepticism of someone who has lived too long within power systems. Pilate has seen truth bent to serve politics and loyalty. For him, truth is mere convenience and is decidedly negotiable.

The tragedy is that Truth itself is standing in front of him. In the Gospel of John, Jesus has already said: “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”

Pilate searches for truth while questioning the One who is truth. The deeper drama of the passage is revealed. The trial is not really about Jesus. It is about us. Humanity stands before the truth and must decide whether it will recognize it.

The crowd chooses Barabbas, a revolutionary. A man of violence seems more believable than a king who reigns through love. Yet the Gospel quietly states which kingdom will endure.

Pilate’s empire once appeared invincible. Its legions marched across continents. Its governors ruled with authority backed by force. And now, Pilate’s empire has long since vanished. Rome’s rulers have turned to dust. The kingdom of Christ continues.

It continues wherever someone listens to his voice. This kingdom does not conquer by destroying enemies. It conquers by transforming them. At the end of the scene, Pilate declares, “I find no case against him.” Still, he will hand Jesus over to be crucified. Power recognizes innocence but sacrifices it to preserve order.

While Jesus recognizes and does not resist because his kingdom will not be established by force. It will be established by self-giving love. However,  this kingdom does not always grow in ways we easily see.

There is a story often told about bamboo forests in Asia. When bamboo is planted, almost nothing appears to happen for years. The seed is watered. The soil is tended. Seasons pass, and the ground looks unchanged.

One year goes by. Nothing. Two years. Still nothing.Three. Four. Then, sometime around the fifth year something remarkable happens. The bamboo suddenly shoots upward, sometimes reaching nearly ninety feet in a matter of weeks. To someone who has not been watching closely, the growth looks sudden and miraculous. But the growth did not begin in the fifth year.

For years the bamboo has been doing its most important work underground. It has been growing an intricate network of roots, spreading wide and deep through the soil. Only when that hidden foundation becomes strong enough does the visible growth appear.

The kingdom Jesus speaks about grows like that. Much of its work happens beneath the surface of history. And in moments like our own, when wars spread, tensions rise, and communities feel fragile; many people quietly ask a painful question:

Is anything we are doing actually making a difference? When change takes longer than we hoped, it is easy to believe that nothing is happening. But the wisdom of the Gospel suggests something different. The most important growth often happens where we cannot see it. When people gather to support one another, roots are growing.

When neighbors refuse to abandon compassion in a climate of fear, roots are growing. When communities continue telling stories of justice, mercy, and dignity even while the culture grows cynical, roots are growing.

None of that work appears dramatic. It rarely makes headlines. It unfolds slowly, too slowly for our impatient hopes, but it matters.

Jesus often described the kingdom of God in this way. He spoke of seeds scattered in a field, seeds that grow quietly through the night while the farmer sleeps. The growth happens beyond human control and often beyond human awareness.

The work of the community rarely unfolds on the timetable we prefer. Like bamboo, it builds its foundation beneath the soil before rising into view. 

The cross itself looked like a failure on the day Jesus died. However, what appeared to be defeat was, in truth, the deepest planting of the kingdom of God. The roots of sacrificial love were sinking into the soil of the world. From those roots, a kingdom has continued to grow.

So the question Jesus places before every reader of this Gospel remains the same one that stood before Pilate:

Which kingdom do we belong to? The kingdom of fear and power, or the kingdom of truth and love? Those who belong to the truth, Jesus says, hear his voice. The kingdom may grow slowly, quietly, even invisibly, yet the roots are spreading.

And these roots can sustain an entire forest.

Pastor Emillie's sermon 

March 8, 2026 John 18:12-27 “I Am Not”: Peter, War, and Lies We Tell Ourselves

Peter stands beside a charcoal fire. John tells us the detail almost casually. A fire burns in the courtyard while Jesus is interrogated inside. Servants and soldiers gather around it for warmth.

It is beside this ordinary fire that the extraordinary fracture occurs. A servant girl asks Peter a simple question:

“You are not also one of this man’s disciples, are you?”

Peter answers: “I am not.”  John 18:17

The words fall quietly echoing with a deep dissonance. Throughout the Gospel Jesus has spoken the divine name: “I AM.” The words recall the voice from the burning bush. The voice of God naming himself to Moses. Now Peter answers that divine name with its inversion.

“I am not.”

This is not merely fear. It is something more familiar and more troubling: the instinct to survive by stepping away from truth. Peter is only standing beside a fire trying to stay warm while the empire does its work, which is precisely the danger. The night began with a sword in the garden. Peter swung first. The Gospel tells us he cut off the ear of the high priest’s servant. Violence felt like loyalty. It felt like courage.

But Jesus stopped him.

“Those who take the sword will perish by the sword.”  Matthew 26:52

Peter’s first instinct was force. Next is denial. The sword and the lie are not opposites. They are two forms of the same attempt to control the outcome. When the sword fails, the lie steps in. Peter does not shout for Jesus’ death. He does something quieter when he says,  “I am not with him.”

Violence often survives through that quieter sentence. While Peter warms himself, the machinery of power is moving smoothly. Everything is happening according to protocol and routine. Stability must be preserved. Order must be maintained. The language of necessity fills the air.

History repeats this pattern endlessly. Violence rarely introduces itself honestly. It arrives wrapped in phrases meant to soften its edges. We do not say war. We say operation. We do not say death. We say targets. And like Peter, we remain near the fire while events unfold somewhere else.

Every generation hears the same promise: War will bring peace. Strike hard enough. Remove the right enemy. Destroy the right threat. Then stability will follow. Theologians call this belief the myth of redemptive violence. It is the ancient idea that destruction can purify the world.

But the Gospel tells a different story. Violence never stays contained. It ripples outward. Families grieve. Children grow up in fear. Landscapes carry the scars of conflict long after the speeches end.

As Martin Luther King Jr. said: “Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.” Jesus understood this. That is why he refused both the sword and the lie. He would not save the world by force.

And he would not deny the truth of what violence does. The New Testament word apokalypsis means unveiling. War is apocalyptic in that sense. It reveals what was already present. Peter thought he was hiding his fear. Instead, the rooster revealed it. War reveals things about nations in the same way.

Peter breathed that atmosphere in the courtyard, and so do we.  When the rooster crowed, Peter remembered. The Gospel says he wept bitterly. Those tears matter. They are the first truthful thing he does after the denial. Before Peter can become a witness, he must grieve. Before resurrection can restore anything, something must first be acknowledged as lost.

The Psalms teach us to cry: “How long, O Lord?” The prophets teach us to say: "Woe.” Lament is not weakness. It is the refusal to normalize death. Peter’s story does not end in the courtyard.

After the resurrection, the Gospel of John returns him to another charcoal fire on the shore of the sea (John 21). The detail is deliberate. But this time, Jesus asks a different question. Not “Are you with me?” Instead, he asks three times: “Do you love me?”

Peter’s denial will not be erased. It is faced. It is spoken aloud, transformed. From the courtyard’s “I am not” emerges something new: costly solidarity. Tradition tells us Peter eventually dies as a martyr. The one who denied becomes the one who refuses to abandon the truth again. 

Every age has its own charcoal fire. Moments when violence proceeds while ordinary people stand nearby, trying to stay warm. Moments when denial seems easier than truth. War reveals us in those moments.

The rooster crows whether we acknowledge it or not. The question that remains is the one Peter eventually had to answer: Will we continue saying “I am not”?

Or will we step away from the courtyard of denial and stand with the One who refused both the sword and the lie?

Peace will not come through domination. We must rebuild the relationships war has shattered.

The rooster has crowed. The fire is still burning. The question remains.

 Pastor Emillie's sermon