December 21, 2025 - Advent 4; John 1:1-18 Daring to Become Flesh

Father Jud: “Maybe these stories of faith aren’t lies or fantasies like Disneyland. Perhaps they resonate with something deep and profoundly true inside us that we can’t express any other way.”

Knives Out Mystery - Wake Up Dead Man

When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.” - Audre Lorde

Today was this year's Winter Solstice. I thought of the interplay between darkness and light. The reading reminds me of where this Narrative Lectionary started with the Genesis creation story and the Holy Disruptors Summer series that preceded it. This Sunday, the Narrative Lectionary moves from Old Testament readings to the New Testament's book of John. Immediately, the language that confronts us is completely challenging and audacious 

John’s Gospel opens not with a manger, but with a daring vision. In the beginning was the Word. Before doctrine, before institution, before fear calcified into control, there is Logos, which, for us, is creative and luminous speech moving toward the world in love. And then comes the most audacious claim of all: the Word became flesh and lived among us.

To become flesh is to dare to be powerful in exactly the way that Audre Lorde named, a featured Holy Disruptor in our summer series.

To become flesh is not power as domination, but power exemplified as embodied truth. This is not strength as coercion, but strength in the service of vision. God’s Word does not hover safely above the world; it enters vulnerability. It risks misunderstanding, rejection, and even violence. The Incarnation is not fearless; it is faithful.

We are taken back to Genesis. John tells us that the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. Notice: the darkness is real. Fear is real. Resistance is real. Yet the light does not wait for safety before shining. Like Lorde’s insight, divine power is not the absence of fear but the refusal to let fear determine the future.

The 4th candle in our Advent Wreath symbolizes Love or Mary. The story is near fulfillment.

Still, this Gospel insists that God’s vision is not abstract, but rather takes on skin. It enters bodies marked by race, gender, class, grief, and hope. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. The Word knows what it is to speak truth and be dismissed, to reveal love and be met with suspicion. And still, the Word persists.

This matters deeply. Too often, faith has been used to silence, to domesticate, to make fear holy. But John proclaims a God whose glory is revealed not in control but in presence; not in purity but in proximity. Grace and truth arrive together, inseparable, and walking among us.

Audre Lorde reminds us that when we dare to use our strength in service of our vision, fear loosens its grip. John goes further: when we dare to receive the Word made flesh, we discover that we are drawn into that same daring. To all who received him… he gave power to become children of God. Not passive heirs, but participants in incarnation, becoming people through whom light continues to take flesh.

At the heart of the Christmas story is a surprising revelation. The holiness and the indignity of flesh. Bodies, by nature, are messy. Pregnancy is messy. Birth is messy. Unpredictable, dangerous even. You can pretty it up by talking about a virgin birth and thereby undermining the shocking truth about how women are abused. Mary's youthful sexuality and desirability, the indignities of being pregnant, 

To follow the Word, then, is to risk embodiment: to speak when silence is safer, to love when hatred is loud, to tell the truth about injustice even when it costs us belonging. It is to trust that our fear does not disqualify us. Our fears simply names the stakes.

The Word is still becoming flesh, whenever courage serves vision, whenever power bends toward love, whenever light refuses to ask permission from the dark. And in that daring, holy work, fear becomes less and less important.

Sermon 

December 17, 2025 - A Midweek Advent Evening of Poetry, Prayer and Advent Music with Mychal and Theresa Lotz

The Earth is the Lord's, and everything in it,   Psalm 24:1 

Creator has been building a tradition of exploring scripture during Creator's weekly Bible Discussions each Wednesday and examining the wisdom the Bible holds for our current times.

 This Wednesday’s Midweek Advent service moved that exploration seamlessly into a liturgical dimension. Creator’s Evening of Poetry, Prayer, and Advent Music with Mychal and Theresa Lotz last night honored the season in both structure and content.

Pastor Emillie opened with Mary Oliver’s poem “Making the House Ready for the Lord.” The last line,“as I do all morning and afternoon. Come in, Come in," stressed the preparation of this season and led directly into the hymn “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” where Mychal and Theresa Lotz began their musical journey with Creator through this church season. 

The selections moved from Tim Hughes’ “Here I Am to Worship,” through carols like “Angels We Have Heard on High,” to including Lotz’s original compositions.

The first was titled “Alaben,” which means “to praise” or “we praise.” Participants joined in this song of proclamation without hesitation. People felt the heartfelt gratitude expressed in that piece, which Mychal transitioned deftly into the hymn “Beautiful Savior.”

Lotz’s next original composition, “Lord I Put My Trust in You,” was delivered with clear, steadfast conviction. The congregation was familiar with “Praise to the Lord,” yet there was a deeper reverence in this version of what Mychal and Theresa played, one that the congregation followed, moving naturally into silence, prayer, and the lighting of candles.

A bilingual “Jesus, Remember Me” and Lotz’s “Dona Nobis Pacem” reminded everyone how universal the language we use for God truly is.

Mychal and Theresa then performed “Sanctify.” Creator was apparently on Mychal’s mind when he wrote the music. “I Bow Down” caught some of the awe everyone was feeling as the service began to define the ardor kindled in each of our souls, which continued with “Lord, I Lift Your Name on High” and “Veni Sancte Spiritus.”

The Lotzes ended with everyone joining in on “10,000 Reasons.”

Recording 

What lingered afterward was not just music, but a shared sense of readiness, a community quietly prepared, like Mary Oliver’s house, with doors open and lamps lit. In a season that invites waiting, Creator found itself already listening, already responding, already saying together: Come in.

A memorable night.

December 14, 2025 Advent 3: Isaiah 55 - Come to the Waters

Isaiah 55 is one of Scripture’s great open-armed invitations. A vision of God is given whose generosity exceeds not only our expectations, but even our categories. It emerges from Israel’s experience of exile and return, but its spiritual resonance reaches far beyond: it is a poem about grace that refuses scarcity and a call to participate in healing that ripples outward into the world.

We start with God’s abundance, breaking the logic of scarcity. “Come, all you who are thirsty … come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.”The prophet imagines a feast where the only requirement is hunger. This vision challenges our cultural assumptions about worthiness, productivity, and “deserving.” Instead of meritocracy, Isaiah offers an economy of grace.

To hear this text is to recognize how deeply scarcity narratives still shape us economically and spiritually. Isaiah portrays a God who refuses the idea that there is “not enough.” The verse maintains there is enough forgiveness and enough welcome to make a difference. For Christians, this provides theological grounding for justice that shares rather than hoards 

Moving to verse 3 we are told to “Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live.” The call is not to doctrinal assent but to listening as a relational posture. Life becomes possible through being open to the voice of God, which in Scripture often sounds like the voice of the marginalized, the grieving, the poor. Basically the stranger.

Listening is itself an act of justice. When communities listen deeply to those who have been ignored, erased, or harmed, immigrants, LGBTQ+ siblings, the poor, the earth itself, all life begins to flourish again. 

Last week, the National Park Service quietly erased Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth from its list of fee-free days and added Donald Trump’s birthday. It was a bureaucratic act so small that most people missed it. Yet it reveals everything. It’s one more attempt to rewrite the story of America: to sanctify domination, to bury memory and to pretend the struggle for freedom is over.

This is racism, yes, but beneath it, something even older and more corrosive: fear. White fear. Fear of reckoning, of reversal, of justice. Fear that equality will mean loss. Fear that the myth of supremacy, so long enshrined as divine order, will crumble. 

The next verses 8-11 address God’s Word as creative energy. “My thoughts are not your thoughts…so shall my word be… it shall not return to me empty.” This is not a statement about God being inscrutable; it is a proclamation that God’s imagination exceeds our narrow visions of power, punishment, or purity. God’s “word” is not a weapon but a seed. The word is a generative force that brings life where life seemed impossible.

Our supply pianist this week, Josh, provided some unexpected joy in his performance, particularly during his selections during communion. But throughout the music was energetic and joyous, which really ignited smiles of the congregation.    

Scripture often reveals a trajectory toward greater compassion, openness, justice, and love. Isaiah affirms that divine creativity keeps moving the world toward wholeness, even when we cannot yet see how. Next, we have God affirming Joy, Creation, and the Healing of the World  : “You shall go out with joy… the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song.” Familiar words from a familiar piece of music 

Isaiah 55 ends with ecological imagery that blurs boundaries between human salvation and the flourishing of creation. God’s restoration is not limited to human souls; it resonates throughout the land, the trees, and the entire ecosystem.

This is a theology of eco-salvation. This is the healing of creation made integral to the healing of humanity. Justice for the earth, like justice for the poor, is not optional; it is part of God’s redemptive dream. 

So radical welcome is identified as missional identity as we affirmed in the follow-up to the Creator coattage meetings last Sunday. Isaiah 55 echoes earlier prophetic calls to welcome foreigners and extend covenant beyond traditional borders (e.g., Isaiah 56). God’s invitation is constantly expanding.

Jesus takes up this same theme when he feasts with outcasts, touches the untouchable, and feeds the hungry without qualifying them. The early church in Acts echoes Isaiah’s universal feast as Gentiles are welcomed without precondition.

In this light, Isaiah 55 becomes a charter for communities practicing radical hospitality with open tables, open arms, and open futures.

Isaiah 55 stands as one of Scripture’s great love songs. We have a divine invitation sung to a people who have forgotten their worth, who have been worn down by empire, exile, scarcity, and the grinding voice of “not enough.” Into that world, into our world, God speaks a word that breaks every narrative of fear:

This is a God who does not transact.  This is a God who does not gate-keep. This is a God who opens the feast to the hungry, the excluded, the exhausted, in fact the ones who’ve spent their lives paying for things that never nourished them.

This chapter is not just ancient poetry. It is a summons for our time. We have here a vision for a Church still learning to lead with love. This is our reminder that grace is free, joy is contagious, and God is always ready to begin again.

December 7, 2025 Advent 2 - Ezekiel 37:1–14 Can These Bones Live?

“The opposite of faith is not doubt, but indifference."                Elie Wiesel  

Ezekiel’s vision begins in a landscape of utter devastation: a valley littered with bones, “very many, and very dry.” It is a metaphor for a people crushed by violence, displacement, and despair. Exile has stripped Israel of its identity, its stability, and its hope. Into this scene, God brings Ezekiel. He is not there to observe, but to participate in the healing that is about to unfold.

Such a lesson for us now. God brings us to places we would avoid. “The hand of the Lord… set me down in the middle of a valley.”

Ezekiel does not choose this valley; God leads him there. For us, this is the inward and outward journey into the places we most fear: Here lie the traumas we bury, the injustices we normalize, the communities our society has abandoned, and perhaps the ecological ruin we barely face.

The Spirit often brings us where polite religion refuses to go. Prophetic imagination begins by witnessing what is broken without turning away. A hard question is asked: “Can These Bones Live?” God asks not for a doctrinal statement, but for Ezekiel’s hopeful imagination. The prophet replies, “O Lord God, you know.” His reply contains a mixture of humility and openness. It is an answer that honors both reality (the bones are dead) and possibility (God can do what we cannot yet conceive).

This is the heart of progressive faith: holding grief and hope together, refusing both denial and despair.

Today, questions echo across the valleys around us:

• Can communities fractured by racism live?

• Can the earth, wounded by ecological destruction, live?

• Can democracies threatened by injustice live?

• Can church traditions that have harmed LGBTQ+ people live in a new way?

• Can our own exhausted spirits live?

As Christians, we must insist: yes, breath is still possible.

“Prophesy to these bones and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.”

God does not magically reassemble the bones. God invites Ezekiel into the work. This is a divine partnership, what some theologians call co-creation. God’s healing moves through human voices, human courage, and human solidarity.

To prophesy today is not primarily to predict the future, but to speak life where death has claimed the last word:

• speaking truth against systems that dehumanize,

• proclaiming dignity where society calls people disposable,

• advocating liberation,

• naming injustice,

• dreaming of alternatives.

Prophetic speech is not abstract, it is speech that changes reality.

“There were sinews… flesh… skin… but there was no breath in them.”

Alison, a contributor to our Creator discussions, emphasized how she has always loved this story. Her thoughts, in this reading, went to people in prisons and people in I.C.E. detention centers currently who find a way to cling to hope in the ugliest of all situations. 

Christ is among all of them and the two-step miracle here mirrors real transformation. First comes structure, encompassing all the organizing, repairing, and building that goes into creating a community. It might feel this is without breath (ruach as we learned at the Oregon Synod Assembly: spirit, wind, or life-force). These structures, in and of themselves, fall short of God’s promise.

But at Creator we are encouraged to:

• Organize for justice and seek spiritual renewal.

• Build systems of care and cultivate wonder.

• Reform institutions and welcome the Spirit’s unpredictable movement.

• Create inclusive churches and pray for deep transformation.

Reform without Spirit becomes bureaucracy. Spirit without reform becomes sentimentality. Ezekiel shows the union of both

“Prophesy to the breath… and breath came into them.”

The Spirit enters from every direction; north, south, east, and west. This is God’s radically inclusive movement. The winds do not discriminate. No culture, identity, or community monopolizes the Spirit. Breath flows across boundaries, traditions, and borders.

As we discussed Creator's vision and mission last Sunday this was articulated by all who were there:

• honoring diverse voices,

• seeing God’s life in communities outside Christianity,

• embracing the global movement for justice as Spirit-led,

• trusting that renewal is never confined to our tribe.

The breath that brings life is bigger than us.

“They stood on their feet, a vast multitude.”

The bones don’t come back to life as isolated persons; they rise as a people, a community. Salvation in Scripture is communal and embodied. The vision points toward liberation, not escape; toward rebuilding society, not retreating from it.

This challenges individualistic spirituality. Resurrection is not an interior feeling; it is a collective rising, a shared reclamation of hope.

This is not a promise of resuscitation but resurrection; in new life and new identity, we have a new future. For exiles in Babylon, restoration didn’t erase their wounds; it wove them into a story of survival and renewal.

For us today, this text proclaims:

• Trauma does not get the last word.

• History’s injustices can be transformed.

• Communities written off as “dead” can rise.

• Creation itself can heal.

• The Spirit is never done with us.

The Valley of Dry Bones is a vision of God’s relentless commitment to life. It invites us:

• to face the broken places with honesty,

• to dare to hope against despair,

• to speak life into death-dealing systems,

• to trust the breath that moves from every direction,

• to rise as communities shaped by justice and compassion.

It is a story for any people who have been told they are finished.
It is a story for a world desperately needing breath.
It is a story for every valley we stand in, whispering the same question:

“Can these bones live?” 
And the Spirit still answers: “Yes.”

November 30, 2025: Advent 1; Daniel 3:- Today's Story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego

"We are lonely for our more-than-human kin… but the land is lonely for us, too. The land loves us, and we need that conduit to love the land back. Out of that, anything is possible.” — Robin Wall Kimmerer

We open with a familiar pattern of empire. Nebuchadnezzar is a ruler who elevates his own image and enforces loyalty through fear. His golden statue is less a religious symbol and more a political project. This is a monument to national glory and unity by coercion. It is the ancient version of propaganda, A fiery furnace is the threat to anyone who dares dissent.

Against this pageant of imperial worship stand three young exiles: Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They are individuals whose bodies do not belong to the dominant culture. Their names have been changed by the state. Their heritage and language have been pressed into conformity. Even in exile, however, and despite serving within the structures of Babylon’s government, they insist they do not bow to the idols of empire:

The furnace is meant to destroy them, but instead it exposes the truth: that oppression is always unsustainable, that coercive power is fragile, and that God’s liberating presence refuses to abandon those who stand on the side of truth and conscience.

The text tells us that a fourth figure appears with them. This is one “like a son of the gods.” Whether understood as an angel, a Christ-like presence, or a poetic sign of divine nearness, the message is the same: God does not stand outside the fire, but steps into it with the oppressed.

This is the heart of the Gospel. God is not neutral. God is not aligned with Nebuchadnezzar or with any system that demands unquestioned allegiance. God is found with those who resist, who hold fast to conscience, who protect their dignity even when the cost is great.

The golden statue of Daniel 3 is an enduring metaphor for the idols that modern societies construct. Today we have idols of nationalism, racial superiority, unregulated power, wealth, violence, or rigid ideology. These idols demand our silence, our participation, and sometimes our worship.

But the witness of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego reminds us that our faith calls us to holy noncompliance, particularly regarding unregulated power. Not every command of the state is just. Not every cultural expectation is God’s will and not every demand for unity deserves obedience. Holy noncompliance is not sedition

Their defiance is not strident; it is calm, honest, and rooted in trust: “Our God is able to deliver us… but even if God does not, we still will not bow.” This is the declaration of a liberated conscience. This is faith that refuses to be weaponized.

One of the most striking features of this story is that the three act together. Liberation is communal. Courage is shared. No one is expected to resist alone.

Our Creator community today can draw strength from this: we do not face the fires of injustice in isolation. We stand shoulder to shoulder with immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, Black and brown neighbors, the poor, the disabled, the marginalized, and all who believe in the sacred dignity of every human being.

When we refuse to bow to systems that diminish life, we then find Christ walking beside us, sometimes visible, sometimes only as courage or peace that should not be possible given the circumstances.

It is easy to end the story at the rescue, but Daniel 3 offers something further. We're given the possibility of transformation. Nebuchadnezzar, a violent tyrant responsible for the suffering of countless people, is confronted by a miracle he cannot control. He sees the fire fail. He sees the freedom of those he meant to crush. He sees God with the ones he condemned.

The arc of the story bends toward a new awareness: even those shaped by empire can be changed when they witness the courage and faithfulness of the oppressed. God’s liberation is not just for the faithful; it is a call to conversion for the powerful.

Daniel 3 challenges the church to examine where we stand in our lives. Too often, the institution has blessed the statues of empire rather than the people in the furnace. Christianity insists on a different alignment: Conscience must prevail over conformity,  Justice should triumph over convenience, and help the oppressed more than the powerful.

Our God who shows up in the flames. The task of the church is not to avoid the fires of our time, but to step into them in solidarity. We trust that Christ is already there, dismantling the instruments of oppression from the inside.

The final message of Daniel 3 is not triumphalism but hope. Oppression will not get the final word. The fires meant to destroy can become the spaces where God is most visible and the courage of a few can transform the conscience of a nation.

In every age, God calls people of faith to resist the idols of empire and to stand with integrity, compassion, and holy defiance. And when we do, we discover what the three exiles discovered long ago: that God’s liberating presence is most fully revealed not in the halls of power, but in the fire where justice and love refuse to burn.

“Love is the deepest form of knowledge, for it requires us to become what we know.” — Thomas Merton

 

December 15, 2024 - Third Sunday of Advent - Act from Joy

Pastor Emillie started her sermon with John’s phrases "brood of vipers"and " the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fires" - powerful indictments that are hard to to ignore even if you want to. The label is aimed at exposing the sin, hypocrisy, and spiritual arrogance of those listening.  In Luke’s account, John the Baptist yells this at the crowd: "You brood of vipers!”. Is he accusing every Jew of infidelity or specific groups of Jews in the crowd — people who held power over other Jews — those who hoarded their wealth without regard for the poor; those who collected taxes on behalf of Rome to enrich themselves; and those serving in Caesar’s army who threatened the weak collecting bribes and extorting? 

Are those in power the “vipers" that will be consumed by holy fire? Or is he really speaking to all of us? John's is a call to repentance and a warning that judgment is near, aligning with his role as the forerunner of Christ. Is this also a call to joy as we are celebrating on this day? 

This Sunday is the third Sunday of Advent. In many Advent wreaths, the third candle is pink — not the traditional purple — to represent rejoicing. Two of today’s readings begin with rejoicing and the third ends with the proclamation of good news. Rejoice … rejoice … Good news! That joy, however, isn’t light-hearted celebration and mirth. Borrowing a memorable phrase from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Advent joy isn’t “cheap.” It is costly. Because all three of the lectionary readings are also about injustice.

Given this Advent and what seems to be coming perhaps this third candle should be red rather than pink to symbolize the anger or bloody violent rhetoric that seems to be promised in our future. And yes, light that red candle! Watch it turn into the equivalent of a pyre to melt the corruption, captivity, and collusion that is being reported around us. A baby-pink candle feels far too weak and totally unsuited for this particular Advent wreath. Or, at least, so I thought this week as I read this Luke text for this season.

Pastor Emillie's sermon changed my mindset She observed that the crowd does not protest John's indictments but rather asks "What then should we do?" She feels they have experienced some sort of repentance or, as in the literal translation of the Greek "a change of mind.

John's answers to their question are sensible, practical ways to feel joy. “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none", tax collectors: “Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.” and soldiers: Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages.”   

This is a good test for our times. Is the response we are giving to a particular situation filling us with joy or not? Too often we act from the reason that we have no other option. We do not choose, or act, out of joy. John gives us simple, practical ways to act out of joy. 

John is speaking to us today.

December 8, 2024 - Second Sunday of Advent - Weaving History and Faith

I believe John the Baptist and Jesus were historical figures, but not because "the Bible tells me so". That is not because I don't trust in the claims of this Luke text, for example, but recounting a history; as our culture defines it; is neither the primary power or purpose of scripture.

Luke 3:1-2 meticulously lists the political and religious authorities of the time (e.g., Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate, Herod, Annas, and Caiaphas). It Luke 3:1-2 meticulously lists the political and religious authorities of the time It sets the stage for a countercultural ministry.

John's call to repentance is not about shame or fear but about realigning one’s life toward justice and compassion. John quotes Isaiah, proclaiming the preparation of God’s way by leveling valleys and mountains and straightening crooked paths. The passage culminates in the declaration that “all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”.

John’s ministry is framed as preparatory work for the coming of Jesus, symbolizing the inbreaking of God's reign of justice and peace.

Luke 3:1-6 invites believers to confront the injustices of their time with courage and hope, inspired by John’s prophetic voice. It challenges Christians to make straight the paths for God's liberating love, working toward a world where no one is left behind and where justice flows "like a mighty stream."

This is where the weaving of faith and history transforms our hearts.

December 1, 2024 - First Sunday of Advent - Preparing for an Advent without Sugarcoating

Christina's World by Andrew Wyeth may not be the first image that comes to mind when thinking of Advent. However, due to some serendipity, however, I heard the backstory of Elizabeth Olson, the inspiration behind this painting for the first time on Sunday.

Here are the powerful words of the Gospel lesson for this first Sunday in Advent:

[Jesus said:] “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

Powerful considering the events that have gone on throughout this past year including the war in Ukraine and the genocide happening in Palestine. Powerful too, after the post-election anxiety many are feeling in this country right now. Many in the Creator congregation have felt an unfocused fear surrounding the promise of mass deportation by the incoming administration.

Pastor Emillie did not shy away from driving home the weight of that anxiety. In fact she particularized a story form her past in Uganda where her family saw hatred stoked the tribe in power turned against her family. She saw how quickly neighbors her family had considered friends turned against them. Neighborhood families, whose children had played with them in the past, took part in stoning her family's home. This gave additional depth to truth in the Gospel reading but was in sharp contrast to what she had initially and ideally envisioned for Advent. The lighting of the Christmas wreath and following the traditional preparations and hopes celebrated in the season was what she was longing for and yet their was another reality that would need to be lived through within this other context.

Though this was not what Jesus was addressing to his disciples in this Gospel. In following with this parable “Look at the fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near." Jesus intimates these signs are not just warm-up acts for the coming of Christ but they are actually part of the very coming itself.

What Jesus prepared the disciples to show was a defiant joy, in the midst of what could be perceived as despairing times. Which brings us to one of the backstories of Christina's World. 

Anna Christina Olson was a woman who became a close friend of Wyeth's wife. She suffered from a degenerative disease, likely polio, that gradually paralyzed her from the waist down. Rather than use a wheelchair to move herself she chose to crawl to move herself. This was a picture of her crawling home. The Christina figure's arm in the picture, particularly around the exposed elbow, show signs of her affliction. The fears and yearnings of a world are represented here.

For Wyeth what he painted combined the loneliness, hope and despair embodied in Olson's story. He wanted to dramatize both her fragility and her resilience in his painting.

Given this inspiration's backstory, Christina's World perfectly captures the defiant hope and joy of this current season, praying to have the strength to escape, and at the same time face her aforementioned world and to be alert to not having your heart weighed down. There is no sugarcoating in Jesus' words or this place. This echoed what resonated with so much meaning in Pastor Emillie's sermon.    

December 18, 2022 - Fourth Sunday In Advent - Joseph's More-Than-Real Dream

Pastor Steve, our new Bridge Pastor, presided over a Creator service for the first time as a Supply Pastor.

His sermon wove in all the day's lectionary readings, particularly the Gospel reading, Matthew 1:18-25. Joseph accepting Jesus as his son because of a dream, differs from the traditional Mary-focused Luke narrative.

Advent in describing the birth of Jesus naturally follows a woman's perspective.  The dominant voices heard in Luke are women's, a refreshing change of perspective that seems very intentional in the Biblical stories of Christmas. For example Mary proclaims the birth of Immanuel, God-with-us, in her eloquent, devoted Magnificat. By comparison with the participating men take  Zechariah, the husband of Elizabeth. He is literally rendered mute until his son John is born. And we do not hear Joseph's voice in today's text. 

Pastor Steve emphasized the importance of Joseph's dream in the birth narrative. The Gospel text, Matthew 1:18-25, describes the angel coming to Joseph in this dream. Can we experience what God wants for the world in dreams? Did Jesus dream for us when he declared God's kingdom is at hand?

God is with us. Everything changes when we are living that truth out. This is our alternative as Christians  It reminds me of a conversation in a film where a bartender justifies an unjust action by saying "That is the way things are in the world" in the Baz Luhrmann's Australia. The hero finally comes to a hard-won realization reflected in his response at the end of the movie,  "Just because that's the way it is does not mean that is the way it should be." The hero is then able to change his reality.

We tend to spend an inordinate amount of time learning about, and adapting ourselves to, the world as it is. We spend less time dreaming about how it might change. We try to conform our dreams to the reality we think that surrounds us and not reality as it should be.

Joseph is faithful to what the angel reveals in his dream. He names his son Jesus, which means saved from sins, as a result of what the angel says. This is not what Joseph planned or dreamed for himself and his family and yet he trusts in this new truth. This may be why he is often imagined by Biblical readers as being significantly older than Mary. He was already seeking for a righteous way to respond to Mary's being with child by resolving not to expose her to public disgrace. After the dream he moves farther into what he resolves to do by accepting Jesus as his son and believing in the angel.

Pastor Steve preached about Jesus birth as a new creation and detailed how much how what and how God creates is mysterious to us. When I heard Pastor Steve mention this text in relationship to Genesis I pondered how the story of Jesus would be heard by first century Jews. I believe they would likely associate the story with that other Joseph — the one who interpreted many dreams — in Genesis. 

We all know the story of Joseph's brothers selling him into slavery. And when the brother's acknowledge how they have sinned against their brother at the climax of their reunion, their wronged sibling proclaims, “As for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.” Indeed, Joseph's name implies both prosperity and protection. The Hebrew word asaf means to gather, collect, bring in, or assemble. A related root word means Harvest.In the same way that Genesis’s Joseph gathered and protected Israel “that many should be kept alive,” so Matthew’s Joseph also gathered in and protected Mary and her child, the hope of Israel, that many would be saved.

The story of the Holy Spirit is, in many minds, too hard to believe. Without this problematic betrothal story, other possibilities leads to something ugly. And there was an ugly rumor around Jesus’ birth — that Jesus was the son of Mary through either an indiscretion with, or a rape by, a Roman soldier. There is some historical confusion as to whether Christians first claim divine conception and their critics then smear Mary with some sexual shame or the converse,

Mary’s adultery or rape leading to a virgin birth tale could be a cover to preserve Mary’s integrity. In any case, the salacious story was out there, referenced in some ancient texts. 

What was meant for evil, God meant for good. So Matthew does not shy away from possible scandal. Indeed, his entire gospel is framed  with this gossip. Mary was “found to be with child” before their marriage - with the father unknown, “from the Holy Spirit.” Matthew could have easily ignored it; he could have chosen not to give it any credence. But he puts the truth right out front, essentially the opening line in the first narrative of Jesus’ life.  

What keeps Biblical fresh and provocative is how the truth is approached and told in the stories. Reminds me of an Emily Dickinson poem:

 Tell all the truth but tell it slant

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —

November 27, 2022 - First Sunday In Advent - Anticipating the Emergence from Our Pandemic Cataclysm

Pastor Tim Herzfeldt-Kamprath presided today and preached on the Gospel text for the day. The lectionary moves to the gospel of Matthew for the coming church year.

When will the Son of Man come? The Gospel describes the days before Noah and the flood until the day Noah entered the ark and how the people did not know until the waters came and swept them away. No one, including Jesus, will know the time the Lord is coming.

Pastor Tim preached that the word translated as flood in this passage is actually the word for cataclysm, a violent upheaval that causes great destruction or brings about a fundamental change. The interesting meaning is in the or past of that definition. The pandemic has brought a fundamental change to the Creator church experience and I can't imagine too many churches that have not undergone that fundamental change.

Yet it is hard to break from what we traditionally know and to recognize what we, as church, need to become. Faithful, yet changing is a delicate balance. We should support one another in that balancing. We can look at each another and criticize. Or we can learn how to be community in a new way after the slow cataclysm we have gone through for years now.

July 10, 2022 - The Fifth Sunday After Pentecost - Parable of the Good Iranian or Keeping in Mind Travel Can Be Dangerous

Pastor Donna started her sermon with a warning "Traveling can be dangerous."

She backed this up with the story of Jay Austin and Lauren Geoghegan who, in July of 2018, were killed in an act of violence as they biked with other travelers along the Pamir Highway in Tajikistan. 

They were cycling and blogging about their many experiences with the people they were meeting in other countries and their life-affirming human interactions. They lived their lives without fear of the other and, in doing so, they left behind a legacy of love, kindness, exploration, and adventure.

Centered in that story Pastor Donna  led me on a surprising take on this parable that had started when I read this Gospel text earlier in the week. I found new wisdom in a familiar story.. I have learned that in the time of Jesus, the road from Jerusalem to Jericho was notorious for its danger and difficulty, and was known as the "Way of Blood". Earlier I had searched for our modern equivalent to what the Samaritan people meant to Jesus' audience.

For this Sunday, to delve deeper into this wisdom, I will call this the Parable of the Good Iranian. Temporarily re-titling the parable opens me to new ways of incorporating the takeaways of this story into my life. For instance I am less likely to set my mind on becoming a "good Iranian", and I believe that is for the best. The specific actions of mercy detailed in Luke can distract from a true definition of being a neighbor to this man between cities.

Pastor Donna observed that the questioning lawyer seeks to understand who Jesus believes that scripture considers as a neighbor in order to better follow the law. Jesus asks "Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?" The lawyer answers "The one who showed him mercy". Jesus said "Go and do likewise".

What Pastor Donna emphasized in her sermon is that we are all likely to fall short of the standard of mercy set by the Samaritan in the parable. We are all capable of being more merciful in what we do as we follow what our beliefs. Does that mean, however, that we are not neighbors to the man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho unless we act like the Samaritan? The priest and the Levite are bound by a certain understanding prevalent in their world. At that moment they were unable to help the man yet I don't think Jesus would have thought they were not the man's neighbors as a result.

By letting the lawyer answer who he thinks the neighbor is - Jesus can show a deeper level of compassion than those who cannot show their deepest levels of mercy at a particular moment. Jesus asks "Which of these three were the neighbor to the man?' Yet there are more than three characters in his parable. 

There are the thieves. Does robbing the man mean there may no longer be a way for robbers to ever show mercy to this man again and become a neighbor? May they be thought of as, at least, potential neighbors? There is also the innkeeper. Since the Samaritan paid the innkeeper, does that mean that the innkeeper is not showing mercy to a man he is caring for? Is the innkeeper's care only transactional because he was paid?

Jesus tells this parable to answer the lawyer's question. Considering the lawyer's answer Jesus poses the question so the lawyer's transactional perspective is satisfied but the parable does not limit the idea or possibility of being a neighbor to that perspective only. 

'I could die doing what I love, but I could also die never having really lived.  To me, that would have been a far greater tragedy.'  

 Jay Austin

Danger encountered and, perhaps, averted or better understood.   

December 17, 2021 - The "O" Antiphons - The First: O Wisdom

 An ancient advent practice for these last days of Advent,

The “O” Antiphons are a tradition dating back more than a thousand years. During vespers (the evening prayer service) on the seven final days of Advent, seven prefaces with seven different images of Jesus - all drawn from the Hebrew scriptures - were chanted before and after Mary’s Magnificat, which comes up in this Sunday's Gospel reading

Each antiphon begins with an “O” and then an image: Wisdom, Lord (“Adonai”), Root of Jesse, Key of David, Radiant Dawn (or “Dayspring”), King of Nations, and Emmanuel (“With Us”). Most Christians know the tradition through the Advent hymn, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” 

I have been reminded of Jesus as a wisdom teacher many times during this Advent season. Often we take wisdom and knowledge to be the same thing but they are different. Knowledge comes from the facts known by a person. Wisdom is the combination of experience and knowledge, with the power of applying them or soundness of judgement in a person. 

Wisdom has often been more counter-intuitive than I would have expected.    

O Wisdom
coming towards us on the breath of God,
seeping into every crack and corner of the world with strength and gentleness to order everything just right:  
Come now and show us the way to health and wholeness.

Lord draw near.
Draw near and save

December 12, 2021 - Third Sunday of Advent - Consecration of Creator's Pledges, Affirmation of Baptism and Reception of New Members

"What then should we do?" The question in this weeks Gospel reminds me of a book Leo Tolstoy wrote about poverty, exploitation and greed called What Then Must We Do? At the time of its publication, the book had a great impact on thinking people both in Russia and abroad, who acknowledged the power of his account of life in the Moscow slums. In examining the causes of poverty through the ages, Tolstoy develops a vision of a way of life that would deny the possibility of the exploitation of one person by another: a vision of self-discipline and responsibility, of joy, passion and compassion, in which work for its own sake plays an essential part as a means to a healthy and kindly life.

It is a question that haunts Christianity. John warns the crowd not to think of their ancestry as the basis of their salvation but by what they do. If we are saved by God's grace like we believe as Lutherans, what should or must we do? John gives us a work, reward solution, Jesus does not. John gives a path where, presumably, people might take comfort that their actions are bringing about the kin-dom of God. Jesus praying to God saying "Why have you forsaken me?" gives no such comfort to anyone. 

There is a spiritual moment in a film called The Year of Living Dangerously where one of the characters, played by Linda Hunt, feels betrayed by everyone the character has helped physically and spiritually. Billy, at first, quietly asks the question "What then must we do?" and finally ends up desperately typing the question over and over again. Strauss's Four Last Songs sets the mood perfectly.

We feel we want the results of our actions to change the world materially. Jesus is concerned with a much-harder-won inner transformation. There is something interesting in the initial question John asks, "Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?" and the crowd asks, "What then should we do?" to flee the wrath to come. They want a plan of action for living their lives and, no doubt, they will say the first time anything does not go their way "Why do bad things always happen to good people?"

There was good attendance at the service today. The Affirmation of Baptism and Reception of New Members was particularly joyful. There was good conversation at the consecration meal. Being a member of a faithful and hopeful congregation is truly amazing. 

December 5, 2021 - Second Sunday of Advent - Faith in the Wilderness and in Our Liminal Time

Bishop Laurie preached about the liminal time Creator was in both in our calling a pastor and, as a church, navigating our way through the pandemic 

The word “liminal” comes from the Latin root, limen, which means “threshold.” This is the “crossing over” space – a space where you have left something behind, yet you are not yet fully in something else. ... One example of this kind of space Bishop Laurie gave was pregnancy, where a woman both is, and is not, a mother.

Bishop Laurie's sermon tied liminal time to the Gospel text as well. She emphasized Creator is currently on two liminal, wilderness journeys with both our pastoral call process and in being church during this pandemic. This is truly a time to hold each other in prayer and recognize the blessings and challenges of this moment in the life of the congregation. 

Seeing from the perspective of congregational life gave a special meaning to the second candle lit in Advent, called the Bethlehem Candle. The Gospel lays out another transition - from the powerful to humble as it shifts our gaze from an emperor's rule to a man living in the outskirts of a wilderness. The second candle is lit with the promise that our attention is moving towards Bethlehem, a tiny town resting in Jerusalem’s shadow where the world’s agony was pierced with hope as God drew his first human breath. 

As blessed as this time is there is likely to be a loss of focus, a fear and longing to return back to where we before our wilderness journeys. This becomes a stark and central question in Advent. What coming are we looking forward to right now? A return to what it was like before the pandemic or what Creator can become with the knowledge and experience we have gained from this time? The pastor that Creator will call at this time will obviously be part of our response to that question. Bishop Laurie pointedly posed this question for us to think about - what will Creator look like 2030? Crying out to God in the wilderness certainly includes wrestling with deep questions.

Frederick Buechner once wrote, “To be commanded to love God at all, let alone in the wilderness, is like being commanded to be well when we are sick, to sing for joy when we are dying of thirst, to run when our legs are broken. But this is the first and great commandment nonetheless. Even in the wilderness — especially in the wilderness — you shall love God.”

Creator's Ministry Site Profile was officially presented to the Bishop and the Creator Call Committee was installed in the service. During the installation, I reflected on how this ordinary congregation in so many ways, continues to influence my spiritual life.  I first posted a blog entry about Creator in 2006. I knew then what a special time and a special people made up this ordinary congregation. Together they offered the right balance of freedom and church tradition I am grateful for. Creator deepened my understanding of the God that was in my heart.

Certainly the times have changed. The people have changed. I have changed. Yet there is also a continuity. I talk to new members with unique ideas and enthusiasms about the future longevity of the congregation. Members are concerned about Creator's direction and I trust I will learn more about God and how to live in God's world today as a result of the prayers around those directions and concerns.

 "The voice of one crying out in the wilderness" in the Gospel reading also brought to mind how central the concept of wilderness became to Pastor Ray's spiritual understanding. In the year prior to the pandemic he would preach about the wilderness and the Promised Land. He firmly believed God comes to us, and works within us, when we are in the wildness.

He preached that the meaning of baptisms in the Jordan River was clear to those who followed John in his time. For them it represented a place of transition from the wilderness to the Promised Land, a transition to new beginnings,  After John this became the place where John baptized Jesus. In the Exodus story the seas parted for God's people to be free from bondage. Even though the partings happened in different places, for Jesus, God parted the heavens rather than the water.

At first this geography was troublesome for me. The Exodus story dramatizes the movement of God's people from bondage, to the wilderness, and finally to the Promised Land. Where were the people moving when John baptized them? They were coming from the same land that was promised by God in Exodus. So why would the people transition back to wilderness. This prompted another question. Why would knowing what the Jordan River meant to the ancients make baptisms meaningful in our lives?

Now, because of a renewed focus on transition, I think I know an answer. John's baptisms signified a transition to a new Promised Land. This emphasizes God's promise does not simply revolve around a plot of land in this world. Christians are baptized in spirit and in a holiness that can exist beyond place, beyond ownership.

Lastly, today's First Reading: Malachi 3:1-4 powerfully connected with last week's "End of the Age" meditation that mixed the fear and hope we have of end times. with verse 2 and 3 " But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap; 3he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the LORD in righteousness.

November 28, 2021 - First Sunday of Advent - Starting Advent with the Biblical End of the Age

Pastor Joel Schmitz preached at today's service. The Gospel was Luke 21:25-36. He also preached on the Second Reading. 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13. The liturgy was Now the Feast and Celebration and Pastor Joel sang the leader's part of the liturgy well.

For years my feelings were it was somewhat counter-intuitive that Christians should begin the new church year and Advent contemplating the end of things. Particularly this Luke passage has this troubling verse "Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away."

Troubling because to hope for something new something old must pass away and, instinctively, we don't want things to change. How do we keep the traditions, the life we want to preserve while, at the same time, ushering in what we hope for.

Also troubling, I think, because our lives are lived linearly. If "until all things have taken place" is read like "There will be signs... all these things must happen and then comes one final, apocalyptic outcome" then this Jesus prediction on its face seems wrong 2,000 years later. 

However, moving from the idea that the end of an age is a one time event is a possibility, Instead of a one time revelation and resolution or a singular rapture, imagine what history shows, that resolutions, revelations, and ruptures happen many times throughout human history. The opportunity remains available for every generation to bring and experience the kindom of God to earth.

December 20, 2020 - Fourth Sunday in Advent - Holy Encounters

I can't remember when I first learned about the Annunciation. I was repeatedly taught or told the story by my family and in Sunday School. I was exposed to famous paintings or religious depictions of Mary and Gabriel every year. The scene was always calm and serene. The angel Gabriel, more often than not, wore wings, Mary was often represented with a halo. An obviously Holy Encounter moment. 

I took in the story literally and concretely. Marcus Borg once called this way of assessing how many children process Biblical stories as pre-critical naivete. At some point I moved, as others have, to what Borg called critical thinking. Did Gabriel have wings and did a halo around Mary "make sense"? I started to understand that artists may try to convey a complicated concept in a single image by using or creating common pictorial conventions. I accepted then accepted that more complicated truth.

Moving, with difficulty, into Borg's last stage in the process post-critical conviction I could not picture the Annunciation anymore. There was no image to replace the pre-critical one formed so many years ago. My critical thinking process rejected everything I tried and try to compose to replace that pre-critical naivete image. I don't think I am alone. Filmmakers, trying to show the Annunciation, now have turned to different conventions than wings and halos. They show Gabriel, dressed all in white, as appearing somewhat transparent and often radiating a bright light. They may also depict Gabriel as a regular man without special effects. All this requires believing convention as reality or being left to wonder how Mary recognized Gabriel as an angel. 

I compare the Annunciation to my mental understanding of a picture of the atom. In primary school I learned to think of an atom like a solar system where the protons and neutrons were the sun and electrons corresponded to planets. I later learned this is an inaccurate representation  Yet I have never seen a more powerful image of that new understanding so I basically default to the old image while knowing it is inaccurate.

This all came to my mind as I listened to the sermon today. Pastor Janell preached about Crystal, an unmarried mother who confided in her mentor Isabelle about the trouble she found herself in. Isabelle  told her the Annunciation story and Crystal was comforted by the words. She took from it that God could be in the midst of Crystal's situation while loving and supporing her. "Nothing is impossible for God." meant for Crystal that God would find a way to resolve everything that had gone wrong.

I wondered, is Isabelle functioning like the angel Gabriel in this story? What could make Isabelle an angel in this story is her concern and love for Crystal. There are differences, however, in the Crystal's story and the Annunciation. Gabriel is giving Mary the news that she is pregnant. Mary was not afraid she was pregnant before the angel's visit. Mary's fear is probably more centered around the angel visitation than her future pregnancy. Mary's question "How can this be?" indicates she barely can accept the news that she is pregnant.

What is "not impossible" for God is another difference in these two stories. Gabriel announces an event that defies how reality is normally perceived, a true miracle beyond normal experience, Isabelle, on the other hand, is giving Crystal hope for a better outcome from a situation than she currently finds herself in. This might be an unexpected outcome but not one that likely promises a supernatural miracle.

What is truly a Holy Encounter? I am left to ponder if we recognize holy encounters as often as they may happen in our lives.   

December 13, 2020 - Third Sunday in Advent - Voices

Pastor Janell preached this morning that this Gospel invites us to listen and that God is often heard in the silence and in other people's stories. She tied this into the call process that Creator is involved in right now. The voices we need to hear in each other and in our community together with the silcnce to ponder what is God's will for what we will do in the future.  

Three years ago Pastor Ray preached from these lectionary readings about leadership and showed the children gathered around him a flashlight during Children's Time. Just as John the Baptizer testified to Jesus as the "light of the world" drawing attention away from himself so Jesus, as he first stood up, reading scripture and preaching, testified that the spirit of the Lord was upon Jesus. Jesus drew attention away from himself while simultaneously acknowledging the spirit of the Lord within him.

Pastor Ray shone the light of the flashlight on himself and asked "Can you see where you are going when the light is on my face?" and followed that up with  "A leader cannot light the way for anyone when he is shining the light on himself". This was all about servant-leadership for both John and Jesus.

hen scripture readings awaken both head and heart there are often entwining echoes like there were for me in the Isaiah reading this morning. We sang this in today's Gospel Acclamation, "You have the words of eternal life. Alleluia".

Another voice speaking to this is in the First Reading. In Luke 4:21-30 Jesus reads the first four verses of this Isaiah passage in the synagogue. I posted once that it passed  the "shiver* test at a particular moment - there was a prickle at the back of the neck. I also wrote about this passage in this year's Advent Devotional.

Reading Isaiah 61:1-4 without referencing Jesus and in the context of today's Gospel makes you wonder about the identity of the person speaking. Who is this prophet? I doubt most people's impulse is to identify with the speaker. My first reaction is to shy away. I cannot proclaim God's good news. I don't see liberty of the captives or the release of those in prison in real life unless I perform some mental gymnastics,  Why, and is this good?

Yet something extraordinary happens in this First Reading. The persona adopts the Lord's identity in verse 8 of the reading "For I the Lord love justice, I hate robbery and wrongdoing". Reading this today I feel like the spirit of the Lord moves with these first person God references. This First Reading from Isaiah is an invitation to understand God in a new light with a different understanding of identity. I deepen that understanding whenever this passage is read. This is an important part of the transformation described in these Isaiah verses.

Having the spirit of the Lord upon us is a tremendous joy and can feel like an awesome responsibility.

December 6, 2020 - Second Sunday in Advent - The Geography of God's Kindom

Today we welcomed Pastor Nick Doversberger as our guest pastor. He joined us from the Mexican Baja Peninsula. The gift of Zoom worship allows retired pastors to lead from a distance. 

And today's message was strong with geography. Preaching on the Gospel of the second Sunday of Advent Pastor Nick emphasized John the Baptizer centered his baptisms around Bethany. Bethany was beyond the Jordan River for the crowds he was baptizing. John proclaimed a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Pastor Nick's sermon focused on his evolving understanding of the word repentance and what he called geography 

Pastor Nick detailed what he has come to feel about repentance. He does not feel the message of Jesus is primarily about feeling repentant for what we did but more of a realization of what we could do. John's baptism was taking place outside the land those who were baptized knew and beginning again. This was a time of asking root questions that awaken realization and trigger a radical reorientation and a new openness to how are we doing and asking are we where God wants us to be.

John ate wild locusts and honey. He wore camel skins. He was dependent only on what God provided and did to look to men for approval. And he did not point to himself but one who would come after. He looks to Jesus who will become the pioneer leader of our faith.  Unlike the pioneers of the past, Jesus is a leader concerned primarily with faith and the Kingdom of God. He was unafraid when encountering physical or spiritual wilderness. Jesus also knew the demands and temptations of settling in a new Promised Land. He faced and navigated the new and gave us visions and ways to perfect our faith.

In this context,  John is particularly meaningful today as Creator mixes this year's Advent journey with our time of transition to call a new pastor.  The Jordan River in the Bible is important because the river demarcates wilderness from the new Promised Land.

The children of Israel crossed the Jordan River in the Old Testament to enter their Promised Land from their forty year long wilderness journey. In the New Testament John the Baptizer baptizes his followers in the Jordan, including Jesus despite Jesus being proclaimed by John as someone greater than himself. This is begins the reversals of what would be expected in Jesus' story.

Now add to that the followers baptized by John while thinking about wildernesses and Promised Lands. People flock to John come to the Jordan River - from the "wilderness" of a former Promised Land. These pilgrims are destined for a new Promised Land. Geographically this new Promised Land is not just a place contained by earthly borders.

For years I worked on an ELCA Synod Team involved in coming up with a future church vision. We lamented the fact that for generations the church had been The Place, the most important gathering place for those generations. Later church was A Place, one of a number of important gathering places for my parent's generation and perhaps my generation. Finally it was No Place for many in the millennial generation. Many do not feel the same importance of church in their lives as their parents and grandparents.

No one argued how correct these assessments were but the team did not know what to do with these insights. Today's Gospel was revelatory in another way that was related to the Advent Journey insights on John and the River Jordan. The Promised Land beyond borders is No Place. Pilgrims like us can physically live anywhere and still be a part of the new Promised Land  Our spiritual concern has moved beyond an ecological concern only for the piece of land we inhabit. We know this is about the entire planet. Given this, how will life in this Promised Land be lived and how should this Promised Land be described? For one vision I quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Letters and Papers:

It always seems to me that we are trying anxiously in this way to reserve some space for God; I should like to speak of God not on the boundaries but at the center, not in weaknesses but in strength; and therefore not in death and guilt but in man’s life and goodness. As to the boundaries, it seems to me better to be silent and leave the insoluble unsolved.

Belief in the resurrection is not the ‘solution’ of the problem of death. God’s ‘beyond’ is not the beyond of our cognitive faculties. Transcendence and new life has nothing to do with the transcendence of God over our lives. God is beyond that and in the midst of our life. The church stands, not at the boundaries where human powers give out, but in the middle of the village.

That is how it is in the Old Testament, and in this sense we still read the New Testament far too little in the light of the Old. How this religionless Christianity looks, what form it takes, is something that I’m thinking about a great deal, and I shall be writing to you again about it soon. It may be that on us in particular, midway between East and West, there will fall a heavy responsibility.

Another vision of living in the Promised Land is expressed for me in the R.E.M. song You Are The Everything. These lyrics in particular paint a portrait of pilgrim and the Promised Land world as one:

All you hear is time stand still in travel
And feel such peace and absolute
The stillness still that doesn't end but slowly drifts into sleep
The stars are the greatest thing you've ever seen
And they're there for you
For you alone, you are the everything

Pastor Ray once preached about wilderness and the Promised Land. He felt God comes to us when we are in the wildness. He suggested some hold a belief that Jesus did not need to be baptized. If baptism involves only purification or becoming more acceptable in God's sight this may be true. I am, however, at this moment, drawn more strongly to the statement we sing with the hymn Waterlife:

A simple sweet beginning, a lovely place to start:
Christ began the singing that swells within my heart

There is the power of community and identity in baptism. Jesus' baptism is as important to that identity we are being baptized into as it is for all of us. Since Jesus was son of man as well as son of God, his need for baptism was the same as ours.

Pastor Nick ended his sermon with an inspiriting poem captured on the left. It is titled The Old Shepherd.

It was apparent to him that the poet that wrote this had spent a great deal of time in the presence of God.

What these words reminded Pastor Nick is that we need not be afraid of anything whethe as long as we have faith that we are held in the love of God and are confident that this love will not fail us.

November 29, 2020 - First Sunday in Advent - Together Again

Living the Christian life appears to be about accepting certain ambiguities. Even as both my wife and I understand why, she often observes with humor the inconsistency and the capacity for what John Keats labeled, in a different knowledge pursuit, the "negative capability" which is increasingly becoming accepted in the postmodern church.

I believe Pastor Dave acknowledged this when he talked about the Gospel text did not want to cooperate with the Advent spirit he felt as he lit the first Advent candle. He started his sermon by cutting holly for Advent candles with log holders which he set up in his cabin at Welches. Interestingly my wife and I delivered Advent logs and devotionals  to a good number of Creator congregation members yesterday, so that felt like a strong, if coincidental, "homemade" connection this Advent.

As a Disaster Preparedness Program Coordinator, he spoke about how this Mark 13:24-37 Gospel initially hit him as he read these verses from our twenty first century cosmology, where this would be experienced as a disaster. Yet this is not the only cosmology we should be prepared to deal with in the Bible. Pastor Dave turned back to first chapter in the book of Genesis to lay out a different cosmology, one that Jesus' contemporaries may have shared. 

Pastor Dave preached that in Genesis the sun, moon and stars were created on the 4th day. In another coincidence I recently had read Genesis in preparation for Advent. I was trying to understand the different kinds of darknesses that are recorded in scripture after reading Lenny Duncan's Dear Church again for Creator's book group.

Pastor Dave went on to reveal how he reads this scripture now. This is a story of God ordering the dark chaos by the creation of the heavenly dome. With this dome God created a place for humankind to live. The stars, sun and moon function as beautiful decorative lanterns rather than a larger than life threat if they are taken away. 

He placed this context with the way we begin to gather again in Advent. The falling stars are a sign - a signal that we should come back together as a group. Pastor Dave compared us to an audience that is out for intermission after having watched the first act of a play. We are signaled back to our seats by the blinking lights announcing the second act is about to begin. The second act is where we also have our part to play in God's ordering of dark chaos through creation.

A great sermon with a good ideas that I accepted intellectually. He closed his sermon by quoting the opening line of the spiritual My Lord What a Morning. This kicked his sermon into bold, new, terrifying, and inspired territory for me. Suddenly my thoughts went back to when I was twelve years old. That was when I first heard When the Stars Begin To Fall sung by The Seekers. I didn't know how to feel on first hearing. Like Pastor Dave, the falling stars threatened disaster in my mind, being filled with a twentieth century cosmology. Yet here was this was sung with triumph, evident joy, and a gratitude that tugged my heart towards a different reaction. Verses like the following kept up this tension created by the chorus:

You will weep for the rocks and mountains
You will weep for the rocks and mountains
You will weep for the rocks and mountains
When the stars begin to fall 

The weeping could be in actual mourning for everything that is passing as the stars begin to fall or that the stars falling simply help uncover and express a gratitude that the rocks and mountains were created and endured in our world to appreciate.

My next encounter with the song was years later when I followed Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and many folk movement protest songs. I heard Joan Baez sing different lyrics  

My Lord, what a morning!
My Lord, what a morning!
Oh, my Lord, what a morning
When the stars begin to fall.

 

Oh, you will hear the trumpet sound
To wake the nations underground,
Looking to my Lord's right hand
When the stars begin to fall.

 

Oh, you will see my Jesus come,
His glory shining like the sun,
Looking to my Lord's right hand
When the stars begin to fall.

 

Oh, you will hear all Christians shout,
'Cause there's a new day come about,
Looking to my Lord's right hand
When the stars begin to fall

I listened to the song then and sang with the power and conviction I would now sing with a song like Canticle of the Turning. I believed in the new vision in these lyrics and felt part of a group that was going to make it happen somehow. Something like what John Lennon wrote about in Imagine.

As my record collection and interests grew I ran across this song again with additional Harry Belefonte lyrics:

No more grief and pain for me
I heard from Heaven today
Yes, my Lord's gonna set me free
I heard from Him today

 

On my way to the promised land
I heard from Him today
God's gonna give me His right hand
I heard from Heaven today

 

In these verses there was a lifting of an experience of a world weariness as the stars fell down. This is where the falling stars indicated a long-established order had reached an end.  And once this understanding was voiced I knew that at times this had welled up in me as well. Perhaps not as strongly as some, but when the struggle between what is and what should be felt too great in my everyday life these lyrics contained another moment of truth for me.

 

Since then I have explored the wisdom of the blues as well and this end-of-the-world triumphant exuberance I heard in all these versions of the spiritual was echoed in Blind Willie Johnson's Jesus Is Coming Soon about the 1918 pandemic. I had never thought of this song with as associated with Advent or that the lyric Jesus is coming soon could be combined with the birth of Jesus as well as the second coming. Yet that became meaningful and real today.

 

Great disease was mighty and the people were sick everywhere.
It was an epidemic, it floated through the air.

Well, the news was presented to the people, "You better close your public schools."
"And to prevent the death piles building, you better close your churches too."

 

We done told you, our God's done warned you,
Jesus coming soon.
We done told

 

Pastor Dave's sermon opened up this unique response to scripture that pulled in my individual past and present musical associations, and my lived present and the historical past, together with all my fears and hopes for the future.

 

Together again indeed.