April 16, 2017 - Easter - Moments where God Shows Up in Life

Matthew 28:2-3 "And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow."

Photos by Debi Stromberg

In her words Pastor Michelle was "not afraid to be a fool for Christ", as she witnessed today in her sermon a moment in daily life where God's presence became a reality that she could perceive and testify to publically.

Internally this declaration shook me like an earthquake and, yes, a stone that was firmly in place and hindering my spirit was rolled away. She admitted to being a little scared of giving this sermon, a feeling I shared, together with being thunderstruck and illuminated, much like I was during Pastor Michelle's Easter sermon last year.

Why this strong emotional and theological connection? Well, I had just struggled with what I wrote in my Easter Vigil blog entry yesterday about God showing up years ago. The coincidence that Pastor Michelle chose this Sunday to make this part of her sermon astonished me.

I experienced a few "God showing up" moments years ago. I referenced the one I experienced at my first Easter Vigil to give context to what I wrote about Saturday's service. However the words I used to express the feeling of God's presence were awkward and, I felt, rambling. As a result, rather than expressing what God showing up meant to me, I wrote that I needed to focus on yesterday evening's worship, which did not have this kind of "God" moment for me.

What moved me today, beyond the chronological coincidence of our witness of God's presence in this way, was how Pastor Michelle's moment matched up with mine and where the moments were different. Those similarities and differences caused a stone to roll away in my thinking, leaving me with a new clarity on how to talk about God, in my daily life anyway.

Pastor Michelle's moment was personal with on one else around. Mine have all been in places where I am with other people. To testify that God "showed up" in this places and at this time has implications. One is the implication that anybody physical there would confirm that presence as  real. Marcus Borg was fond of asking the question in this way "Could someone have videotaped it?" That was not what I have ever experienced. I would not have expected the person next to me to agree God appeared in this particular place. I don't think Pastor Michelle would have expected her dog, who was present in the room when she was visited, to react to the presence she perceived.

Many people today might then conclude that God wasn't there, and chalk it up to just an internal mental construct. Today that was the stone that rolled away - a realization this does an injustice to these moments.

It was neither personal opinion, a decision, or a moment of inspiration, exhilaration or sorrow that triggered my knowing what I know. Like Pastor Michelle's moment, I had no choice of where and when but, rather, only an openness to accept the personal reality of the moment. I imagined for years that experiencing God's presence would be a mystical, otherworldly experience. Interestingly my experiences are not particularly mystical but rather intimately related to, and actually springing from, what is happening in a fragile, ephemeral world. For me, God showing up is closer to feeling a depth of love experience. Often there is a "giving away" offering which can feel profoundly foolish.

I noticed this week that Easter would be my 100th blog entry. I find that not only am I detailing Creator's Easter celebration but something much more emotional and scary than what I typically write.

There was more that happened in this service beyond the sermon. The choir sang Now the Green Blade Rises at both services as a musical offering to the congregation together with Life Tree. Robert played a beautiful recorder solo on Life Tree with Matt on piano. The music, that is sung to the American folk melody  O Waly Waly, gently floated over the congregation with an inner grace that was humbling.

The service moved to an individual congregation member as well. Easter was Sam's last worship at Creator before his move which will eventually take him to the coast. Our quilting group presented him with a quilt and the congregation gave him a blessing, a heartfelt god speed for his life journey from here, and a hope that our paths would cross again.

Creator's traditional Easter Brunch took place between the two services. In addition there was a bake sale with both helping to raise funds for our youth.

I met Valentine's family over brunch. They just arrived at the service after flying in from Cameroon, Valentine has not see his mother and father for fourteen years. It is a real joy for me to be in choir with him and to swap stories about what is going on in our lives.

As our table talked the presence of  Valentine's parents moved me. Together with the many members who were dressed specially for Easter, my thoughts began to turn to my own parents and sister, past Easters shared with others, and being together with my family today.

Mary, Eric and I attended the second service together. Normally I have something to do in worship but today singing in choir did not relegate me to sitting in a particular place so we had the opportunity to sit and worship as a family.

Altogether this was a blessed Easter for this congregation.

April 15, 2017 - Holy Week Triduum: Easter Vigil - From the Good Friday Death to Building An Easter Vigil Community

Some cosmic tumblers clicked into place for me tonight regarding a few reasons why the Tridumm is now a powerful worship experience for me. The roots of this power started with my first Easter Vigil experience which was the first time I felt God show up for worship.

At this point a little more of my church background might help. After some soul-bruising encounters with the institutional Lutheran church I grew up with, I had been unaffiliated with a Lutheran worship community for years until finding Creator. This congregation welcomed my family to join them on a shared God journey in a unique way that restored something in us.

The early years at Creator quenched my years-old thirst for true corporate worship. Trying to separate those corporate worship moments from the itme I now think of as "God showing up" is certainly clearer to me now than it was initially.

I didn't know what to expect of Easter Vigil when I first heard this was celebrated at Creator. I only knew Pastor Dayle touted this service as her favorite of the year. I wasn't used to Saturday worship. I asked about the difference between an Easter Vigil and an Easter service. People smiled and said "Just come, you have to experience it."

They were right  There was a topsy-turvy quality about the order of the service that puzzled me at first, only in turn to trigger first sheer joy in me and, finally, an intimate sense of God just being with us. I could go into detail but this post is about tonight's Easter Vigil so sharing the details of this first Easter Vigil must wait.

This evening followed a shattering Good Friday service. The haunting contemporary stations of the cross, and the last line "But today... go home. There is nothing more to see. Jesus is dead." drove this Good Friday into my consciousness. This, with the recent headlines of Syria tomahawk missiles and the MOAB strike in Afghanistan,  presented a reality that seemed to shout through all the perceptions I currently have of the world. A shout that was a wake-up call to the facts that ultimately truth is dictated by those who hold the most earthly power and that rule is held with violence or the threat of violence.

Easter Vigil started to whisper, then sang to me of another, greater truth - the truth that the life of Jesus attests to. The service began with the usual outdoor BBQ fire which is used to light the Paschal candle. This evening I recalled the words of Peter Gabriel's Biko (Steve Biko was an anti-apartheid activist who died in 1977 from injuries sustained while in police custody in South Africa) when the fire was lit:

The man is dead
You can blow out a candle
But you can't blow out a fire
Once the flames begin to catch
The wind will blow it higher

Easter Vigil was a "Biko" wind for me this year; a wind that spread the candlelight of each of our deeply held personal feelings into the fire of corporate worship tonight. We celebrated the Easter Vigil as Christians have traditionally done for centuries. We told our stories that build up our ties to one another and bind us together. Tonight the threads of these stories intertwined and unraveling with one another together with recently made memories and those of past years.

The choir has practiced Now The Green Blade Rises for weeks under Matt's direction to sing at Easter services tomorrow. Matt played the music as an instrumental tonight between the first and second half of this service. The words conveyed what the congregation took into this service from Good Friday. The first shared story was truly our first story - our origin story - Genesis.

First the Now The Green Blade Rises lyrics:

In the grave they laid Him, Love Whom we had slain,
Thinking that He’d never wake to life again,
Laid in the earth like grain that sleeps unseen:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.

In this context, on top of the endearing playfulness of the presentation for our youth, creation is associated with Jesus Christ as humankind's second Adam. As Diane read the Genesis it was not only a past history shared; but a prophecy about the healing, feeding and renewing of creation from now on as understood through Jesus and the resurrection.

In an instant I knew the response to that shattering Good Friday shout came in the gospel of Matthew 11 verse 12 - "From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been subjected to violence, and violent people have been raiding it." 

We live with a the new covenant. The creation story, as told after Jesus' baptism and resurrection, is the affirmation of a new reality. The Easter Vigil's first story recognizes a journey away from the violence of Good Friday.

Next came the story of Noah and the flood. Over this two-by-two Sunday school story that I have heard all my life there was deep, overlaid meaning from the 2014 film starring Russell Crowe.

In the film, as in the Bible, God gives Noah a vision. God, with the knowledge of how evil men have become, commands Noah to save the animals and that Noah and his family become their caretakers.

In the vision Noah also comes to another understanding of God's will - namely that man should not be allowed to perpetuate as a species.

To fulfill this command means killing his granddaughters born on the ark, which ultimately Noah finds impossible to do. Believing he has disobeyed God's command he is ashamed of sparing his granddaughters. He drinks heavily and separates himself from his family until his daughter gives him a different insight on the vision when he explains why he spared her children.

The daughter then believes God entrusted man's fate in Noah's hands. Noah certainly knew man's sinful nature and, considering that nature, could have followed the commandment. Instead he acted out of the love he felt when making the life or death decision. God gave Noah the decision and Noah gave humanity another chance.

Perhaps one man alone may not fully understand God's intention and will, even in a personal vision from God.

Each story told in this service continued to build community step by step. Easter Vigil, at the core, celebrates what is at the heart of Christianity. We recognized the green blade of life that rises today from the bonds of our community.

At Easter tomorrow we will celebrate the wheat of abundant life.