Crisis and Creativity

These things I remember as I pour out my soul:
how I went with the throng and led them in procession to the house of God
with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival.
Psalm 42:4

I have heard it said that crisis is often the best soil for creativity.  The crisis that delivers us into places of isolation, dislocation, deprivation and desolation can foster a resourcefulness that helps us to find new ways to fulfill the desires of our hearts.  What initially is nothing more than a source for our lament over loss, can actually teach us to sing a new song of hope.  This was certainly the case for Israel during its exile in Babylon.  In this time when their last memories of Jerusalem were a broken down wall and the burned out rubble of the temple, they sat at first by the waters in Babylon weeping and refusing to sing the songs of Zion (Ps. 137).  They were furious; and paralyzed by rage all they could think about was the injustice done to them and how long it would be before they could go back to Jerusalem and reclaim what was rightfully theirs.

Yet 70 years of lamentation was not a sustainable means of managing their grief and rage.  Nor was simply waiting to go back to what was.  So for whatever reason, they began to allow the light of God into the cracks in their hard shell of bitterness.  That light warmed the seeds of hope and creativity lying dormant within them, and the plants that grew from these seeds changed them forever.  What was born during this era where they were deprived of their normal ways of worship and fellowship were new ways to gather and new songs to sing.  They built “highways to Zion in their hearts” (Ps. 84) and the dry, lifeless world of exile (Ps 42:1-3) became a well-watered and verdant field giving witness to their ongoing covenant relationship with God (Isaiah35:1).  Most of the Psalms were written and the institution of the synagogue was born during the exile.  In a time where they could not worship as they had, when they were grieving the loss of “leading the throng” into the temple, the Holy Spirit was working overtime, blowing the creative breath of life into the lungs of people who thought they would never sing again.

We’re in a very different kind of crisis these days.  Our oppressor does not manifest itself with the concreteness of a conquering army or a voracious, narcissistic emperor.  Our captor is silent and unseen.  So it is harder to oppose and, at this moment at least, impervious to any rebellion we might mount to overthrow it.  So perhaps our despair is even greater than that of the exiles, because it is so unclear as to where we should focus our rage.  Yet even so, the songs the exiles wrote and the means of gathering they developed have something to teach us about how we can manage our anger and sorrow.  They call us to summon the same spirit of creativity and explore how God might be inviting us to a new thing (Is. 43:18-19).

My biggest frustration these days is that the very act of meeting together indoors, in close proximity to one another for an hour or more is apparently one of the best ways to spread Covid-19.  Get us all singing in that space and you create an even more fertile environment for the disease.  I’d call that a crisis.  And I spend many of my waking hours longing to go back to a time when we did not have to worry about this or spend our waking hours trying to devise ways of maintaining our current means of worship in our sanctuary while avoiding this threat.  It will surprise no one to learn that in spite of all my fretting I have yet to come up with the time machine that would take us back to the way we used to be or the work-around that would neutralize the threat of this contagion. 

So what can we do?  We can focus on what we know we need and work to develop new ways of meeting that need.  One of the most important items of business we need to attend to in these days of restriction and isolation is the work of “not neglecting to meet together” in order to “encourage one another”(Heb. 10:25).  I believe there are some creative ways we can heed this admonition to meet together while also respecting the limits placed upon us by Covid-19.

We have already settled into one example of this creative adjustment by gathering for our weekly worship service on Zoom.  And we will continue to offer this into the foreseeable future, and so accommodate those who will not initially be able to come back into the sanctuary even when we open that up.  But there are other ways to use this tool that we have not yet fully explored.  Bible studies, prayer groups, lectio divina groups, and fellowship events (aka- happy hours) are all things we can do using a video conference platform.  In this time when we cannot just drive to the church and all attend the same service and then chat with one another in the narthex after the service, we can still be talking with one another about our faith.  We can be encouraging one another to persevere.  If you need some help with making use of the tool that facilitates these discussions, there are folks in the congregation who are making it their mission to help people get set up.  Don’t just defer this necessity of meeting together until the time when the church building opens up again.  Do it now. 

Another thing we can do to attend to this admonition to meet together is to explore outdoor options for gathering in smaller groups.  We might not be able to gather 120 people in the sanctuary to sing and celebrate the Lord’s Supper, but we can gather groups of ten to do those things outside.  Granted this significantly diminishes the number that we would normally think of when we think of a “throng”, but a circle of 10 spaced at a safe distance from one another more than meets Jesus’ suggested quorum of two or three who come together in his name. 

In short, we need to think beyond merely restoring our indoor once a week gathering for all.  The initial work of opening things up will not be about getting everybody back into the sanctuary and getting back to the way things were.  Instead it might mean multiplying the number of gatherings we have and spreading these out over the week.  Will you please join me in praying and dreaming about this?  God’s steadfast love has not ceased, Jesus is still Lord and we are his disciples.  As St. Paul says in 2 Corinthians “now is the acceptable time, now is the day of salvation.”  So let us both accept the unhappy circumstances of the now that we cannot change, and cling to the truth about God in this now that will not change.  Let us act in the assurance and confidence that nothing will separate us from God’s love.  

Why are you cast down O my soul and why are you disquieted within me,
hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my King and my God.
(Ps. 42:11)

Dave Rohrer
5/22/20202

Return to Normalcy?

One of my best friends during this time of crisis in our world has been the study of history.  When I look back and see that there have been other times in history when we have walked a similar path, I tend to turn down the volume on what I am feeling in the present.  I step back from the tendency to catastrophize and stop using words like unprecedented.  I have heard it said that those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it.  Frankly, I think the better way to state this maxim is that those who study history know when we are repeating it.

With all the talk these days about “opening things up” and “getting back to normal” I’ve been thinking about an obscure detail concerning the 1920 presidential campaign. 100 years ago Warren G. Harding and James M. Cox were running against each other for president.  Their running mates were two future presidents, Calvin Coolidge and Franklin Roosevelt.  In 1920 the nation had just emerged from two major crises, World War I and the 1918 flu pandemic, and Harding’s campaign slogan was “Return to Normalcy.”

Sound familiar?

Return to normalcy.  It certainly expresses our heart’s desire these days.  We’re tired of being cooped up in our homes.  We’re oppressed by the loneliness of it all.  We’re fearful about the economy.  We desperately want to get back to the way things were before we shut ourselves in as a result of this worldwide outbreak of Covid-19.  Our souls are sated with the bad tasting food of crisis and we want the sustenance of something more savory.  So let’s get back to the way things were.  Let’s return to normalcy.

Of course the problem with this desire is that we can’t fulfill it.  It’s as difficult to go back to what was as it is to predict what is ahead.  We can only be where we are.  We can only live faithful lives in the present that are  fueled by gratitude for and wisdom born of past experience and hopeful anticipation and educated guesses of what might be best for the future. Nostalgia about the past and fear about the future have not proven to be the best foundations for decisions we have to make in the present.   

A big part of the Biblical narrative grows out of the theme of what happens when we human beings emerge from a crisis.  The expulsion from the Garden, the release from slavery in Egypt, 40 years of wilderness wandering and the entry into the new land, the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 BC, the end of 70 years spent in exile in Babylon and a return to the rubble that was once a great city, the crucifixion and the resurrection of the one who turned out to be a very different Messiah than the one who was anticipated, all give witness to this theme.  At each of these moments of transition the story tells both of the longings and sadness the people have as they look back to what was, as well as the fear and the hope they experience as they anticipate something new.  And at each of these moments the Bible acknowledges our feelings and gives us songs to sing that put words to them: Wailing laments that long for the restoration of what was and hopeful hymns as we search the horizon for the signs of God’s presence.

Yet there is another song that we are given as well.  It is the song that sings of the one constant that endures even in the face of uncertainty and change.  There are many versions of it in the Bible but one of my favorites is Jeremiah’s song in Lamentations 3.  It faces into the loss and embraces hope.  It does not deny the pain and yet sings of something that transcends it.  It offers no rosy promise of a return to what was, only a celebration of what remains true.  In the wake of destruction and the throes of exile Jeremiah gives us a word for today:

The thought of my affliction and my homelessness
    is wormwood and gall!
My soul continually thinks of it
    and is bowed down within me.
But this I call to mind,
    and therefore I have hope:

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,
    his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
    great is your faithfulness.
“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
    “therefore I will hope in him.”
(Lamentations 3:19-24)

David Rohrer
05/06/2020

Shameless Nakedness

“And the man and his wife were both naked,
and were not ashamed.”
Genesis 2:25

Sometime in either my freshman or sophomore year of college I took a class called Human Ecology.  It fulfilled one of the two biological science general education course requirements for a bachelor’s degree and was essentially a course that explored the inter-relatedness of human society and the natural world.  Early in the class to make the point that human beings share things in common with the other animals in this world, the professor identified what he considered to be the two major biological traits that distinguish us from other animals. Pointing to his head with one hand and repeatedly demonstrating the grasping function of his thumb and his other four fingers he said: “These are the only two things that make us different: our brains and an opposable thumb.”

I suppose if you look at this question from the perspective of evolutionary biology it is not far from the truth.  At the very least, it is a helpful perspective in that it mitigates some of the arrogance brought on by that big brain and maybe helps us to think twice about how to live in a state of respectful humility with the rest of the natural world.  And this was certainly part of my professor’s point.  But it is not the whole story.  And it is not the only perspective from which one can look at this question of how we are different from the animals. For what that big brain also does is give us the ability to admit what we do not know and therefore also postulate the existence of a being other than ourselves who might know what we don’t.

If we see ourselves as creatures made by the thoughtful and intentional actions of a Creator, then there is another short list of similarities and differences we can compile when we compare ourselves with the other animals God has created.  The story of creation in Genesis 1 and 2 is a helpful source in constructing this list.  What makes us similar can be summarized in words like dust and death, and what distinguishes us is identified in the words like image and dominion. 

The Psalms are a helpful commentary on Genesis.  For on the one hand these poets lead us into the stark awareness that we return to the dust from which we come (Ps 90) and that we cannot “abide in our pomp” because like the beasts we perish (Ps 49).  On the other hand they celebrate our special status in creation as ones who are on God’s mind in a different way: That God made us “a little lower than God” and has given us “dominion over the works of [his] hands” (Ps. 8).

But irrespective of which of these two sets of lenses we use to explore this question of our similarities to and our dissimilarities from the other animals, we are delivered into a place where we must face the same question. We have to decide what we will do with this information.  We have to ask: “So what?”  How will we make use of our privilege and what will we do with the truth that we have limits?  We are brought to a place where we must consider our moral choices in how we will relate to this world. 

And when I come to this point I am glad for my theological lens.  For it gives me direction in how to deploy my big brain and it gives me compassion for a world that comes from the loving thoughts of a benevolent creator who looked at it all when it was finished and said: “This is very good.”

There is a strange little detail at the end of Genesis 2 that brings this together for me.  We’re told that the man and the woman were “naked and not ashamed.”  Another way to say this is: They knew who they were, they saw themselves clearly and they were ok with that.  Naked and not ashamed: vulnerable and undefended, yet confident and empowered. 

When we know who we are, people created in the image of God, made by God for relationship with God, one another and the rest of creation, we are not anxious about what we are not.  We shrug our shoulders at the fact of our nakedness because we know that our vulnerability is not the only truth that defines us.  We can humbly make use of those big, yet limited, brains because we receive them as a gift from God and use them in gratitude to him and for his glory.

The way Eugene Peterson renders the third Beatitude concerning the blessedness of the meek provides us with a good summary and an apt conclusion:

You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are—
no more, no less.
That’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought.
Matthew 5:5

David Rohrer
April 27, 2020

Old, But Far From Irrelevant

One night during my first year of seminary my classmate and housemate, Keith, came into my room looking haggard, carrying a big thick commentary on some book of the Bible and announced: “Had God known what we were going to do with the Bible, he never would have given it to us.”  I remember this night fondly because it was such an incredibly funny and yet ironically cogent observation.  As is the case with some other good things that God has given us, we who are a part of the Judeo/Christian tradition have come up with a myriad of ways to misuse the Bible.

We have ignored matters of context and used pieces of Scripture as a religious weapon to beat people into submission or as a justification for bad behavior.  We have tried to make it into a modern science or history book or criticized it because of it’s failure to be either one of those things.  We have assumed this collection of many books written over thousands of years is one book and then either derided it for inconsistency or tried to explain away its apparent contradictions.  We have done things with it that are probably not within the Divine intention for it, and as a result when reading it we often find ourselves missing the beauty of the forest while we are lost in the examination of the bark on specific trees.

So what are we to do with this ancient collection of religious texts?  Just what is it?  What assumptions should we make about it and how should we read it?  Why should we bother with it at all?  These are all what we call hermeneutical questions. They are among the questions that help us to define the lenses through which we will read the Bible.  Whenever we read any book we come to it with a set of expectations that order how we read it, and the hermeneutic we apply to reading the Bible will say a great deal about what we bring to it and, more importantly, what we take from it.

For me the foundational answer to this hermeneutical question is to start with the assumption that the Bible is the word of God. However, I don’t mean by this that God dictated every word and people wrote it down word for word as he spoke.  I mean that we hear God’s voice in it because it is the report of his interaction with his creation.  So when I sit down to read the Bible, I assume that, first and foremost, it is going to tell me something about God: about who God is and what God has done.  And second, I assume it is going to tell me something about the people who have related to God: about who they are, how they have prayed to God and how they have been both challenged and changed by God.  In other words, when I read the Bible I don’t expect to find an answer to all of life’s questions, I go looking for direction in who God is and how I can relate to God. 

In worship we periodically sing a hymn that gives us some direction in this matter of Biblical hermeneutics.  It’s called “Ancient Words” and its chorus is especially instructive:

Ancient words, ever true, changing me, changing you. 
We have come with open hearts;
O let the ancient words impart.

The words of the Bible are well tested and have shown a kind of resilience that not all human literature can claim.  They speak with an unmistakable veracity that grabs and holds our attention.  We see ourselves in these words.  They tell us something about God and about ourselves as God’s creation.   In these words we hear something that we want to preserve and pass on because they challenge us and change us. They are old words that remain relevant even in new times.

For the next six weeks our sermons will be about listening to this old message in a new time.  We’ll look at some of the oldest stories in the Bible in the first eleven chapters of the Book of Genesis, and explore their applicability to our day and time.  These stories are some of the biggest targets of those who want denigrate the Bible and at the same time some of the texts most abused by those who claim to order their lives by the Bible. But what can be heard above the din of this atheistic and religious rancor is the crystal clear song of love that God has been singing to his creation since the dawn of time. 

David Rohrer
04/17/2020

Easter Sunday 2020

“Simon, son of John do you love me?” 
Peter said to Jesus, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” 
Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep.”
John 21:16

A commonly used exaggeration we often deploy in the midst of some discomfort we are enduring is the phrase, “This is killing me.”  After the long hike we say “My feet are killing me.”  After a hard day at the office, “This job is killing me.”  Or at the end of an afternoon spent bending over to tend the garden, “My back is killing me.”  When we use it in this way, the phrase is rarely accurate.  But in these days of our isolation due to Covid-19 it seems appropriate.  We are daily aware of something that is killing us.  And it’s hard to get our minds off of it. This novel corona virus is making many of us very sick.  It is easy to catch and hard to fight, and our response to it is causing all sorts of collateral damage.  So maybe in this case it’s not so much of an exaggeration to say, “This is killing me.”

Yet even so, even if it is true that Covid-19 is killing us, perseverating on this fact is also something that will rob us of life.  To survive this scourge and thrive we’ll need to do something more than work to avoid contracting this disease.  We’ll need to adjust our perspective and widen our angle to take in a bigger picture.  We’ll need to set this disease in a broader context.  And I propose a question posed by Barbara Brown Taylor in one of her books to help us do this.  She asks her readers the question: “What’s saving your life right now.” 

Easter Sunday is a good day to contemplate Taylor’s question to us.  On this day when we celebrate the truth that evil will not have the last word, it is good for us to contemplate what is saving our lives rather than what is killing us.  On the day when the ugliness of that Roman cross is fading into the background, it is good to look forward in hope and contemplate the life and light that flies in the face of death and darkness.  How is Covid-19 failing to get the last word even though it is still raging among us?  Truly living is not just about not dying.  So what is helping us to live?

At one level the post-resurrection encounter of Jesus and Peter in John 21 is an example of this work of reframing life’s central question.   While lounging on the shore of the lake after a big breakfast, Jesus asks Peter to think about what will foster life.  He asks the question three times.  Each time Peter answers the question in the affirmative.  Each time he responds to Jesus, Peter becomes a bit more irritated.  But Jesus is calmly persistent and offers the same rejoinder to each of Peter’s answers.  “Do you love me, Peter.  Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.  Then feed my lambs. . . , tend my sheep . . ., feed my sheep.”  In essence, Jesus says to Peter: “If you love me, then love as you have been loved.  Pass on what you have been given.  Reflect the light that has been poured out on you.” 

The contradiction to the finality of the Cross that occurs on Easter morning initially brings the disciples up short.  In all of the stories of encounters between the resurrected Christ and the disciples, they are rubbing their eyes and pinching themselves wondering if they are just having a dream.  Once they figure out he is alive and that they can believe their eyes, there is great joy and relief.  The snare of the fowler was broken (Ps 124) and death didn’t have the last word.  What they all knew was the exhilaration of being saved from the crushing grip of an oppressive opponent.  Yet once the adrenalin secreted by this awareness began to subside, there on the shore of the lake with full stomachs and the comforting presence of Jesus there was space to ask another question.  Just beyond the relief of being saved, the question that presented itself was, “Now what?” What does this mean?  What does it tell us?  What impact will this have on the way we live our lives?  Now that we know we’ve been saved from evil, what’s next?  What have we been saved for?

Notice that Jesus’ encounter with Peter in John 21 doesn’t answer this question with the command to develop strategy for a worldwide movement or to begin work on a theology that explains it all.  Jesus simply calls Peter to continue to do what he had already called him to do.  Follow me, Peter.  Abide with me.  Let me love you.  Then go in the strength of that love and love others.  Feed my sheep. 

Now what?  Basically it boils down to a one word answer: Relationship.  Love as you have been loved.
Many years later St. Paul effectively said the same thing in his letter to the Colossians:

As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved,
clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. 
Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other;
just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.
Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.
And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body.
And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly;
teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts
sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed,
do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
(Colossians 3:12-17)

David Rohrer
4/12/2020

Good Friday 2020

So Joseph [of Arimathea] took the body [of Jesus] and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn in the rock. He then rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb and went away. (Matthew 27:59-60)

Anyone who has ever been through the death of a loved one knows that strange and sometimes horrible awareness that crashes in immediately following the death.  Something is going to need to be done with the now lifeless body of our beloved.  In our day we refer to it as making arrangements, and it is largely about brokering the connection between the hospital and the mortuary.  Much of the transition from death to grave happens out of our sight.  It is not common for us to have the opportunity to do what Joseph of Arimathea did with the body of Jesus.  We do not personally carry the newly lifeless body of our loved one to the place where he or she will be entombed.  We do not experience the physical strain of leaning down to place them on a surface even more lifeless than their body. We do not struggle to roll a stone door over the mouth of the tomb.

Yet whether we have this more intimate experience of death or not, we all know, or will know, what it feels like to experience the overwhelming presence of our loved one’s absence.  The one who was alive and with us, is now dead and gone.  The tomb that awaited an occupant, is no longer waiting.  And once that space is filled, we have nothing to do but back out of the crypt, or fill in the grave with dirt, or watch the waves wash away the ashes, and then walk away.  Alone.

Death is an undeniable “full stop.”  It ends something.  Yet for those of us who are contemplating Jesus’ death on this Good Friday, we see death as a gateway as well.  Unlike Joseph of Arimathea, or Mary Magdalene, or Mary the mother of Jesus, or his disciples, we know the rest of the story.  We know that Sunday is coming.  We know the promise of resurrection.  So the breathless body on the stone slab in the crypt is not the only image we carry as we close the door of the tomb on Good Friday.  We hear the echo of his teaching about the grain of wheat needing to fall into the ground and die in order to bear fruit (John 12:24).  We remember the stories of his post resurrection appearances to his disciples.  We believe that he is alive and with us in a brand new way. 

But none of this counters the truth that he died.  And Good Friday and Holy Saturday are the days to sit with that truth for a while and ask ourselves what this death means.  What new life popped out of this seed that fell into the ground and died.  What new doors were opened when it broke the soil and opened itself to light?  What died with it?  And what part of it could that Roman cross not kill?

Once again Wendell Berry has been God’s gift to me in the contemplation of these Lenten questions.  He gives me a picture of the amazing work God does for us in death, how God’s experience of the grave is our gateway to life. 

What hard travail God does in death!
He strives in sleep, in our despair,
And all flesh shudders underneath
The nightmare of His sepulcher.

The earth shakes, grinding its deep stone;
All night the cold wind heaves and pries;
Creation strains sinew and bone
Against the dark door where He lies.

The stem bent, pent in seed, grows straight
And stands. Pain breaks in song. Surprising
The merely dead, graves fill with light
Like opened eyes. He rests in rising.

(1980 --  I  This Day p.25)

Our God in Christ participates in “creation’s groan” (Romans 8:22).  He enters into our bondage and decay in order to free us from it.  He descends into the ultimate pit and lets us know in no uncertain terms that not even death can stop his pursuit of us.  Not even death can separate us from his love.

David Rohrer

4/10/2020

A Welcoming Room of Song

A typical, pastor speak, opening line for this essay might be: “This Lent I have been daily thanking God for the black Labrador who was delivered to us in late January via the Guide Dogs for the Blind Puppy Truck.”  But to begin with an expression of what I actually feel, it's more accurate to simply say: “I am hopelessly in love with Tifah.” 
 
It’s hard not to love a puppy.  But I would have to say that my relationship with this puppy is markedly different than with any of the six previous Guide Dog puppies our family has raised.  I imagine this is a combination of my awareness and Tifah’s uniqueness, and to be sure, she does remind me of Pilaf, dog number three.  But she has one trait that is especially endearing and affirming.  She is a contemplative.  She loves to pay attention, watch and listen.  When we head down to the bottom of the driveway before and after her breakfast, she almost always pauses, sits and listens.  The birds are out in force, singing away; Tifah clearly notices and seems to enjoy their song.
 
Projection? Perhaps.  But if you saw her do this, I think you would agree with me.  She seems to understand that she has a job to do so that we can return to the house, but in her choice to sit and wait, I also hear her saying: “Don’t rush me.  I’ll get around to it.  But do you hear that? Take a moment to take it in.  You won’t be sorry.”  I do.  And I’m never sorry I did.
 
In this world of goal setting and to do lists, it is so easy to turn life into nothing more than the accomplishment of the tasks that we have carefully laid out the day before.  Success is gauged in terms how good we are at management by objective.  Wake up, review the list, attack each bullet point, and at the end of the day make tomorrow’s list.  But here’s the thing about these lists: they aren’t simply an end in themselves; they can take us to places where we discover things that we had not expected or imagined.  There at the end of the driveway I get a gift as I wait and listen with Tifah.  I hear an invitation to life that I would not have heard but for her choice and my willingness to join her in it. 
 
As I have previously mentioned, Wendell Berry’s poetry has been another thing that has been saving my life this Lent.  In one poem in particular he paints a picture of the lesson Tifah has been teaching me:

Off in the woods in the quiet
morning a redbird is singing
and his song around him
greater than its purpose,
a welcoming room of song
in which the trees stand,
through which the creek runs.
(This Day, 2011 --- VII)

 Like Tifah, the redbird is involved in a work he does not know about.  He is creating a “welcoming room of song,” and so inviting all in his hearing to listen and perhaps join in the song.  When I pay attention to and accept those invitations, my life is fuller.   Suddenly I am about much more than my goals.  I am a participant in something that I could not have created by myself or achieved merely through the accomplishment of my stated objectives.  And that’s a lot of fun.
 
In Luke’s telling of the Palm Sunday story (Luke 19), the Pharisees are uncomfortable with all the adulation Jesus is receiving and tell him to tell the crowds to be quiet.  Jesus’ reply to them is priceless: “I tell you if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”  The invitation to that room of song is sounding.  In fact, it can’t be silenced.  The question before us is whether or not we pause long enough to hear it and then take the step of entering the room to join in the song.  It means the sacrifice of laying aside some of our urgency and humbly recognizing the limits of our lists.  But it’s a heck of a lot more fulfilling than coming to the end of the day with nothing more than the anticipation of tomorrow’s list.
 
Dave Rohrer
4/3/2020

Lent 2020

Hands down, Lent is my favorite season of the Christian Year.  This isn’t because I love the color purple, or because ashes and thorns and crosses are among my favorite things.  It’s because Lent is an unadorned appeal to simply step back, take a breath and then lean into the difficult, and yet liberating, labor of facing into the truth.  Jesus says the truth sets us free.  But before it leads us across the threshold of the broad and open space, it also frightens us.  And in the midst of that fear we have a choice to make: will we trust God, or will we try to go it alone.

One of the primary truths the Lenten season invites us to explore is the truth of our mortality.  The truth of our limits.  The truth that “we come from dust and to dust we will return.”  If we look full face into this truth of death, we come to grips with our vulnerability and the question of how we are going to manage this fact.  Will we try to overcome it ourselves and build walls of protection that will insulate us from it and allow us to temporarily defer or deny it?  Or will we recognize our Maker who made us out of love and for love and relax into God’s embrace?

Lent asks us to work with the very basic question of trust.  As vulnerable, limited beings we cannot survive apart from taking the risk of trust.  Infants need their mothers for food.  Children must accept their dependence on family for sustenance and protection.  Spouses give up some individual prerogative in order to create a covenant bond.  A big part of life is about taking the risk of trusting one who in some way has more power than us, one on whom we are in some way dependent.  And there’s the rub.  Dependence scares us and makes it hard to trust.  How do we know that the other is for us? 

There is a direct line between Eve’s conversation with the serpent in the garden and Jesus’ conversation with Satan in the wilderness.  The serpent and Satan plant the same seed.  They sow mistrust.  “Has God said you shall not eat from any tree of the garden?”  “If you are the son of God, turn these stones to bread.”  In other words, does God really care about you?  If so, why can’t you have the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, why are you out here in the wilderness hungry and thirsty? What kind of a God would deny you this wonderful abundance?  How can he be so stingy?  

When this seed of mistrust germinates and takes root in us, we run.  For the last thing we want to be is God’s toy.  But we are not God’s playthings.  We are not chess pieces on his great cosmic game board.  While we are indeed God’s creatures, we are also God’s children. God made us for relationship himself.  And Jesus’ birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension are all a testimony of the extent to which God has gone to pursue and maintain this relationship.   

Lent is not just about sin and penance.  It’s not simply a reminder of disobedience and rebellion that we must renounce.  It’s not primarily about admitting that we are bad and asking for God’s forgiveness.  At a more basic level Lent invites us to work once again with that ever-present conundrum of trust.  There is freedom in admitting our weakness and limits.  Facing into that truth doesn’t simply cast us into a fear-filled abyss of vulnerability.  It can also empower us to turn and see the face of God.  And when we do, what we see is the same longing we see on the face of Jesus.  A face that reflects his grief over our fearful rejection of him, yet nevertheless continues to shine with the invitation to us to accept the relationship and love for which we were made.

David Rohrer

Ash Wednesday 2020

Pastor's Annual Report

I have a good friend who is the president of a liberal arts university in Iowa.  As I have watched him do his job, one of the things I have been impressed by is the way he is always ready to “make remarks” at public gatherings of the university community.  As the leader of the institution he is attuned to the importance of using even the most mundane events as an opportunity to talk about the mission of the university. He finds a foothold in the ordinary to step up into something sublime.

As the pastor of Emmanuel I see this report as one of my regular opportunities to “make remarks,” and the foothold I want to use to step up into the grandeur of our mission is a colony of mice beneath our sanctuary.  Last winter as we endured the snow and ice that hung around a lot longer than it usually does, we were also greeted with the odor of dead rodents who sought refuge in our crawl space during the freezing temperatures.  Something this earthy is hard to elevate to a higher spiritual plane.  For as we consider this problem of mice seeking shelter and dying in our crawlspace, we, like the people around the tomb of Lazarus, are more aware of the presence of a stench than the presence of the Lord.

Yet there is in all of this a reminder of our mission and the implications of living into that mission.  A big part of who we are and what we do takes place in a wonderful space where we worship God, in which we are encouraged and equipped with the resources we need to persevere on the Way, and from which we are sent into our various worlds where we reflect God’s love and light.  In short, our building plays an important role in our mission and the mice are a reminder that the maintenance of our building is a big part of the equation of sustaining our ministry. 

The sparrows may indeed find a home and the swallows a nest for themselves in the Lord’s house (Psalm 84:3), but someone also has to clean up after them if the temple is going to be maintained for its primary purpose.

One of the things we came to know here at Emmanuel in 2019 is the obvious truth that our “new” building won’t stay new.  A big part of facing into 2020 will be living into the awareness of the costs associated with the upkeep of our facilities.  The session is identifying and prioritizing a variety of maintenance projects that need attention.  These projects will raise our annual expenses and we will be asking you to consider how you can be a part of helping us to meet these needs. 

The good news in all of this is that we have a significant amount of money in reserve to meet many of these needs.  We also have a congregation which has doubled in size since the completion of the building in 2009, and thus have twice as many people who can be a part of sharing this burden.  But as we continue to pay down the remaining part of the mortgage (the principal balance now stands at about $270,000) we will also need to be adding these increasing maintenance costs to our annual budget.

We have a lot to be grateful for here at Emmanuel.  Among those invitations to gratitude are our grounds and the buildings we have constructed on those grounds.  The best way to thank God for these gifts is to be good stewards of these resources.  Thank you for your commitment to participate in this expression of gratitude.

Dave Rohrer—January 23, 2020

January 2020

I have too many books to read.  I feel like that proverbial dog at a whistler’s convention.  A title presents itself to me and not too long after I crack the spine of that book, another title whistles and I set off in a new direction.  I am clearly following the advice of one of my theology professors in seminary who told us:  “Don’t read books.  Read parts of books.”  

The latest title to get my attention is a book I received for Christmas, Timothy Egan’s Pilgrimage to Eternity: From Canterbury to Rome in Search of a Faith.  It is a memoir about his recent pilgrimage along the Via Francigena, a medieval trail from Canterbury to Rome that winds its way through France, Switzerland and Italy.   What I am most drawn to in the book are Egan’s various reflections on the evidence of the dying European Church.  He keeps pointing to the tragic irony of how the continent, whose historic landmarks are legacies of Christian faith, is now primarily home to people who no longer believe.

Egan’s reflections about the European Church have fueled my own reflections about the sustainability of the American Church.  We’re not that far behind Europe.  Our statistics indicating active participation in organized religious communities might be higher than those in Europe, but as I drive around Seattle I am definitely noticing an increase in the number of “farewell” signs posted in front of churches that announce their impending closure.  Like the message on a marquis advertising the close of a Broadway show, these signs celebrate a good run that has run its course.       

Yet fear and anxiety about the survival of the Church is not a very good way to respond to these dour statistics.  In the end, the energy we expend in worry does little more than add to the depth of our grave.  Jesus has let us know in a variety of ways that the work of saving our lives pretty much depends on not thinking about saving our lives but focusing instead on living them, giving them away.  The church is heathiest when we settle into Jesus’ invitation to follow him.  Resting in the truth that brought us together is what keeps us together, and keeps us moving forward in productive, life-giving ways.

The Church is a means to a greater end, not an end in itself.  It came to be because followers of Jesus need each other to sustain the journey on which Jesus has invited us.  Each of us has a God-given vocation on which to act, and we need the people of the church to encourage us on the Way.  We don’t show up on Sunday with a lot to give.  We show up hungry, in search of the food we know we need to fuel the coming week.  So if we have a duty to the church, it is a duty to show up and take what we need to sustain the journey and give what we must to insure that the table can continue to be set.     

Nothing flashy, but vitally important.  The church offers the gift of encouragement that enables us to persevere.  Timothy Egan tells of a sign outside St. Martin’s parish in Canterbury that says it well:  

We do not have all the answers.

We are on a spiritual journey.

We look to Scripture, reason and tradition to help us on our way.

Whoever you are, we offer you a space to draw nearer to God and walk with us.

[Dave Rohrer—January 1, 2020]