Exile and Restoration

“Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like the watercourses in the Negeb.”
Psalm 126:4

 
This season when I have been preaching sermons based on the words of Old Testament prophets, and especially sermons based on passages from Jeremiah and Habakkuk, has provided an opportunity to reflect on the era of the Babylonian exile.  The catastrophic losses that Israel experienced through this event made an indelible impression them.  It changed everything.  It meant loss of home, loss of culture; but hardest of all it meant a breach of trust in their relationship with God.  Suddenly God was not who they thought he was.  The One who promised that David’s descendants would be on the throne in Jerusalem forever seemed to have reneged on that pledge.  Who were they now without Zion and, more to the point, what was Zion now that God had withdrawn his favor? 

In light of this, prophets like Habakkuk and Jeremiah invited people to step back, to wait, to watch.  If God is not who you thought he was, then who is he?  If God has withdrawn you from Zion, then take this opportunity to enquire whether or not he might still be with you even here by the waters of Babylon.  Where might you find God’s comfort now that all the familiar sources of comfort are gone?  The work they did in this era was fruitful.  In the absence of the Temple new ways of worship were developed, new songs of praise and lament were written.  The synagogue was born and became place where the words and the promises of God were heard, and exile proved fertile soil for the composition of some of the most enduring Psalms. 

Then after 70 years away from Zion, after the deaths of many of the people who were sent into exile, after Cyrus of Persia had defeated Babylon and decreed that the Jews could return to their beloved homeland, they went home.  But home was not at all what they had left 70 years before.  Biblical scholars label this period “The Restoration,” but little of their earlier experience was restored.  The work of rebuilding the Temple and the wall of the city was started but the early results of that work were not very promising.

Ezra reports an example of this at the occasion of the laying of the foundation for the Temple (Ezra 3:8-13).  At the worship service celebrating this event the priests led the gathered crowd in the familiar response: “The Lord is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.”  Yet there were competing perceptions about just how good God had been to them.  For while half the gathered crowd shouted in affirmation, the other half, made up of older people who had seen the earlier version of the Temple, “wept with a loud voice . . . . so that the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people’s weeping.”  What was a sign of restoration and renewal for some, was for others an invitation to hopelessness that did little more than underscore the irreversible history of their defeat.

While it is a bit of a stretch to draw too strong of a correlation between our 17 months of COVID-19 sequestration and the 70 years of Babylonian Exile, there are lessons from the Exile that speak to our current place in this saga of the pandemic.  Now that we are in the process of what we call “opening up” there are some truths about Israel’s experience of restoration that might help us to understand what to expect in the transition that is before us.  The most prominent of these lessons is to remember that “restoration” is rarely about going back to the way things were before the dislocation. If our comfort is derived merely from an experience that things are getting “back to normal” we are bound to be disappointed.  COVID has changed many things and the process of opening-up our sanctuary as we come out of COVID will be a much longer and more complex process than our quick response to the crisis that closed us down in March of last year. Going forward is not necessarily a return to normalcy, rather it is a matter of moving forward into a new place that is based on the truth that COVID could not touch: God’s love is steadfast, and Jesus is still Lord.

I am grateful for your prayers and positive spirit as we anticipate our return to in-person worship. I ask for your gentleness and patience as we walk across this familiar threshold in the wake of very unfamiliar circumstances.  When we return we will be “returning” to many new things.  We will have a congregation gathering not just in-person but a congregation also gathering on-line.  We won’t initially be singing but listening to music recorded for the worship service.  We will be wearing masks and there will be fewer chairs in the sanctuary.  The shoulder-to-shoulder post-service levity and libation in the narthex will not be a part of our experience.  And we will not initially have programing for children during worship.  Those are all loses; all reasons to moan along with those at the laying of the Temple foundation who could not see what might lie ahead but could only feel the loss of what had not been restored.   

It’s ok to feel grief and dissatisfaction that is born of loss.  But it is also important for us to recognize that loss is not the only reality at play in these times.  There is a kind of “severe mercy” that grows out of loss.  Sometimes having things taken away highlights what cannot be taken away and so leads us into a deeper appreciation of the grace and love of God.  Isaiah says it well:

Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old.
I am about to do a new thing, now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.
Wild animals will honor me, the jackals and the ostriches;
for I give water in the wilderness and rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people,
the people whom I formed for myself so that they might declare my praise.
Isaiah 43:18-21

 David Rohrer
05/22/2021  

Dual Citizenship

“Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.”
Luke 4:24

I am pretty certain that one of the reasons I have been able to sustain an almost 40 year career in congregational pastoral ministry is that I love reading the Bible.  The oft quoted line of Karl Barth about the “strange world of the Bible” comes to mind.  In pastoral ministry I have had the weekly opportunity to read, study, pray through and talk about some part of the Bible and it has been a fascinating place to spend my time.  It has opened me up to a world that I would not have known.  It has informed me about an identity that I possess that is at times in conflict with the identity informed by my genetics, history and geography.  It has helped me to set my life in a bigger context and stretched my otherwise stunted imagination.

The Bible has helped me to understand that I am a citizen of two kingdoms.  I haven’t had any say in the creation of either of these kingdoms. I have been placed in each of them by circumstances or powers that were not subject to my initiative. But one thing I do have a daily say in is the question of how I am going to navigate the tension of belonging to these two vastly different, and often conflicting, orders.     

The writers in the Bible who have been the most help in navigating this tension are the prophets. In seeing the big Truth of a Kingdom that remains largely hidden to the vast majority of their audience, the prophets have a heavy burden to bear. The gift of dual citizenship can be a rather severe mercy.  It isn’t easy to give witness to something that people have a hard time seeing, or perhaps what few actually want to see.  But that’s their job and the report of how they did that job has much to teach us about finding our footing on what is often a rather rocky path of living our faith.

Prophets are not accepted in their hometowns because they cause discomfort.  Like the pain we experience as the physical therapist shows us the limits of our tight, weak muscles, prophetic words point to truth that is hard to bear. The pain of the stretch is something we would rather avoid.  But the stretch expands our movement and so delivers us into God’s “broad and open space.”  Or perhaps more specifically, it places the life we live in the little kingdom of this world into the big context of the Kingdom of God.  And when this happens, we are both beset by a conflict and delivered into the clear air of truth that sets us free.  How’s that for a strange world!

But that’s the one we occupy the minute we say yes to Jesus’ invitation to “come and see.”  We say yes to this status of dual citizenship and staying in shape for the journey of following Jesus requires a number of stretches that teach us about muscles we never knew we had.  God no longer fits in our box.  The magnitude of God’s justice, grace and mercy begin to teach us that God is not merely concerned about the success of our little kingdom, but that God actually has room in his heart for everything he has created.  In Jesus, God gives witness to his desire to reconcile all things to himself.

 Over and over again history tells the story of how we have tried to resolve this tension of dual citizenship by futilely attempting to squeeze the Kingdom of God into the cramped and constricting containers that hold the kingdoms of this world.  It doesn’t work.  But that doesn’t keep us from trying.  It doesn’t keep us from wielding the tools of judgement, hate, arrogance, might, and fear, to wedge out those who don’t “fit” in our kingdom all the while hiding behind the delusion that we are somehow purifying the Kingdom of God.   

 Last time I checked God had not relinquished his exclusive right to the title “Refiner’s Fire.”  So for now, in this confusing place of holding dual citizenship, perhaps the better characterization of the Way on which Jesus has called us to walk is the work of simply enjoying rather than striving to usher in the Kingdom of God.  Humility is a great liberator.  For to be delivered out of the pit and into the broad and open space of God’s love is above all else a call to a lived gratitude where we strive merely to pass on what we did not produce and what we cannot kill; to love as we have been loved and so shine with the light that illumines the pathway to life.

David Rohrer
04/24/2021  

Safe?

“’Safe?’ said Mr. Beaver.  ‘Don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you?  Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. 
But he’s good.  He’s the King, I tell you.’”
C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

 
Having finished my work on tomorrow’s Resurrection Sunday sermon, I attended to some deferred maintenance on my email inbox. While digging down through the accumulated layers of unread messages, I ran across this line: “Dave, this is your last chance to make Easter safe with up to 80% off these safety products.”  What followed was a price list for foggers, the disinfectant solution that goes in them, hand sanitizing stations, refills for them, and face masks for the whole family.  As I read, I wondered if I’d be getting a similar kind of message from this company before Pentecost advertising good prices on fire extinguishers and wind barriers.   

In all fairness to this company, I hasten to point out that I realize what the advertisement was getting at.  And we at Emmanuel have chosen our own path to safety tomorrow due to the circumstances imposed on us by Covid.   Nevertheless, it brought a smile to my face and a roll of my eyes.  Our cultural obsession with safety, which predates the pandemic, often seems like a fruitless endeavor to me.  And even if our Spring Easter celebration is restricted to its contemporary secular meanings, which are based on its pre-Christian origins associated with a Germanic fertility goddess, it isn’t safe.  Don’t let those pastel bunnies and eggs fool you.  I guarantee you there is very little that feels safe about a pagan fertility rite.  Think of images that we might pair with the pulsating and cacophonous passages of Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring.”

Talk of a “safe” Easter also brought to mind C.S. Lewis’ oft quoted lines from his first book in the “Chronicles of Narnia” series.  The children have finished their dinner with the Beaver family and are discussing how Aslan is on the move.  When Susan and Lucy hear that Aslan is a lion, they both take pause and wonder if he is safe.  In response, Mr. Beaver lets them know that they have asked a question that really makes no sense; that when it comes to talking about Aslan, safety was not the primary value at the core of his mission.

Holy Week is filled with events that do little to illustrate a sense of being safe.  It is a week of describing what happens when God is at work and almost no one feels safe as they live through these events.  As Jesus enters Jerusalem the religious leaders feel threatened as they watch the crowds go wild.  On the one hand they fear instability in their tenuous relationship with Rome, and on the other they fear the retribution from God at what sounds like blasphemy coming from the mouths of the people.  In the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus is afraid and asks his Father for relief.  Just as his disciples are afraid when the temple guards come to arrest Jesus and Peter cuts off the ear of one of the men who make up this arresting posse.  In the courtyard outside the High Priest’s house, Peter is afraid and denies his relationship with Jesus three times.  Inside the Roman Procurator’s headquarters, Pilate is afraid as he observes Jesus’ fearlessness.  At the cross almost all of Jesus’ followers have fled because of fear.  And on their way to the tomb the grief-stricken women who have come to anoint Jesus’ body ponder how they will accomplish the herculean task of rolling away the stone. 

Nobody feels safe.  And neither are we because Jesus is not safe.  But he is good.

Several years ago I attended a continuing ed. class for pastors on preaching the Holy Week texts in the Gospel of Mark.  It was taught by New Testament professor Donald Juel. When Dr. Juel discussed the text in Mark 15:38 about how upon the death of Jesus the temple curtain was “torn in two from top to bottom,” he told a story about a discussion he had been a part of while teaching this text to a group of High School students. He asked the students what they thought the image meant.  He initially got the expected responses: “It means that we are no longer separated from God, that we have access to the holy of holies, that we can now approach God.”  But then one kid after a short period of silence said, “No, it means more than that.  It means that God is on the loose.”

Faith in God is rarely about feeling safely in control of our circumstances.  Faith is not simply security in a set of assurances that everything will be in ok because “God is in control.”  Faith is faithfulness to a relationship with God. A relationship that God has initiated with us and one which he promises to sustain.  A relationship based on a love from which nothing can separate us, but also a relationship where we encounter some of those things that Paul mentions in Romans 8 that seem to have the power to break this relationship and thus make us feel unsafe. 

God is on the loose.  God is in our midst.  But God is for us.  And if God is for us who can be against us.

Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?  No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,  nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8:35,37-39 

David Rohrer
Holy Saturday
04/03/2021

Lenses

For you say, ‘I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing.’
You do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.

Revelation 3:17

These are the words of the resurrected Christ to the first century Christian congregation in Laodicea, a city in Asia Minor.  They are words that represent two very different takes on the truth.  In one sense, both of these truths were true.  Laodicea was affluent.  Economically they were not in need.   It was true that they had more than enough money, they were admired in their world for their accomplishments, and they weren’t looking around and seeing anything they envied.  But that wasn’t the whole picture.  When viewed through a different set of lenses a different picture of these people emerged. Their vision of themselves was incomplete. 

Therefore, Jesus comes to them with an invitation to take in another truth as well.  I would paraphrase that truth in this way: “You are so focused on what you do have that you cannot see what you don’t have.  Your affluence has limited your vision.  Your over-reliance on the things that make you rich and powerful in this world makes you weak.  You have no savory presence in your world but are mostly lukewarm and tasteless.  So, step back from your certainly, put on the lenses I will give you and you’ll be able to take in that bigger picture.  Set these commodities of your affluence in context and take note of how small they are.  Take note of the truth that these things which you think belong to you are nothing in comparison with the One to whom you belong.”

It’s possible to read Jesus’ letter to Laodicea and merely hear him saying “You’ve been blinded by a lie, so wake up to the truth. Renounce your lie; let me heal your disease; step into my light; begin your new life in the brightness of my everlasting truth and from this day forward all will be forever well.” This is the way we often read the Bible’s depiction of conversion: a once for all healing moment when blindness suddenly gives way to seeing.  When the deep, seemingly irreversible, darkness is flooded with inextinguishable light.  When all that was bad has been reversed and only the good fills our view.  Wouldn’t that be great!  Suddenly stepping from darkness into light and from that point on eternally singing the phrase in “Amazing Grace” about the lost being found and the blind seeing as if it is the only reality we know. 

How many of us can attest to this experience:  Suddenly and completely, once and for all time, delivered from the dominion of darkness and transferred into the Kingdom of God’s beloved son (Colossians 1:13)?  While we can attest to experiences that foreshadow the fulness of this experience, most of us still have times when we wake up feeling like we’ll be spending the better part of our day in the pit specially dug for us by the dominion of darkness.  At this point, as we shut off the alarm, what we know is that we’re going to need some help to direct our attention to the thin crack of light faintly shining at the mouth of the pit.  We’ll need a reminder that the pit isn’t the only truth.  We’ll need some different lenses so that we can take in what our current experience seems to want to deny us.  And what those lenses help us to see is not that our darkness is a fiction, but that it is the smaller of two truths.  What those lenses help us to see is that there is a world beyond the pit, that actually dwarfs the pit and helps us to remember that the pit won’t have the last word.

The Laodiceans were rich, they had prospered, they didn’t really need anything.  But they were also wretched pitiable, poor, blind and naked.  So, Jesus stood at the door and knocked and asked them to let him in that he might show them that he had what it would take to address the poverty they couldn’t see.  He offered them the light that would dispel their darkness.  He offered to prepare a feast that would be far more satisfying than the one they had prepared for themselves.  The abundance they had produced wasn’t worthless, just incomplete, and Jesus, like a good optometrist, offered them some help in seeing this distinction. 

Jesus’ invitation to discipleship is not something that he offers only once.  “Follow me” and “Come and See” are gentle reminders that he sends our way every day.  As we rise each day, he reminds us to put on our Kingdom lenses. These lenses help us to see that we belong to someone who is bigger than the things that belong to us or the malign forces that seem to want to control us.  Those belongings, those forces, are nevertheless real, and we will need to deal with them.  But like the hell that CS Lewis describes in The Great Divorce, these things occupy a space that fits into a small crack in a sidewalk of the Kingdom of God.  They are set in the right perspective when placed next to the One who is before all things and in whom all things hold together and then we can see that this One has us firmly in his grip and has no intention of letting us go.

If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.
Romans 14:8

David Rohrer
March 6, 2021

Still Small Voice

And God said,
“Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.”
Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord,
but the Lord was not in the wind;
and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; 
and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire;
and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.
1 Kings 19:11-12

The story of the prophet Elijah in 1 Kings is one in which I find enormous consolation and inspiration; so when I saw this icon of Elijah I was immediately drawn to it.  It was part of an exhibition of icons from the Monastery of St. Catherine on Mt Sinai that were on display at the Getty Center in Los Angeles in 2007.  The icon shown here depicts a story earlier in the Elijah narrative than the text quoted above.  But it illustrates a truth about Elijah’s experience with God that runs through the entirety of his story.  Elijah the great miracle worker, preacher, political activist and warrior was also a great listener.  And he seemed to pay attention best when the Divine voice was expressed without words.

At the mouth of the cave on Mt. Horeb he experienced the power of God in an overwhelming silence.  In his self-imposed exile at the Wadi Cherith (1 Kings 17) after announcing God’s judgement of King Ahab, he received the hand of God’s mercy through the daily visits of the ravens who brought him bread and meat. The icon depicts the prophet’s surprise at these unexpected messengers from God.  This strong man is here depicted in his vulnerability as he is dumb-struck by the surprise of God’s grace delivered to him in the beak of a bird.  

In his book on preaching, Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Comedy, Tragedy and Fairy Tale, Frederick Buechner makes the claim that “Before it is a word, the Gospel that is truth is silence.”  In other words, the wisdom delivered in the words of an inspired sermon usually only comes to the preacher after a good stretch of silence.  Listening, watching, quietly paying attention, these are the precursors to preaching. You don’t know until you know, and this kind of deep knowing often comes only in the wake of deep listening.

I suppose this is why so much of what Jesus says has to do with the invitation to pay attention.  He says things like: what are you looking for, follow me, come and see, watch and pray.  Come walk along this way with me; open your eyes to what I have to show you, and you’ll begin to understand that I am the Way along which you were created to walk.  Or to put the same idea in the words of St Francis: “It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching.”

During Lent we’ll be exploring Jesus’ various invitations to awareness that he issues to his disciples.  He does not force himself on his disciples.  He does not begin with a list of precepts and rules that they must sign before they can become his followers.  He invites them on a journey and asks only that they keep their eyes and ears open so that they can see and hear all that he has to show them; so that they can behold the good news, the truth that will set them free. They don’t always get it.  They aren’t always awake.  Yet these failures and lapses do not deter his persistence. 

Neither will our failures and lapses diminish Jesus’ unending invitation to wake up to the gifts of God’s grace and Lent is a good time to let him issue that invitation to us once again.  Like his disciples we may not be able to stay awake with him in Gethsemane as he asks us to watch and pray. The task of reconciling the facts of his story with our expectations of what should be may continue to elude us.  But he won’t stop asking us to come and see.  He won’t stop pointing to what he’d like us to know.  He won’t hand us over to our stunted imaginations but will keep shining light on what we need to see.  And one day we will “know fully, even as we have been fully known.”

David Rohrer
02/12/2021

Celebration and Lament

“When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream.
Restore our fortunes O Lord, like the water courses of the Negeb.”
Psalm 126:1 & 4

When Abraham Lincoln gave his second inaugural address on March 4, 1865, the end of the Civil War was in sight.  That bloody conflict was the event that set the stage for and occupied his thoughts and prayers for all of his first term.  Toward the middle of the speech (which was really more of a sermon than a speech) he observed:

Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.

Lincoln’s words have comforted me in these days following a deeply conflicted and polarized election season, a rancorous and extended refusal to accept its results, a siege on the Capitol that vainly tried to overthrow it and finally, an inauguration of a new president who spent much of his speech asking for a new season of unity.  Those words of the new president were music to some ears and for others inspired little more than eye rolling consternation at a perceived hypocrisy.  And, as was true in Lincoln’s day, these opposing groups are, in part, comprised of people who read the same Bible and pray to the same God. 

What I find comforting about Lincoln’s observations is not that his words give us direction to navigate these seemingly irreconcilable conflicts in which we find ourselves, but that they give witness to another time in our history when we were stuck in a rut of unending dispute.  It calms me to remember that these dynamics have happened before, that they were never really “solved,” but we are still here and still have the opportunity to face and deal with them informed by the power of the grace of God.  His words also calm me in that they admit that neither side can possess certainty that they have comprehended and therefore represent the mind of the Creator on the matters of what should characterize our national policy. “The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully.  The Almighty has his own purposes.” And we don’t fully comprehend what those purposes are.

But what do we know? We know that Jesus is Lord and that nothing can separate us from the love of God.  We also know that we are called to love our neighbors as ourselves and that we are invited to allow the love of God to teach us to love our enemies.  If we think about it long enough, we know that the matter of determining whether or not God is on our side and not on the other side is a fruitless task.  For while we may read the same Bible, we wear different lenses as we read it and our arguments about who has the right interpretation end up looking like a cartoon in which the characters take turns exchanging blows on each other that are inflicted by the same club.  And this “same” Bible becomes merely a tool to prove our rightness rather than the word that directs our attention to God and gives light to our path. 

So, if this is true, if this is what we do know, what should we do?  If I may be so bold as to offer a suggestion, I would say the first thing that all of us should do is take a step back and pause to remember that the God who we think we hold in our hearts actually holds all of us in his heart.  We don’t just pray to the same God, this same God created all of us.  This same God has more than enough space for all things to come together in his heart and is actually at work reconciling all things to himself.

Furthermore, as we pray to this same God, I would offer the suggestion that one of the prayers we pray be comprised of the words of the 126th Psalm.  Psalm 126 gives voice to the passions of both sides in our current conflict and in so doing teaches us empathy for one another and roots us in the truth that God cannot be locked into the box of either side.  There is a side which is rejoicing in a feeling of restoration.  The Lord has restored our fortunes and we are “like those who dream.” Our mouths are filled with laughter and our tongues with shouts of joy.  Yet so also is there a side more drawn to the second half of the psalm. “Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like the water courses of the Negeb.”  Quench the dryness of our defeat with your rain.  Replace our tears with joy.  Give us a seed to plant that will help us live in hope of something better.

God has plenty of room for both prayers.  God knows the hearts and minds of both sides.  But we need to remember that neither the prayer of celebration nor the prayer of lament can capture the fulness of the truth.   Yet both can express the heartfelt longings of humble people who must ultimately resign themselves to the mystery that “the Almighty has his own purposes.”

O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable are his judgements and how inscrutable his ways!
For who has known the mind of the Lord?  Or who has been God’s counselor?
Or who has given a gift to him to receive a gift in return?
For from him and through him and to him are all things.
To him be the glory forever. Amen
Romans 11:33-36

David Rohrer
02/06/2021

Pastor's Annual Report for 2020

A year-end report is in some ways a kind of magical thinking.  It makes the assumption that we can push a cosmic pause button that gives us time to both reflect on and tie up the happenings of the previous year in a neat package that can then be filed away.  But time didn’t stop on December 31, 2020 and what we accomplished or failed to achieve this past year is all part of the information that we are still working with and adding to in 2021.  In light of this, the most important thing I have to report with respect the life of Emmanuel Presbyterian Church in 2020 is that God is faithful; God’s mercies are new every morning and we can expect that to continue into 2021.

 When the world went into lock-down in early March because of the pandemic, our life together was up-ended and we had to figure out some way to meet without actually being in the same room.  We’ve done pretty well with that adjustment.  It has been both an exhausting and energizing thing to go through this process.  It is never easy to be dispossessed of what you think are normal expectations.  Yet when this happens there is a corresponding call to innovation and adaptation.  The former depletes us; the latter restores us. 

We have known both of these states of being over the last 11 months.  We have lost some folks due to lack of connectivity to the internet.  We have lost others due to their fatigue and frustration with a church that is choosing not to come together in our sanctuary for worship.  We have lost others because of life circumstances related to Covid-19 that have caused them to move away from Bothell.  Some of these folks we will see again when we return to the practice of gathering in our sanctuary for worship, but some won’t be returning.  Yet that said, we have also welcomed a number of new people into our fellowship at this time.  For a variety of reasons Emmanuel has become a welcoming place for folks even in this time when our gathering place is virtual.  On most Sundays 90-100 devices log into our Zoom worship service and many of these screens have more than one person sitting before them.  And that means that our worship attendance has actually grown.

Pastors joke that the standard metric of success for a congregation is “Butts in the pews and bucks in the plate.”  The absence of both pews and plates makes for potentially very bad news for a congregation.  Yet not so for us.  Our giving and our attendance have remained steady this past year.  Not only is God faithful, but so are you.  You are hanging in there and working to show up even when you can’t meet together in our sanctuary and narthex. Thank you for your faithfulness that is born of the faithfulness of God.

I can’t say this with absolute certainty, but I suspect that the congregation of Emmanuel Presbyterian Church has been asked to go through more change this past year than it has ever been asked to endure before.  I have heard it said that all change is often initially experienced as loss.  Indeed, the loss of meeting together in our sanctuary is a big one.  By all rights, it should have killed us.  Losing the place where we expect to live our life together feels life threatening.  It requires enormous adaptation.  It is like asking fish to develop lungs and legs so they can live on land or asking us terrestrial mammals to grow bigger lungs and fins so that we can join our cousins in the sea.  That’s a tall order! 

Yet what makes adaptation possible is that there are still points that do not change.  One of those is God’s faithfulness to us. The big, big heart of God has not stopped being the place in which we primarily dwell.  My prayer for 2021 is that we can spend more time resting in this truth than being anxious about the yet unknown ways in which we will be invited to adapt.  It is hard to know what is before us, but we can rest in the truth of where we are.  We’re fixed firmly on the rock of Jesus Christ and this foundation is one from which we can’t be shaken loose.      

 Dave Rohrer—January 31, 2021

Three Acres and a Building

I was glad when they said to me, “let us go unto the hose of the Lord.”
Psalm 122:1

Depending on which route I choose to take on a given day, my commute from home into Emmanuel sometimes takes me past the former and present locations of Bethel Lutheran Church in Shoreline.  As I drive East on NE 175th I can see the perimeter of Bethel’s former location outlined by construction fencing.  The building which once housed the Bethel congregation is being repurposed by a new family of faith, the Buddha Jewel Monastery.  Then as I continue my drive up 175th and turn left on 15th Ave NE, I pass Bethel’s new home consisting of two storefronts in a retail corridor.   

I do not know the specifics of Bethel’s story and I have no need to make judgements about that community’s choice.  Clearly, they have found a sustainable way to continue to be a worshipping community and light to their neighborhood.  They are like so many other congregations which have made a similar choice.  It is a way forward that perhaps comes in the wake of changing demographics and declining numbers. Perhaps it was a choice that is not unlike what a couple does when they sell their home and downsize their lives by moving into a condo or retirement community.  It is time to allow someone younger or something new, to occupy the space that defined so much of one’s life.  The increasingly difficult demands of maintaining a property begin to weigh heavy, and the best path to sustaining life together is divestment and reinvestment resulting in relocation.

If this is Bethel’s story, it is not unique.  Last year in this space, at about this time, I mentioned the common sight of signs in front of churches announcing an impending closure or relocation. Also at least once a month I receive mail that tells me that many churches are considering similar moves.  This mail comes in the form of a letter from a developer or realtor who is wanting us to be aware of how they are ready and willing to help us “secure our future” or “fund our ministry.”  I usually read these kind offers with a smirk on my face and they start to drift toward my recycling bin as I am midway through the second sentence.

At this point their offers seem irrelevant to me.  From where I sit, I look at Emmanuel and see a spiritually alive and financially healthy congregation.  We are meeting our financial obligations, saving money for those inevitable projects that a property like ours can expect, and able to share our resources with others who are in need.  We have, even in the midst of the pandemic, maintained the same levels of Sunday worship attendance and beyond that welcomed new people into our fellowship.  So for the present at least, divestment, reinvestment and relocation do not present themselves as a necessary means of securing our future.

Yet with this pandemic we have learned some things about our building and our grounds that we might not have acknowledged apart from the experience over the last 10 months.  First, we have learned that we can come together, worship together, stay together, serve together and grow together as a congregation even if we can’t meet together in our building.  And this has gotten me looking at our three acres and building in a new way.  They are no longer synonymous with the word “Church.” They aren’t the church, they house the church.  And what a house! They are a privilege to possess.  They are a fountain of riches that we probably appreciate in a new way.  They are a treasure that God has given us to share with our neighborhood. And surveying these grounds leads me into an experience of deep gratitude.  I find myself regularly thanking God for the labor and dedication of all who have contributed to the work of securing this place that is the home of Emmanuel Presbyterian Church.  And my longings to once again come together for worship in this place grow more intense every day.

My “soul longs, indeed faints for the courts of the Lord.” Absence does indeed make the heart grow fonder.  It also drives home the point of how rich we are:  What a valuable resource we possess!  And this in turn makes me reflect on how we go about expressing gratitude for this resource. I ask that you join me in this reflection and pray with me a prayer of thanksgiving to God.

Our congregational “tag line” (Hope Refuge Service) is once again providing the framework for my January sermons.  Because we started worshipping together in January of 1963 and were chartered in January of 1964, I try to set this month aside as a time to think about what it means to live into our joint calling as a congregation.  This year, after more than ten months of not meeting together in our building, it seemed appropriate to thank God for our grounds and our building and together ask how God is calling us to treasure and steward this resource. So please join me in responding to the Psalmist’s call to gladness as we ponder the gift of going to the house of the Lord.   

David Rohrer
01/07/2021

Generosity

They rise in the darkness as a light for the upright.
Psalm 112:4

“Thank you for your generous gift.”  I can’t count the number of thank-you notes I have written over the years that have included this line.  Yet as I ponder the nature of generosity, it occurs to me that to call a gift “generous” is at best redundant, and at worst, adding a modifier that suggests that a gift of lesser monetary value would not merit the designation.  In other words, if a gift doesn’t get a donor’s name engraved into the wall of the museum or concert hall, it doesn’t qualify for the addition of the adjective.          

But a gift is a gift.  It is something freely given out of love, or gratitude, or joy, or appreciation, without expectation of a response from the recipient.  If it is a gift, it isn’t more or less generous because it is bigger or smaller than what might normally be expected.  It is simply a kindness shown that is a benefit to both the giver and the receiver.  And when this is true, the receiver usually passes it on in some way to another.  Generosity tends to beget generosity. 

Christmas, at its best, is a season of generosity.  The gifts we give one another are imitations of those gifts given by the Magi to the Holy Family.  They are expressions of gratitude for the privilege of being a part of the story, being let in on a miracle, being the recipients of a grace we did nothing to earn.  Our relationships with the ones to whom we give gifts are treasures lavished upon us and inspire a generosity that wants to broadcast its gratitude for a resource on which no price can be placed.  And so we give gifts.

Christmas, at its worst, is a season of obligation.  The gifts we give are a part of a social protocol.  Their value is closely watched and matched with the message we are supposed to send.  They are all about meeting an expectation, being just enough to properly recognize where the relationship falls in a hierarchy of relationships.  Machiavelli’s political writings could perhaps be construed as an illustration of how one goes about mastering the exchanges of power that are inherent in these kinds of gifts. 

I come to Christmas each year with a deep desire to live into the Christmas of generosity.  O how I want to follow the Magi to Bethlehem and unthinkingly, giddily and somewhat foolishly, lay my gold, frankincense and myrrh at the base of the manger simply because I am so grateful to be there.  But I would not be honest if I did not admit that the Christmas of obligation always worms its way into my consciousness and takes up residence in some dark corner of my soul.  And this makes me want to run from the holiday and hide someplace until well after Epiphany.     

Yet this Advent as we have been pondering the light and the various ways we can live in hope in spite of the darkness, I have found encouragement in the Psalms to stay put and persevere.   Psalm 112 is one of those places of encouragement, especially in that it celebrates how acts of generosity reflect God’s light.  Here are some of highlights, (some sound bites I have excised from the original context and rearranged):

Happy are those who fear the Lord, who greatly delight in God,
Wealth and riches are in their houses
They have distributed freely, they have given to the poor.
It is well with those who deal generously and lend
They rise in the darkness as a light for the upright,
they are gracious, merciful and righteous.
Their hearts are steady, they will not be afraid.

The Psalm just keeps saying the same thing: those who know they are rich, who know they possess an inexhaustible resource, cannot help but be a generous presence in their world.  The fear of the Lord, the awe we know as we ponder the unfathomable depths of God’s steadfast love and faithfulness, displaces our fear of scarcity.  The darkness of want is shattered by the light of God’s love.  The confidence that we have more than enough gives birth to a bold generosity that reflects the warmth of God’s light to our world.  And so on. . . , and so on. . . , and so on . . . .

Generosity is an expression of gratitude for a gift we have been given.  It is not something we muster up and then show forth.  It is something that uncontrollably flows out of us because we have no capacity to contain it, because we are running over with it.  The living water Jesus gives us to drink becomes a “spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” The gift that God gives us keeps on giving. 

David Rohrer
12/23/2020

Straining to See

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before
(from “The Raven” by Edgar Allen Poe)

When Mr. Bieberstein asked our 8th grade Social Studies class to memorize at least 40 lines of a famous poem and recite it before the class, I chose to learn lines from Poe’s “The Raven.” What we memorize in our younger years stays with us and as I was contemplating the observance of Advent this week, Poe’s lines came to mind.  Probably not a poem often quoted at Advent, but in my defense, Poe did set it in “bleak December” and “peering” into the deep darkness and trying to discern the shape of some shadow or some faint ray of light is a great description of the work we do during Advent.  

If you want to know something about the experience of darkness, Poe’s “The Raven” is a good source.  As he ruminates on the death of his beloved, Lenore, Poe depicts an experience of grief that suggests slipping into a kind of schizophrenia.  He hears a tapping at his door, and as he opens the door to look for the source of the sound he is initially greeted with a silent darkness.  Eventually he encounters a raven outside his window and the bird has but one word for this grief-stricken man: “Nevermore.”   

That’s often the way darkness can feel.  In deep darkness we strain to discern some source of light, we lean forward and listen for some sound.  And when neither emerge, the dark silence ratchets up our despair.  Praying people have called this the “dark night of the soul.”  It is the overwhelming experience of the presence of an absence.  It is the desolation of wondering if God is anywhere to be found.   It is the fear that our soul, as Poe put it, “Shall be lifted—nevermore!” 

The Psalms acknowledge this experience.  And fortunately, they give us words to pray to God in the midst of it.  Psalm 115 is one of those prayers that grows out of this kind of desolation.   It’s sort of a bargain with God that grows out of an experience of the darkness of God’s apparent absence.  It begins with the appeal:

Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory,
for the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness.
Why should the nations say, “Where is your God?”

We miss you God.  We’re not seeing you.  So, show up.  But don’t do it just for us. Do it for yourself.  Don’t just come and save us.  Defend yourself. These folks that surround us don’t think you exist.  But we know the power of your faithfulness and steadfast love.  So, show up and show them these things that are at the core of your being. If you are out there God, if you are listening, if you care, then show yourself in a way that makes the darkness face into the truth of its impending demise.  Let the darkness know that its only option is to admit its ultimate destruction by your light.

If Christmas is about light, Advent is about darkness.  You can’t have one without the other.  You can’t know one without the other.  Both are a normative part of our experience.  Thank God that the rhythms and observances of the spiritual life honestly make room for both realities.   Those perceived injustices we suffer will continue to come tapping on our doors.  They will suggest to us that they have the last word. And we will be tempted to believe them. But the best response to these invitations to despair is not to greet darkness as an aberration we should fear, but as a norm that gives birth to prayer.  The life of faith in God gives us the ability to navigate in the darkness. It is a life that triggers memory and instills hope.  It fosters the boldness that allows us to bargain with God.  To look into and ultimately beyond the darkness and scan the horizon for the light spoken into being by the author of all life.  The light that will ultimately guide our feet “into the way of peace.”

All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.
What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.
The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.
John 1:3-5

David Rohrer
12/16/2020