From the Pastor’s Study - April 2025

The journey of Lent is supposed to challenge us to deepen our faith and draw closer to the power and the love of God. Each week on Wednesday night, we gather to sing Holden Evening Prayer and hear Mary’s bold “yes” to God's request to be God's servant. Mary’s song continues with a vision that reverses the ways of the world. My love for those sung words grows with each passing season. I now see them as such a gift as we journey in Lent and approach Holy Week. It feels strange sometimes to sing of Jesus' birth as we prepare for his death. But the whole point of his ministry and the whole reason that he will be executed by the state is because of the radical good news of his existence.

Jesus came to offer us a different way of being and loving, but every generation has tried to find the loopholes in his message. I struggle to understand why God's extravagant love should be so hard… but it seems that something in our human condition loves tribalism more than we love God. Even on the cross, Jesus challenges us to overcome our stereotypes and divisions. Think about what it means to follow someone who looks at the very soldiers who are crucifying him and proclaims: “Father forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” Imagine Jesus looking to the criminal beside him who confesses to committing a crime and sharing that compassionate grace: “Truly, I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

I don’t know what will be happening in our world by the time that you read this article, but I can imagine that God’s extravagant grace will be under attack at least as much as it is today. We’ve heard of the rewriting of history to expunge transgender people from the history of Stonewall, of the demonization of immigrants and refugees, of an attack on any acknowledgement or examination of the uncomfortable parts of our nation’s history. For goodness’ sake, Jesus challenges the history and practices of his own tradition, and we certainly should be doing the same. As followers of Jesus, we ought to be the first ones hungering for justice instead of hiding from it. I have always been so proud of our denomination for being at the forefront of offering apologies for injustices on behalf of the church… it’s hard, and it’s what Jesus’ gospel calls us to embrace.

Throughout history we have seen dominant groups demonize others to gain power or privilege. The group changes, regularly, but the usefulness of targeting and demonizing others remains. Jesus lived a life of God's extravagant love and grace and every generation crucifies that message over and over again.

There was a pastor named Martin Niemöller in Germany in the second world war who is often quoted.. His famous words are transcribed on the wall of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum:

First they came for the Communists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me

And there was no one left

To speak out for me.

Diana Butler Bass, historian, theologian, and writer reminds us that: “Pastor Niemöller … was a German nationalist who, in the 1920s and early 1930s, supported Hitler and the Nazis. He hated Communism and socialism and workers — he believed that they had betrayed Germany in the aftermath of WWI. He worked against the Weimar Republic, thinking it to be politically weak and corrupt. Indeed, Niemöller voted for the Nazis, even in the 1933 elections which handed Germany over to Hitler.

But Niemöller began to change his mind when Hitler interfered with church policies and applied racial tests to both clergy and laity, even insisting that German churches refrain from teaching or reading from the Old Testament.

Niemöller’s resistance started when the Nazis applied their brutal and racist agenda to the church — Niemöller’s church, the community he most cared about, was vowed to serve, and lead.

Then, he realized that they were coming for him, too. It took him a while. It was a process. But he spoke out. He preached against Hitler and Nazism. He was one of the founders of the Confessing Church. He was detained several times between 1934 and 1937. Then, in 1937, he was arrested for treason and spent the next seven years in various prisons and concentration camps, including Dachau.”

Niemöller changed his mind and he changed his perspective… I would say that he finally woke up to understand Jesus’ command to see the other as also beloved of God. He needed to be reminded not to allow God's extravagant grace to be abused out of fear or hunger for power or privilege.

We are called to be as bold in our love as Jesus. The promise is that this love cannot be killed. That’s the proclamation of Easter! We start in love, and we return to love… but in between, we must choose how we will live and who we will follow. Lent calls us to that journey and the cross drives our choices home. Are we willing to change ourselves to embrace God's ways if it means loving beyond our comfort zone? Our faith is a story of death and resurrection. Often what needs to die are the parts within ourselves that are unwilling to be changed by love and grace. Let hate, fear, prejudice, and divisions die so that we might share in the rebirth of God's enduring promise of grace. Amen.  

From Pastor’s Eric’s Study - March 2025

From Pastor Eric’s Study – March 2025

“The body of Christ, given for you.” I’ve said those words thousands of times as I’ve served communion to a community with whom I share the journey and, with whom I share God's love. This morning, I read an article by Lutheran Pastor Diane Roth reflecting on what she called the “for-you-ness” of the sacrament. She shared how the experience of offering this gift impacted her life and ministry, and it resonated so deeply with my own experiences over the years.

We are incredibly blessed to share this journey of faith with one another, seeking to encourage one another to draw ever closer to our relationship with God. Even as we know the hunger in our own souls to hear the assurance of God's love offered freely for us again and again, most of us still struggle to mirror that same freely given love for others. Soon we will once again begin our Lenten journey, a spiritual pilgrimage in time that encourages us to reorient our lives away from our stubborn ways and back to God's ways of freely given grace. Our temptation is always to hear the Good News as being particularly for us. We tend to listen less passionately for how our receiving that grace should shatter all of the barriers that we have created within ourselves. If we let God's love work fully within us, it would melt all the limits that we construct… and that would be frightening new territory.

I have heard lots of people through the years talk about cultivating a spirit of curiosity as the antidote to certainties, to division, and to despair. When we’re curious, we open ourselves to learning new things. Seeing God at work in new ways, we allow the possibility of setting ourselves free to receive the gift of God's love and then pass it on to others.

When we receive that “for-you-ness,” it is only half of the spiritual gift. The other half comes when we share it with the next person, and the next person, and then the next person. As Diane Roth concluded: “Jesus didn’t come to make us feel good. He came to set us free, whether it feels good or not.” The love of God made known to us in Jesus challenges us to take seriously the work of sharing that grace even when it hurts or is terribly hard. We are called to bear grace that works to dismantle racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and all forms of oppression. God's grace offered in its for-you-ness demands that we see God and love God in our immigrant and transgender siblings, in the democrat and the republican, in the Christian and the Muslim and the Hindu and the Jew… that we see the love of God in all.

Our Lenten journey reminds us that we are dust, just star-dust blessed by God with life and God's love. We are blessed, and so are every “they” that we can imagine. On this Lenten journey may we journey ever deeper into God's challenge to love and affirm as powerfully as God. Amen.

From Pastor Eric’s Study – February 2025

February makes me think of St. Valentine and his feast day that commemorates love and the faithfulness of a Saint who is hard to pin down. The stories speak of an imprisoned priest healing the blindness of his jailer’s daughter, causing the jailer and his household to convert to Christianity. There are stories of Valentine marrying people behind the government’s back in order to keep them out of military service. He becomes a saint associated with love who ultimately refuses to denounce his faith, ultimately leading to his being martyred on February 14th.

Love and faithfulness are at the heart of our story, but when we encounter it with Jesus, it is more the stuff that will end up getting you martyred than getting a valentine’s card from a friend. Jesus challenges his followers to love their neighbors and even challenges us to love our enemies. Isn’t it interesting that the challenge isn’t to like them, or to love only our friends? The challenge is to offer a love that sees in others the belovedness of God. I recently listened to a TED Talk that talked about how powerful empathy can be to help people understand that we share more in common than all that we assume may separate us. There is this reminder that when we love like Jesus, we find that others always carry within them that sacred spark of God's love.

Sometimes it’s incredibly challenging to honor that spark or to love it into a light bright enough to shine through the barriers we may create. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. often preached about the task of loving. In an oft shared sermon he preached:

…I’m so happy [Jesus] didn’t say, “Like your enemies,” because it’s kind of difficult to like some people. Like is sentimental; like is an affectionate sort of thing. And you can’t like anybody who’s bombing your home and threatening your children. It’s hard to like a senator who’s spending all of his time in Washington standing against all of the legislation that will make for better relationships and that will make for brotherhood. It’s difficult to like them. But Jesus says, “Love them,” and love is greater than like. Love is understanding, redemptive, creative goodwill for all men. And so Jesus was expressing something very creative when he said, “Love your enemies. Bless them that curse you. Pray for them that despitefully use you.”

It's easy to speak of love. It’s much more challenging to live it as Jesus did. The rewards of choosing love change our hearts and have the power to change the world. Oh, you might be criticized for living that vision, most of God's faithful have been… you might get rather frustrated that it seems like nothing is changing… and yet, empathy, loving our neighbors and even our enemies harnesses the very power of God. 

From Vikar Jakob’s Study - January 2025

Advent is the time of patient waiting. That patience can be harder to come by in some times more than others. For me, once again, I wait for my visa to come through, as I did two years ealier, this time for the extension of said visa, to be precise. My life as a vikar and pastor to Peace Church has always been both precarious and abundant, and as you read through my reflections, I would assume you will find echoes of your own story or current situation in my words.

My stay here has been precarious and abundant emotionally. Being away from those closest to me, those we call so casually “loved ones” has been a challenge, but at the same time not greatly. I’ve become used to start over someplace else, I’ve done so in Jerusalem, in Rome, in my last parish, out on the Polish border. One of my favorite saints is St. Christopher, the patron of sojourners. My road has been as mch lonely as it has been filled with incredible experiences and encounters. There is always a blessing in staying, and there is always a blessing in moving on. Sometimes relationships – just like dreams – break along the way, sometimes they can heal, other times they get lost in the sands of time, or are deferred to a distant future and distant shores. Sometimes only God will judge and reconcile between those that were unable to find understanding of each other – respect for each other. But an abundance I have found as well: openness to story, to vulnerability, to joy. All this in the faces I see at church, all of us together an ever-changing kaleidoscope.

My stay here has been precarious and abundant socially and culturally. The political context that surrounds us and the Biblical demand, the prophetic word that is so dear to me, rarely align, which is why the prophetic word exists. It does not describe a present, nor does it describe only what is beyond. It holds us accountable. We will not find meaning, unless we find a way to commit to living out that prophetic word in all the ways that it calls out our shortcomings. It strengthens us in seeing and naming the injustice we see in others, it just as well embraces us enough to see our own failures. We cannot decide for others, but we can make amends for our part and pray that others do the same in the chambers of their heart. The rest lies with God. Again, it is hard to trust, and hard to wait, and yet the superiority of God’s narrative over the affairs of mortals on our little planet is something to find comfort in. It’s not all about us. Thank God.

My stay here has been precarious and abundant financially and legally. There is something to be said about taxes, and only when you struggle with those, you get to find out that Jesus actually talks a whole lot about them. All our struggles draw us closer to trust and to hope, they strip us bare of our certainties, our convenience, our cheap comforts and all the other things that life can take away so easily, leaving us startled and afraid, left with that – excuse me – stupid question: “why me?” Why the heck not? Life gets to all of us eventually, there’s your only justice. We will all be afraid. “I am not afraid!” exclaims the young Skywalker defiantly, but Yoda, with foreboding wisdom in his voice, answers, “You will be! You will be.” And yet, what do we westerners know of survival? There’s still enough for most of us to have a hot chocolate and turn up the heating. We are spoiled. In gamer terms, we are playing life on easy difficulty. Isn’t it strange that those who struggle the least with survival struggle the most with meaning? Again, when all our illusions peel away, we realize that on the other side of that lonesome bridge is only God to help us over, but fear not. He shall. That is all the good news.

My stay here has been precarious and abundant professionally. In a weird spot between fully trained and still learning, thoroughly examined by the Germans (God help us), and yet a beginner in UCC lands, I got to see my shortcomings and my strengths throughout every part of ministry. I give thanks for a congregation willing to bear with me, and I hope you are assured that I keep working on all those parts where I missed the mark so far.

By the time you read this, Advent and Christmas may be over, and a new year started. It is a time of year where I feel mulmig, one of those quirky German words I find hard to translate. My trusty dictionary gives me “queasy” or “crumbly” but that’s hardly capturing it. You feel mulmig in your stomach, you feel it when you peer down from great heights, your belly and your body telling you to not lean over too far. As we go into this new year, we might heed that warning to not look too far with our fears and questions, lest we fall. We will get there step by step, the strong arms of our God ready to support us, to lift us up, when we falter. May His peace always surround you, may it be a light in dark places when all other lights go out.

And may God bless you, always.

Pastor Jakob