December 2024

The other day I was thinking about Christmas and how hard it is to look past all of the trappings and wonderful cultural traditions in order to once again claim the gift that the gospels proclaim. As I was thinking about the challenge, I remembered an optical illusion that a member of the congregation had given me years ago that is now readily available online. It looks like a Rorschach ink blotch that you stare at the four dots in the center for 30 seconds and then either look away at a blank wall or close your eyes and tip your head back and suddenly you have the face of Jesus floating before you. I have seen the image in so many different forms, passed around over the years… and still it is neat to have our brains see something beyond the obvious.

The artist in me loves the way that we naturally reframe the way that we see the world. This is a central tenet of our faith – that God would have us see and live in the world with eyes open to a different way of being. The Christmas stories begin that reframing, but it continues right through to Easter. All of Jesus’ ministry is about approaching the world in a different way. Interestingly, much of the church and society seem to have settled for a faith that conforms to our vision of how we want the world to appear instead of trying to discern God's ways. And I suppose that makes sense. The ways of the world, power, riches, success, would all be quite uncomfortable with the foundational message of Jesus.

And so, I invite us to stare again at the Christmas story and see God's ways emerge. The story is one that is in direct opposition to the status quo. In the Christmas stories from Matthew and Luke we hear stories that are direct critiques of those who are in power within the Roman Empire. It was not until I was at Divinity School and following that I finally heard the stories not as warm cozy narratives about little-baby-Jesus and began to hear them as God's powerful inbreaking rebuttal against a world that had chosen values completely contrary to God's. It is no accident that Jesus is born in the midst of the oppression of the Roman Empire where the ruler perceived himself to be a god-king himself, above the law, and to be regarded by all as being the savior. All of the titles that we hear offered for Jesus were titles used for Caesar, and we forget that. Savior of the World, Lord of Lords, King of Kings, Prince of Peace, these were all titles used for the self-proclaimed and system anointed god-king, Caesar. This title for emperor would later be echoed in other languages as Tzar, Kaiser, those who would rule over vast territories.

When we hear the Christmas story, we hear God's reframing of what power looks like. We see God trying to teach us to see the world through God's eyes. And it looks radically different than anything that we might imagine. All of those titles are now offered for a little baby born to a teenage, unwed mother, in a backwater town that lives in the oppressive shadow of that powerful empire. We hear a young woman sing a Magnificat that speaks of turning the way that we see the world upside down. And then the whole rest of the story unfolds in similar fashion. Jesus’ ministry is continually to those whom society sees as the wrong people. Those who are powerful and rich are invited to share in the journey, but only if they are willing to let go of what they have always known, to embrace love and generosity instead of power and certainties, and that seems almost impossible. Jesus’ story is constantly one of suffering for challenging the world to see and live differently. It is not popular to advocate for the downtrodden or to criticize those who love power. That conflict will continue all the way to the cross when the ways of power will declare that they’ve won and made an example of this foolishness. And then the heart of our faith will proclaim the resurrection that again asserts that love and peace triumph.

This should be an uncomfortable story for us. We have become the empire- starting with Constantine, Christianity was usurped by the very powers of the world that it sought to critique. Our story should make us uncomfortable, as we watch the ways that our world chooses to assign value. As we vote, as we budget our resources, as we pursue careers or retirements, or policies that impact God's world and God's people… we should constantly feel rather uncomfortable. When we look past the illusion and see Jesus staring back at us, we are supposed to hear that call to see and act like Jesus.

The question that nags at me is whether Christianity survived for all these centuries because it became co-opted by the power of the Empire to serve itself. The call that pulls at my soul is the affirmation that this radically different way of living in the world and in relationship with God sparked something in those earliest believers. They chose to leave their comfortable existence to live in the world differently. I believe that they chose to live in a world where every face reflected the light and love of God, where every glimmer of creation, from ugly bug to majestic mountaintop, invited a new vision of the wonder of God. 

As the lights twinkle, as the songs are sung, and the story told, will we try again to open our hearts to seeing and living like Jesus? That is not the stuff of party tricks or illusions, but of choosing to live a life that really is life. Gloria in excelsis deo! Glory to GOD in the highest, and peace among all,

November 2024

From Pastor Eric’s Study – November 2024

This has been an extraordinarily beautiful fall! The weather has been uncharacteristically warm, and now the colors are bursting forth in celebration of the changing seasons — how glorious! This change of season also portends the coming of Thanksgiving (or, for some, the chance to sit in the woods and watch nature wake up as another hunting season approaches). The Thanksgiving holiday holds a special place for us as a nation. The history of the first Thanksgiving is incredibly complicated and linked to histories within our nation that are unredeemable, broken alliances, broken treaties, and a government sanctioned genocide of our Indigenous brothers and sisters. That history is painful and not something to hold with pride in its entirety, but it was also a moment when people gave thanks for forming relationships across differences.

          Our faith has always put gratitude at the very center of our story. In the first creation story, in Genesis one, God consistently assesses the creative progress and proclaims, “… and it was good… and it was good… and it was very good!” That proclamation of affirmation holds a sentiment of gratitude and wonder for what is emerging from God's creative flair. Our story continues with the command for us to offer “first fruits,” the first portion of each harvest or gathering, as an offering to God. It is a practice that is meant to remind us that the blessings we receive aren’t merely the product of our toil, but rather a gift from God's ongoing creative energy.

          As a child, I remember my great-grandmother speaking about beginning each day with gratitude for being alive for another day, and then at the end of that day, giving thanks for what had unfolded. Over the years, I’ve found that people who live with this attitude are very special gifts in my life, and there have been many of them. People who live with gratitude as the heart of their being are a joy to be around. While those people may be wonderful inspiration woven into the fabric of my life, it’s not always as easy to practice that spirit of steady gratitude. Often enough, I find that I need to practice a lesson that our first exchange student offered and “pick an attitude.” The attitude we should always begin with is one of thanksgiving. There is always something for which we can be grateful, even in circumstances or relationships that test us to our limits.

          Even as we hear and feel the tensions in our nation and our world, I pray that we can take a deep breath and admire the changing colors of fall, to hope for the best in humanity, and look at our lives and our world and find those things that call forth gratitude… even if that takes some real searching. Then I pray that we can share that spirit of thanksgiving with those around us. This life is an incredible blessing. Those with whom we share it are gifts, imperfect though we all surely are. Each day is filled with wonders large and small that are just waiting to be celebrated as good and very good.

          Together we are given the opportunity to bear God's witness of love in the world.

          The Tuesday before Thanksgiving we will gather again at Cedar Ridge for an ecumenical Thanksgiving service at 7 p.m. Following the service there will be a chance for a pie social. It is an opportunity for us to gather with others from our wider community — Lutheran, Methodist, Catholic, UCC, and Cedar’s chaplaincy — to remember again how good it is to reorient ourselves toward gratitude.

          May God bless us, lifting up a humble, thankful song that crosses all boundaries!

From Pastor Eric’s Study - October 2024

There is such a tornado of emotions and rhetoric swirling around these days, it’s exhausting. As a pastor in the midst of a contentious election season it is always challenging to hear the call to speak truth to power and to recognize that scripture, for all of its outspoken words about politics, has a very particular response to things political. Ultimately, the message is that our faith doesn’t call us to align with any particular politic but rather to live in alignment with a renewed relationship with God. It is a narrative that is in direct conflict often enough with the politics of any age, and yet the intent is not to preach politics but to preach the call of God's love into an ever deeper and more challenging relationship with ourselves, our world, and our faith. An article that I was reading recently, “The Politics of God” by Dan Clendenin, lifted up that challenge as he recalled: “Mary’s birth announcement includes an ominous prophecy directed at the political powers: “He has brought down rulers from their thrones, but has lifted up the humble” (Luke 1:52). It’s no wonder that governments have banned Mary’s Magnificat as politically subversive – in India in 1805 by the British rulers, in the mid-1970’s in Argentina after the “Mothers of the Disappeared” put the poem on posters in their non-violent marches against the ruling government…”

Clendenin does an eye-opening job of continuing this challenge of understanding that God calls us to different way of being, a different “kingdom” with which to align ourselves. That’s hard for us to imagine in our binary culture, and it is at the foundation of our faith. If Jesus is Lord, then Caesar is not! That’s the simplest summary. If God is in charge, then all politics are radically relativized with visions like Micah 6:8 where we are to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our Lord. Or Isaiah 58 that proclaims: “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter— when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard. Then you will call, and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I. “If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday.

Remembering that call to be citizens of God's kingdom, to be bearers of God's light, can be a real challenge in a season of division and heightened political rhetoric.

In the midst of this cultural-political tornado, I have been grateful to be journeying with another charming and familiar story: The Wizard of Oz. I’m grateful to be rehearsing with our community theater group, as well as church members Becky Manthei, Mia Dornacker, and Sherry McElhatton (typecast as the Glinda the good witch). That story of Dorothy getting clobbered in the midst of the whirlwind is an apt metaphor for lots of moments in life. To watch the fanciful journey of Dorothy navigating good and evil, friendship, and trusting in what is at the core of our beings, is a powerfully rewarding story. Oh, the munchkins are adorable in their energetic dancing, and the Winkies are woefully sad and ridiculous as those who were once “human just like us” until the evil of the wicked witch transformed them into a caricature of their former selves. It is a powerful metaphor for our times, and for our journeys of faith. Each time I watch Dorothy click her heels and remember what home is, I am reminded of how our story of faith keeps encouraging in every way imaginable that we do the same.

I am not expecting the whirlwind of our times to die down anytime soon. But I am praying fervently that we can click our heels three times and keep remembering that there is no place like our home with God's grace and truth and story of a radically different way of living in our world.

There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home in God's love,

September 2024

In the last week I have been intrigued by poetry and stories that I’ve encountered about monarch butterflies and dragonflies. These two insects are often used as symbols in church because of their amazing transformations. They become metaphors for the resurrection as we see a chrysalis break open to reveal the newly emerging butterfly, or new life as the dragonfly emerges from the back of the nymph to spread its wings as a creature utterly transformed. That metamorphosis from terrestrial or aquatic to taking flight is something extraordinary. I’m humbled by the incredible effort that it takes to get to these utterly wondrous magical states.

Imagine a dragonfly spending ninety percent of its life underwater, for some varieties up to five years, only to emerge for a matter of months. Then consider that this process has been going on since the time of the dinosaurs. It is no wonder that dragonflies are incorporated into religious practices from Japan to our own indigenous people. What an amazing story of persistence over time, and the spectacular witness of momentary transformation for each generation before the cycle repeats. One researcher was waxing poetic about dragonflies moving over great distances at over thirty miles an hour, how they see from the ultraviolet through the infrared light spectrum, they see so many times more colors than we are capable of perceiving. What inspirations of nature.

Those Monarch butterflies are miraculous in a whole different way as they begin their migration south in late summer and early fall. I can hardly imagine these beautiful, delicate wings fluttering on the breeze to travel as far as 3,000 miles over the course of eight to nine months. Part of what is remarkable is that they will travel to a place that they have never known. Somehow the destination is woven into the fabric of their being. Those butterflies on their return journey seem to fly only for a few weeks, before needing to stop and pass the baton on to the next generation. The journeys back to the northern most habits appear to be a multi-generational effort.

Imagine these journeys of transformation for which the destination is written in our souls, yet that might take generations to fully realize. That can sound like the life of the church, or like our individual journeys. We live in a society where our attention spans have grown shorter and shorter. We expect change to be instantaneous and often we also want it to be self-serving. Imagine if we were following the course written in our souls knowing that it might take generations to get to the destination and still, we need to do our part. We live in a society where we are often distracted by whatever the loudest voice or flashiest ad may offer, imagine if we slowed down and took the time to listen to the story of transformation that was written on our souls from the beginning of creation, even before the time of the dinosaurs. I love how Buddhism speaks of quieting ourselves so that we might get out of our own way and realize the truth that is inherent in each of us. In our tradition it’s too easy to think that we need to pursue God's truth instead of looking for how it was written within us in love from our very beginnings. The journey of faith invites us to align ourselves with that path toward transformation for which God awesomely and wondrously created us.

Summer is drawing to close, we will start seeing students and teachers resume their migrations to classrooms. The church will return to its regular schedule of two services at 8:00 and 9:30 on Sunday mornings. We will all begin another season on the journey. I pray that we might be trusting in the awesome transformation that God instills in each of us, and in us generationally. I don’t know where “church” is going in the years to come. I don’t know where our own spiritual paths will suddenly grow wings and fly… but I trust that God has woven into our souls, and into the fabric of the universe, a path that leads us toward life, and wonder, and transformation that is best pursued with a commitment to the long arc of history.