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.