In praying my morning office Tuesday morning, the lesson from the Hebrew Scriptures was from the first chapter of Jonah. In verse 5, I read, “Then the mariners were afraid, and each cried to his god.” (NRSV) I thought it was a funny coincidence at the time of my reading. But it came back to me as tragic as I got into my car to drive home later that day. I turned the Mariners’ game on the radio before I left the parking garage—just in time to hear the sound of a game winning, three run, walk off homerun by the Astros. If I would have left the radio on after that, I just might have heard the sound of fearful Mariners crying out to their gods.

I am currently teaching a study on 1 First Corinthians at the Shores. The church at Corinth was probably the most diverse church in the first century. That church’s diversity became particularly evident when they gathered, manifesting itself in divisions. Preparing for this study has brought gathering to my mind. It also has brought back to mind one of the most profound experiences of gathering I have ever had. It was when Susan and I visited Sweden for the first time. My father’s relatives took us to the Johansson homestead. They arranged with the current owners to take us onto the farm that my great-grandfather once owned, and into the farmhouse in which my grandfather was born. After visiting the homestead, they took me to the grave where my great grandparents were buried. There I stood at the head of their grave, surrounded by my father’s cousins, their spouses, and their children; none of whom my father ever met. In that moment I had a profound sense of identity that I can only describe as feeling at home.

Gathering: From Sweden to Corinth to First Covenant—Part 1

Autumn is a season of gathering. Farmers harvest their crops gathering them for storage or for sale. Students who have been dispersed over the summer gather in classrooms again. In northern Europe in pre-Christian times, it was a time of gathering with your clan, living and dead. The cooler, greyer, less vibrant days of the year’s end marked the end of growing season. People’s lives moved indoors, bringing families physically closer together. Those shorter darker days also led those people to consider what we now call November to be a season of the dead. Christians turned that time of remembering the dead into what we know as “All Saints Day” applying the hope of Christ’s resurrection to a season of remembering and grief. As a church, we are gathering again in greater numbers as our summer travels are subsiding and we settle into life in Seattle in shorter, less sunny days. So we open this more robust season of our church’s life and ministry by gathering on “Welcome Home” Sunday.

I seem to be repeating myself. And it seems I have little control over it.

Chaplain Greg Asimakoupoulos of Covenant Shores puts together a weekly Evensong service which he posts online. More than once I have found myself “preaching” in this service —meaning, Greg found some video of me from Fuller or here at First Cov, and inserted it into this service. Most recently, he repurposed my sermon from July 10, this past summer, for this week’s Evensong video. That particular Sunday the gospel text was the parable of the “good Samaritan.” It was interesting for me to hear that sermon again at this time, as I have been thinking a lot about “being a good neighbor.”

The last two weeks “on the Vine” I have been reflecting on the nature of Christian growth or formation. I identified the unique charisms of the Evangelical Covenant Church as a part of the Lutheran Pietist tradition, that insist on the primary and initial action of God in establishing a relationship with human beings; in other words, an emphasis on grace. But we are not completely passive in our faith, instead our faith is a grateful response to God’s grace by being good stewards of the gifts and abilities God has given us. We do this by allowing God to develop our faith and gifts by the work of the Holy Spirit through the Body of Christ, the church.

This Saturday we will celebrate the sacrament of baptism for two people in our community by confession of faith. As I am preparing for that special day, I am reminded of the ancient Christian adage, “Christians are made, not born.” Martin Luther made a comment about baptism that reflected this thought. Luther said, no matter how old you are when baptized, it is like putting an infant into a monk’s robe. That is, all baptisms are something you need to grow into. It is the beginning, not the end of any faith journey, even for someone who has grown up in the faith and is baptized confessing their own faith.

“Archeology” and “nursery” aren’t two words that you think would naturally go together. But the sign above my office door gives evidence that they intersect—at least in this sign.

As you may know we have a team of young parents who are taking the care and maintenance of our nursery very seriously. This is a real gift to our church as we have a number of children who use our nursery, with more on the way. We should be equally excited by and appreciative of the work they are doing. But there are other benefits it seems. Allan Waite, while doing the hard work of clearing out the space and all of its nooks and crannies, found the sign that is now found above my office door. It reads, “If you don’t know everything in the bible, you need Sunday School; if you do, we need you! Sunday School Committee.” This sign was the fruit of Allan’s “excavation” in the nursery. A “fossil” from a previous era.

Welcome to “Life on the Vine”!

In the fifteenth chapter of John’s gospel, Jesus offers a very unique take on the life of his followers. Jesus describes himself as a vine, and his Divine Father is the one who tends to the vine. (15:1) Later Jesus describes those who follow him as branches which “abide” in him as the vine. “Abide” here means to both “dwell in” and “conform to.” We are to live connected to God through Christ, becoming more like Christ as we do. In chapter 14 Jesus had already made clear that what is expected of Jesus followers will be supported by the Holy Spirit. (14:15-17) It is the Spirit that will help us abide in Christ, like the water and nutrients from the vine provided to sustain the branches, following this vine metaphor.

I have just returned from a trip to Toronto, Ontario. It is an old haunt of mine from the 1970s and 80s, growing up just south of the New York-Ontario boarder. Each time I have returned, I find it interesting to see how much Toronto has changed over the years—and how much it has remained the same.  I have always been struck by how clean a city Toronto is for its size, and that is still the case. What struck me this visit is that this very diverse and cosmopolitan city has become even more diverse. Part of the reason this visit was the number of international tourists who were enjoying Toronto and its mild summer weather.

August is upon us. It used to be the last month of summer, back when school began after Labor Day. But students are already heading off to college and K-12 faculty and staff will soon be heading back to their offices and classrooms. August is a transitional month. The weather outside tells you its summer, while your calendar and its “to do lists” tells you otherwise. August is a month to look back, look forward, and take inventory. And so, I will.

I am not a fan of change. So it is with no amount of reluctance that I write these reflections about a change in our church.

Nat Bartels was hired almost exactly three years ago, July of 2019, “as a permanent, part-time employee” whose ministry title was “Organist/Accompanist”. This past Sunday was her last Sunday as a member of our Church Staff, though she will be “filling in” at least one more Sunday in August. By the time I met Nat in 2020, she was more than just a musician. She was functioning as our church’s music director and played a vital role in creating congregational song opportunities and special music for our prerecorded worship services.

There are a lot of songs about home. In the 60s and 70s many songs were written by people touring the world at a young age and missing home. (Trivia: The world renown band Coldplay cut short its first US tour in 2001 because they were homesick.) From James Taylor’s “Isn’t it Nice to be Home Again” to Simon and Garfunkel’s “Homeward Bound” songs have identified “home” as a place that is an extension of yourself, and when you are absent from it, you are less than yourself. The song that has always defined home for me, was the Bacharach and David song, “A House is not a Home.” Home is where you find those you love. And when they are not there, a home becomes simply a house. Home is about relationships and identity.

I wanted to continue last week’s summer musings this week. As I mentioned last year, Summer is a season of vacating; leaving, emptying yourself of responsibilities for a short while, and hopefully returning with renewed energy and focus. And so it will be for Susan and me.

Susan was planning on going to visit her family in Rockford last week. My plans were to leave this week for Pittsburgh where I would meet up with three friends to go canoeing and camping on the Allegheny River.

Summer. It is a magical, mythical season. It is a time for play, think of Roger Kahn’s classic baseball book Boys of Summer, or your favorite amusement park. Summer’s a time for romance, think of your favorite songs about falling in love in the summer, or your favorite summer romance films. Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream covers all the bases: love, supernatural, and summer coalescing into one of Bard’s most beloved plays. Summer for we moderns is time away and time off—summer vacation. We created a break from year around schooling so children could help on their family’s farm. When then-President Nixon suggested this need no longer existed and proposed eliminating summer vacation for students, the pushback was firm and decisive. Too much of our culture (and economy) assumed a magical oasis in the warmest, brightest time of the year. 

Dear Friends,

I have returned from the Covenant’s Annual Meeting in Kansas City with some insights and observations. Here are a few of them. To begin with, I was struck by how much my colleagues have aged, how many of them had children who I met, and how many of my classmates were retiring. Then I realized it was decades, not years, since I had last been among many of these colleagues of mine. Over those decades, however, both the denomination and I have changed. The gathering at both the Ministerium and the Annual Meeting was very intergenerational, multiracial, with much larger percentage of women in leadership and in attendance. There were also many more people who are not “cradle Covenanters” which has led to a more diverse denomination than before.

Leaving on a jet plane. Sounded so romantic when John Denver wrote it and Peter. Paul, and Mary sang it. Not so much being on a full flight in an on-going pandemic. But off I go to my first Covenant Annual meeting in two decades, and my first time as a delegate ever. I have been blissfully ignorant of much of the goings on in the Covenant the past 16 years. And that level of disconnection has been diminishing over the past two years. I am looking forward to learning first-hand about the what the denominational home since my birth has become and is becoming.

And I look forward to sharing that knowledge with you upon my return.

But for now I have the privilege of introducing you to the five people who will be received into membership in our church this Sunday.

When I was young I loved math and science. I enjoyed figuring out math and algebra problems and applying my math skills to science, especially physics problems. I enjoyed math and physics enough to pursue an electrical engineering degree in college. By the time I had begun my second year in my engineering program, what I thought was a nudge to reconsider my vocation turned into a call to ministry, and a shift away from numbers, equations, and experiments to much less concrete and calculable subjects. I still love math and enjoy it when I have opportunities to return to it.

This past Sunday was filled with numbers, though nothing that had to do with asymptotes, velocity, variables, or energy. Though truth be told, there was some energy—and enthusiasm—in our building on Sunday, mostly provided by you.

What is old often becomes new again. Sometimes it is a welcome return, other times, not so much. Plagues are old and are now with us again. Not such a good thing, most would say. On the other hand, there are approaches to religious education and faith formation that fell by the wayside after the printing press was invented, that have returned with renewed vigor in the past half-century.

The Reformation is the direct result of the printing press. What I grew up being told was a “biblical Christian faith” could not exist until people had Bibles and were able to read them. The printing press changed education both inside and outside of churches.

Marking time and making time. We are in that period the year when we begin to negotiate a change in seasons and changes in life patterns. Days are getting noticeably longer, meaning the longest day of the year, the official first day of summer will soon be here. Of course, that will also initiate the slow shrinkage in our hours of daylight. We remedy this by acting like summer arrives Memorial Day week-end, which is already behind us. Regardless, the long, dark, and somewhat reclusive days of winter have receded and now we are anticipating making up for it with an active and enjoyable summer. 

We are about to enter into a “trifecta of worship” in our next three Sundays. This Sunday we will celebrate the Ascension of our Lord. We are reminded in the Nicene Creed that Jesus “suffered death and was buried, rose again on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.” Jesus dying and rising is completed by his ascending, all one act of God’s redemption. So in this last Sunday of Easter we celebrate the final act of our Lord’s crucifixion and resurrection—his ascension.