Ending a Year

This is the last newsletter of the year. In the middle of this year, the name of the newsletter, and just about everything else about it, was changed, as was our church’s website. It was a year of many births (up to six, depending how you count), and appropriately, a renovated nursery. But this is just two of the new and renewed things that we as a church experienced this past year. But our year, with all its ups, had its share of downs. One of which was the tragic loss of a daughter by two of our missionaries, James and Rachel Tang.

Don't Let the Light Go Out!

In keeping with the tradition of trimming the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve, I offer some late-Advent reflections strung together like popcorn and cranberries on a string.

It is almost Christmas. We held our last worship service in Advent this past Sunday. Christmas is almost upon us—and this may be good news for some, and not so good news for others. However much you want Christmas to come soon, or are praying for one more day before Christmas comes, I pray you find time to reflect and enjoy the promise of God’s light and love becoming flesh in Christ. In a hectic and sometimes abrupt holiday season, Christmas offers the promise of peace on earth and good will to all people.

Transitioning from Advent to Christmas

This Sunday is the fourth and last Sunday of Advent. The Sunday after this one is Christmas Day. Advent was originally a penitential season of preparation. In part it was preparation for a “High Holy Day,” in part because some people in Advent, as in Lent, were preparing for baptism. In the Western (Protestant and Catholic) churches, the day for Baptism was primarily Easter. In the Eastern (Orthodox) churches, the principal day for baptism is their Christmas (January 6) or the Sunday after, which celebrates the baptism of Jesus. Our Orthodox friends in Russia and Ukraine still baptize by immersion on those days. It makes baptism in Puget Sound look balmy by comparison!

Remembering: The Return of Old Friends

When our children were young we tried to have family devotions regularly on weeknights. We had songs we would sing, a Children’s Bible we would read from, and prayers we would pray. Each night we would begin by lighting a candle and extinguish it when we were done, with our children waiting anxiously for their turn to tend the candle. Except in Advent and Christmas, which were different in special ways. From Advent through the end of Christmas we had a six-sided tower with doors on each side to be opened like any Advent calendar. Behind the doors were “stained-glass” windows illumined by the battery-operated candle inside the tower. There were big doors on the bottom for each Sunday, and smaller doors for each weekday, with each side being one week. In each window was often a “saint,” or sometimes an event, with a Bible verse for that day on the back side of the door. We had an Advent wreath with its 5 candles to light along with special Advent and Christmas songs to sing. And our Advent/Christmas tower went all the way though Christmastide, starting on November 30 and ending on the Sunday after January 6. 

Conditions, Traditions, and Transitions: Stream of conscience ramblings in the first week of Advent

Last Wednesday some of you contributed to a worship service that I would describe as being heartfelt and inspiring gratitude. You offered your voices to songs, prayers and personal reflections. Those who attended in person had the opportunity after the service to practice eating pumpkin pie before you ate the “official” pie the next day. I cannot speak to what those who attended virtually did. If you did not attend this service in any mode, it is not too late. I encourage you to view the recording of the service. I believe you will consider it an hour well spent.

New Dawn, New Year, Coming Promise

As I write this, the rain and grey has returned to the Emerald City. What a contrast to last week, with its cool, crisp sunny days…and its unforgettable sunrises.

I confess I am a morning person. I love the quiet of the predawn dark. It is such a pregnant time of the day, filled with possibility and potential. It is also a time when much of our continent has already been awake and productive, giving me incentive to start catching up. After I have been up for a bit, doing some morning tasks, I will walk out to the end of our drive and get that morning’s paper. When I am returning and getting near our front door, on a clear day, I can look right and see Mount Rainier. Last week I saw some of the most beautiful views of Mount Rainier I have ever seen. The air was so clear it made Rainier appear so much closer than typical. And the early morning rays of the just-dawning sun wrapped themselves orange around that still sleeping volcano, like a glowing, warm hug.

Thanksgiving, Mission, and Stewardship

When I have been asked what I believe is the central theme of the Christian faith, I more often than not answer that it is stewardship, for two reasons. First, everything we have is a gift, it is grace. A steward is a person who cares for other people or other people’s things. We are stewards of the life God afforded us and all that we encounter while living, for it is all God’s and we are simply managing it. Second, having been given a gift, it raises the question of what we will do with what we have been given. This determines what sort of steward we are. The range of answers to that question is wide. Do you acknowledge that what we have is, in fact, from outside ourselves? Do we consider ourselves worthy, or having earned, our life and all that it offers us? Do we care about how our choices affect others? The scriptures begin with God declaring creation good and entrusting responsibility for creation, including other people, to people. This is a theme that runs from the beginning to end of the Bible. Stewardship cannot be avoided either in the scriptures or in the life of a Christian.

In last Sunday’s epistle lesson we read these three verses.

“In (Christ) you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of his glory.… And (God) has put all things under (Christ’s) feet and has made (Christ) the head over all things for the church, which is (Christ’s) body, the fullness of God who fills all in all.” Ephesians 1:13, 22-23

A week ago tomorrow (Saturday), will be one week since I tested positive for COVID. Susan had become ill on Tuesday and tested positive on Wednesday. Susan by far had the worst case: more severe symptoms and they lasted longer. We are both on the mend and we thank you for all your expressions of support and offers of help, even as we apologize for not responding to you all individually. We are not unique, unfortunately, in having COVID in our church family. We pray for all of those who are enduring this virus as I write this, some with mild cases, some with severe, but hopefully all soon behind us.

I had mentioned in one of my earlier writings, that northern Europe in its pre-Christian era had seen the darkening days of November as a season when the light of the life and the darkness of death intermingled into the grey of Autumn. In this season, they believed, that the separation between the living and the dead became thin, allowing communication between the living and the dead. Today early, pre-Christian practices are can still be found in some places where the dead are remembered and communicated to. It is in response to this tradition that the Christian church in the West instituted All Saints’ Day, All Souls’ Day, and November as a month of remembering the dead.

This cultural approach was, and is, quite common in the ministries of Christian missionaries. Those bringing the gospel to a new people would find a theme in their culture and connect it to a theme of the gospel, in this case the resurrection of the dead and the communion of saints to these autumnal festivals of the dead.

This week’s cool temperatures seem more like October in the best ways. When I was a boy the cooler temperatures, the autumn palette of colors that carpeted the hills and valleys in my homeland all pointed not only the end of summer and first gasp of Fall, it ushered in a whole new rhythm of life. It was high school football on Friday nights, JiffyPop popcorn and watching television with family, the World Series and intramural crab soccer games after school, and anxiously awaiting the Holy Grail of gift dreaming, the Sears “Christmas Wishbook.”

It wasn’t all pleasant however. Sometimes it meant disagreeing with your parents about whether you needed to wear a snowsuit under your Halloween costume — “but no one else is going to wear a snow suit under their costume.” Oftentimes it meant being warmer than your friends while trouncing through the snow on Halloween, and feeling glad you were, but never admitting it to Mom and Dad.

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.