Life on the Vine, Revisited

One December, when all our children were home for Christmas and my brother Don was with us as well, we decided to make a pre-Christmas trip to Wine Country in Northern California. Growing up in Pennsylvania, we had neighbors that had a grapevine in their backyard. Although it was a scrawny, puny vine, I found it impressive at the time. After all, you could eat the grapes it produced. It wasn’t until this California road trip that I had ever seen a full-scale vineyard and endless rows of impressive vines. 

UNITE Fundraising: Exceeding our Goal

Over the last few weeks, you’ve heard us talking about UNITE and our fundraising efforts to give our high schoolers the opportunity to attend this week-long gathering of Covenant youth. I’m thrilled to report that we have already surpassed our fundraising goal! We hoped to raise $7,800, and to date, we’ve raised $9,400!

Half Time Adjustments

Some sports divide their game into halves, with a “Half Time” in-between. It is in half time when teams make adjustments to try to ensure a victory, or at least improve their chances. Sometimes a second half will play out very differently from the first half. Sometimes a game is won or lost by the fine tunings a team makes or doesn’t make at half time.

From untie to UNITE

Back in the day, a few decades ago, Covenant High in Congress—the Covenant’s meeting of high school students from across North America every four years—was the largest Christian youth event in North America. I was on the planning team in 1988 for its meeting at Colorado State University. At that time our meetings were so large there were only a few campuses that would be able to accommodate a group our size. I had never attended when I was in high school, so this was all new to me.

Children’s Rites

This past Sunday we as congregation received Charlie Larson-Strobel into the Body of Christ universal through our church. We promised Eva and Brent that we would support them in raising Charlie in the faith, and welcome him as member of our church family. Later in that service we came to the Table—Christ’s Table—where we received communion as a sign of the grace of Christ which redeems our lives and establishes the bonds of the Spirit that holds our church family together. Both Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are considered sacraments in Covenant churches. But the Covenant as a denomination allows for diversity in both theology and practice of sacraments, particularly related to children. After worship this past Sunday, Pastor Lauren and I led the first of two conversations about children, initiation, and sacraments reflecting on these themes.

REJOICE!

Our bulletin this past Sunday greeted us with a command: “Rejoice!” In other words, be glad, celebrate the goodness of God and the life we have been given. This coming Sunday’s psalm, Psalm 98, proclaims that when God’s justice and mercy are evident and obvious to all, all God’s people will rejoice, all the people of the world will rejoice, and all of creation will rejoice. The presence of God in the world draws praise and joy out of everything and everyone.This only reinforces the direction we were given last Sunday from the outset: “Rejoice!”

Installations

The word “install” is a verb which means “to put in place for service,” such as installing an appliance or software. But it can also apply to a person, such as installing a new fire chief. The noun “installation” is something that has been installed. A week ago today, I attended the opening of an installation. It was called “Murals of Hope” and it is found at Temple De Hirsch Sinai. A year ago last Friday someone entered the Synagogue’s property and desecrated a wall with antisemitic rants. This had happened before to another part of the wall. That time they recruited art students from the Northwest School to re-consecrate a desecrated space by painting a mural over it. Now some years later they recruited three institutions—Wing Luke Museum, The Bush School, and Seattle Academy of Arts and Sciences—to do the same. Both murals complement each other with images of life, growth, hope, and promise.

Young Adults Gather

This past Sunday, fourteen of us gathered after church for what we generously called our “Young Adult Gathering.” Since some of us are within striking distance of forty, we’ll be rebranding ourselves soon. While we’re still deciding what to call our cohort, we did decide that it was good for us to gather, so we plan to do that more. We talked about our hopes for this group, as well as our general hopes for the future of First Covenant Church. 

I was inspired and encouraged by the energy of these people and how seriously they take their call to steward the church’s future. They had lots of ideas for how First Cov could better reach our neighborhood and provide for those who are already in our community. I’m excited to see how this group will coalesce and how their influence will shape the future of our congregation. 

Being a Good Neighbor

One of the tasks our Church Council has been working on since the first of the year has been doing an audit of the fiscal (dollars spent) and human (people-hours spent) resources it takes to do all we do as a church. For a congregation our size, we do a great deal more than one might think. Our Church Chair Karl Nelson describes it a “punching above our weight class.” I agree, we are a talented, resourceful, and scrappy bunch. Still, there are many needs in our immediate community and our wider world, and we can only do so much to address those needs. One thing we can do is to be informed about opportunities to help and serve offered by those outside our church. Even if we don’t actually contribute to their efforts, we can pray for them—prayers of thanks for these efforts and the people who make them, as well as prayers of intercession for their efforts to be fruitful and productive.

Voices from Holy Week and Easter

The holy eight days (or octave) from Palm Sunday to Easter at First Covenant Church were evidently quite noteworthy; at least from the voices I heard. Maybe you heard them too?

Here are few selected examples.

Palm Sunday: “What glorious music we had today. Our choir has been such a grace to us these past weeks.” “It was so good to have the children up front singing!”

Maundy Thursday: “I’ve never had my feet washed before.” “The choir’s anthem during the foot washing and watching others have their feet washed was a sacred moment.”

On this good, holy Friday

It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, while the sun’s light failed, and the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, crying out with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” Having said this, he breathed his last.

~ Luke 23:44-46

Palms, Passion, Confusion, and celebrating Holy Week

Jerusalem was an important location for Christian pilgrimages in the early centuries. Christians would especially flock to Jerusalem in the week prior to Easter, as the church of Jerusalem enacted the last week of Jesus’ life in Jerusalem in the places where they believed they took place. Those practices of this week in Jerusalem gave rise to what we now know as Holy Week and the Stations of the Cross. By the 300s, Holy Week was being celebrated well beyond Jerusalem and became a time of fasting, donations to the church and to the needy, and extended times of prayer.

Exorcising in Lent

Exorcism is the stuff of Halloween movies. The words “exorcism” and “exorcist” conjure images of priests going toe to toe with a demon—or demons—armed only with a crucifix, consecrated oils, and a prayer book. In Mark’s gospel, casting out demons is a core element in Jesus’ ministry of proclaiming the good news and offering evidence that Jesus is bringing the reign of God to earth. But that seldom comes to mind when hearing the word “exorcism.”

Getting the Straight Story on Forgiveness and Reconciliation

Then Peter came and said to Jesus, “Lord, if my brother or sister sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.” (Matthew 18: 21-22)

Peter came to Jesus with a question, “Teacher, when are we done forgiving a person?” and Jesus responded, “Never.” Peter was looking at forgiveness as an obligation, social, religious, and moral. It was Jewish law, after all; and, at some point you meet the obligation of the law, right? But Jesus said, “No.”

History and Our Human Natures

In such a rapidly changing world, is our reliance on the ancient texts of scripture still relevant?

For any scripture text that we read, we could replace it with a much more recent—and possibly more directly relevant—theological text, but would its authority be enduing? How do we know what this particular writing by a scripture scholar or theologian will have a lasting importance in our lives? The scriptures had their divine authority vetted many centuries ago, and have since been read as a “canon” or the rule of faith for God’s people. One of the reasons we read ancient texts every time we gather for worship is that they speak of our humanity in all its diversity in ways that still speaks truth to our lives. A sign that as much as our human contexts have changed across time and around the world, our human natures remain remarkably the same.

Lent and Keeping Score

On Tuesday night, August 17, 1971, I attended my first major league baseball game. It was the Angels playing the Red Sox at Fenway. We sat in the right field bleachers behind the Red Sox bullpen. It was such a treat to see all of those players who I had collected as baseball cards playing live in front of me. It was also the night my cousin Adrian taught me how to keep score. It changed my life. Soon I would be creating score sheets on legal pads and then keep score of the games I watched on television. It made me so much more engaged in the game helping me follow the game and its strategy better. I still like keeping score. Ask our church’s softball manager, Aaron Nilson, how often I volunteer to “keep the book.”

A New Season

This week marks the first week of Pastor Lauren St. Martin among us. This is a bit misleading as Lauren has graciously contributed to the ministry of our church in a variety of ways—some public, some less so—over the past few years, but does so now as one of our pastors. Still, even as pastor, Lauren and I have been laying the groundwork for our ministry together. In particular, we have been thinking about what changes we might like to make in this new season of ministry in our church.

February: A Month in Transition

Some people really don’t like winter. I personally love winter. It is my favorite season. I miss winters in the northern Allegheny Mountains, which is found in the snow belt between Erie, Pennsylvania and Buffalo, New York. Though I took advantage of Southern California’s mild winters by biking and other warm weather activities, I missed real winter weather. Seattle has a more wintery climate (though I am still waiting for my first opportunity to shovel snow this year), but not quite wintry enough. I have on a rare occasion gone east to cross-country ski and skated at the Northgate ice rink, but far less than I would like.

Praying through Lent

As we have done in the past, I am inviting our congregation to participate in a “do-it-yourself” Lenten devotional. This year I have chosen Matthew’s gospel as the foundation for our devotions. We spent last year with Mathew’s gospel in our worship and I am hoping those texts might be fresh in your minds. Specifically, I have chosen small passages from the Sermon on the Mount and invite you to offer a short prayer that this text inspires in you. That will take us to the last two weeks in Lent, where the texts will shift to some of Jesus' teachings as he was approaching the Cross. The texts will be different, but the assignment is the same. Offer a short prayer that arises out of your response to this passage. We are inviting you to sign up to both receive these as an email each weekday in Lent as well as volunteer to write a short prayer. (A sample of what these will look like is below.)

Another Postcard from your Pastor

We have returned from a brief but immersive few days in Paris. There we found ourselves at the tail-end of “Fashion Week” in Paris, encountering moments of celebrity and fanatic responses to it. We also found locations such as the Opera House and the Champs-Élysées filled with people, as well as cafés overflowing with conversation and crowds. We saw a luminated, glistening Eiffel Tower by night, giving evidence of why Paris is called the “City of Light.” And though we found many evidences of Christendom in the many churches and the saint-names streets we passed by, we saw less evidence of a living faith as the light in that city.