Postcard from the San Juans

Having a lovely time in Griffin Bay on our first day in the water. Praying you are paddling along well wherever you are and whatever you are doing.

Grace and Peace,

~ Pastor Todd

Freedom, Unity, and Responsibility:
A Covenant Resource Paper

At the recent annual meeting of the Covenant Church, a proposed position paper was approved by the assembly. (For more about this meeting in general, see Aaron Nilson’s offering below.) I had seen early drafts of this paper as prior versions were sent to the ministerium. We had opportunities to discuss and offer feedback on these drafts, and revisit it when revisions were made. The version posted on the Covenant website still identifies it as a “draft”, though I am fairly certain it is the document that was approved. For most of the delegates, though, this was the first time they had seen this document. 

Church: Universal and Local

In the early Christian creeds we find the phrase “one holy, catholic (or universal), and apostolic church.” The implication is that from the beginning the Christian churches were unified and unanimous in their understanding of what the apostolic faith was. One should understand that the creeds were written because at that time there were Christians who didn’t believe those things. The creeds were a line in the sand: if you agreed you were orthodox, if you did not you were incorrect and possibly even dangerous or heretical.

Juneteenth is about more than Race

On Sunday, June 9 the Reverend James Lawson passed away. Rev. Lawson was a force for justice in the greater Los Angeles area when I lived there, even though he had retired from his ministry at Holman United Methodist Church in LA in 1999, six years before we moved there. Both before that ministry, Rev. Lawson was a prominent leader in the civil rights movement with Dr. King. Rev. Lawson followed the lead of Rev. Howard Thurman, who studied pacifism and passive resistance with Gandhi in India. Where King was the visionary and a spokesperson for the movement, and Thurman was the philosopher and spiritual director of the movement, Lawson was the organizer. It was Lawson’s ability to train troops of non-violent protestors who were able to embody grace under fire that made this movement something to be reckoned with, and forced our country to reckon with its injustices.

Questions

My last few weeks have been quite curious ones. In that time, I have had conversations with a number of people: in and out of our church, religious and non-religious, national and international. What is curious is how much overlap those conversations had. For example, recently someone observed how much COVID seems to have affected people in ways that are still currently evident. The very next day someone in a completely different context commented on how COVID has “changed everything” and wondered if we will ever go back to “normal.”

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.