From the Pastor's Study - November 2021

And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had been doing, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation.

- Genesis 2:2-3

    It is hard for me to believe that I’m in the midst of my 24th year as the pastor at Peace UCC. As such we are busy at church planning for an upcoming Sabbatical. This will be the first time that I have taken this time on schedule, and only the second time that I’ll take the time in full. I had initially hoped that we would be fully on the other side of the pandemic by the time that I would be stepping away for several months, but it seems like we might be on that journey for some time yet.  Thankfully we have settled into a much more normal pattern than where we were a year ago. For some of you the concept of Sabbatical may be new, and so I’m always aware that there is some work to do in order to help understand what this word means. Functionally it means that the church will be giving me a paid leave from my duties for 4 months (3 months plus some unused time from the last sabbatical).

    When I began my ministry at Peace we were encouraged to follow the guidelines offered to us by the Conference Office to institute a sabbatical policy. The congregation took that leap of faith and implemented a sabbatical policy: “Sabbatical of three months, in addition to vacation, during the sixth year of service, and every sixth year following, per conference guidelines.”

    I offer what I wrote before my first Sabbatical as still appropriate: “Sabbaticals are recommended as an essential part of keeping clergy attuned to their call and service to God. There is an awareness of the extraordinarily high potential for burnout in the ministry. It is ironic that ministry, as a caring vocation, often does such a poor job of teaching ministers to care for themselves. Even something as simple as having the chance to be a part of a worshipping community instead of always leading worship challenges the pastor to keep Sabbath time. A Sabbatical is an extended Sabbath offered for spiritual renewal, rejuvenation, intellectual growth. Its roots are in God's vision of Sabbath time.

    We all know the command to keep the Sabbath holy. The gifted theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote a profound book on Sabbath, poetry of faith. He offers us an image of Sabbath as a cathedral in time. At its foundation Sabbath is intended to be a different way of being than the other six days of the week. Heschel recalls how the ancient rabbis looked at the seventh day of creation and noted that it was not an absence of creation, but something more, something different. For six days God created the heavens and the earth, all of the stuff of the universe. So after six days of creation what did the universe lack? Their answer: Menuha, a Hebrew word that is often simply translated as rest but its connotations are much more powerful, much more positive than mere rest. On the seventh day God created tranquility, serenity, peace and repose. On the seventh day God created a cathedral in time into which we are invited to be with God in glory and praise and prayer. The poetry of our creation story has all of creation culminate in this seventh day. The Sabbath is the finale, the perfection of creation. This was a unique idea in the ancient world just as it is today. Only the Jews worked in order to enter into the sanctity of rest with their God. The Egyptian slaves rested only in order to recover to do more work in the following days.

    Work to rest or rest to work, that difference is all the difference in the world. How many of us “keep the Sabbath?” How many of us truly set aside that time to enter into relationship with God as the very goal of the other six days of our week?

    Sabbath also means enough, this is the time when we are opened to encounter the fullness of God's creation. This is not the proclamation that comes in frustration at the end of a hard week, “enough already!” but this is the proclamation of a sufficiency that can only be experienced as the bounty God offered to creation, “ah, it is enough!!”

    Isn’t it interesting how we have moved back into the old patterns of Egyptian slavery rushing from one thing to the next always trying to just keep up? As I plan for time away, time with God, I must confess that there is a certain dread that overcomes me. I know how to keep doing what I’m doing; I’m not so sure I know how to enter into God's cathedral-in-time to be restored. Of course at the same time, I’m growing to clearly understand the wisdom of Sabbatical, I am feeling the desperate need to recharge and reclaim that fire with which God called me to ministry. I cannot help but think that we all have much to gain from this experience.”

    My prayer is that this will become a time for all of us to discern how God is calling each of us to live out our faith. It is a chance to break some well-worn patterns, to hear some new voices, and I pray to let the time be a sacred time of imagination. When I think of that opportunity, this seems like a perfect time to listen together for where God is calling us to go as a congregation.

    I have watched many pastors and congregations that have experienced sabbaticals together. Most of what I hear are stories about how the experience proved to be a real blessing for everyone involved, congregation and pastor. It was not undertaken as struggle or burden but as opportunity for all involved. It is to embrace the manuha for which God made all of creation.

    We will embark on this sabbatical together. That may sound a bit strange as I make plans to be away and you will all be here, but we will do this together. All of us are called to open our eyes to new experiences, new preaching and teaching, new opportunities for people to step up to claim the ministry to which we are each called. I pray that it may be a time when we all are reminded to listen a little more clearly for God's voice in our lives.

    Shabbat shalom,

Pastor Eric

From the Pastor's Study - October 2021

A smile filled my insides as I saw a little boy with a backpack as large as he was standing on the street corner waiting for the Monday morning school bus to pick him up. His body language seemed to spark with that eager energy of heading to school on his own. The joy seemed to ripple off his little patient foot-shuffling. Every now and again, his glance confirmed that he knew that just across the street his parent was watching from the garage. It’s been a lot of years since Laura and I were watching our children venture off toward those first days of school. It’s been so many years of memories since then. We’ve watched not only our children growing up, but also each of those special exchange students who we were blessed to welcome into our family. The house is quieter this fall, having now entered into the realm of empty-nesters. We’re new at the journey, but have been blessed to watch many in our church family survive and even thrive before us in this transition. And like with each change on our life’s journey, in those moments when I may feel anxious, or excited, or nervous, I know that God is right there watching like that parent across the street… never far away, encouraging from a safe distance.

Life transitions and children’s faces seem like wonderful places to remember a core message of God: that we are beloved, each of us wondrous. The greatest gift that I’ve found in life are those connections with people along the journey. A moment with a shared smile, or a lifetime of shared love and commitment, each offer the blessing of God inviting us toward seeing the world differently. This fall I am once again involved in a musical, Roald Dahl’s Matilda, with our community theater group. I entered that process with a certain amount of trepidation with a cast of mostly unvaccinated children, singing and dancing our way through regular rehearsals. I’ve been grateful that initially most of our rehearsing has been outdoors in the park. I been still more grateful for the role that I was given as The Doctor. Each rehearsal I get to sing about how every child, every life, is miraculous – a wonder. Then as I watch the rest of the cast performing their song and dance my proclamation is overwhelmingly confirmed! It hasn’t felt the same to be on stage without my daughters or exchange-student daughters. But as the show is coming together, I’m beaming with a reflection of that same pride and love for each of the children present in the production… every child is awesomely and wondrously made (as Psalm 139 says).  With the resumption of Sunday School, and the reemergence of a middle school youth group, that same emotion keeps welling up within me as I watch and pray for each person involved. Like so many people, I am aware of how parched my soul has been for the regathering of community. But even more poignantly, I’ve been longing for experiences of community working together to celebrate and care for one another – understanding that our stories are always interdependent.

Scripture speaks over and over again about that love for one another as intertwined with our love for God. As the Apostle Paul writes to churches struggling with division and all manner of difficulties he invariably turns back to the tool of love as being what will heal them and align them with God's ways. Judgement exists as a thread that runs through those texts as well, but so often the judgement is linked to placing ourselves ahead of the love of others, or the commitment to value every part of the community, every person, as miraculous, a wonder, a reflection of God. We are continuing as a nation, and as a world, in a time when it seems like there are lots of forces trying to produce division. In that chaos I keep praying that we can stop to see the child, see the faces, and take the next small step on the journey knowing that God is right there watching and inviting us to see a different way.

May God guide us in Love,

Pastor Eric

From the Pastor's Study - September 2021

The September Tidings letter has always anticipated the fall program year and that regathering of the body of Christ in a somewhat more regular rhythm than what the summer offers. This year I find myself looking to the fall with the great hope that we will be able to regather in increasingly normal ways after a period of time much greater than just a summertime. As I write this article, I continue to be aware that all of our plans continue to be contingent on factors of which we are not fully in control – namely an ongoing pandemic. Every school is putting out their guidance and their plan for how to navigate this year in a way that will hopefully be more normal than the last year and a half. Churches are navigating the same journey, some guided strictly by fear, some guided by what they are calling faithfulness, but which sometimes looks more like bravado. At Peace UCC we are continuing to try to navigate this journey with the humility of only knowing what we know and trying to continue to lead in love and care for all of our members and our community. And I know that we are not managing to please everyone.

There is a common theme that I hear in conversations and that I feel in my own heart, and that is exhaustion and longing. Our healthcare systems speak of doctors and nurses experiencing PTSD-like symptoms as the health crisis that we had hoped was behind us is once again exerting a strain on the system. I imagine that for teachers and business owners there is that nagging concern that we don’t want to go backward… for the church we share that concern, and we share that longing to get back to normal.

Through the last year I have been regularly drawn to the story of the Exodus and of the Exile. Our story of faith holds deep wisdom for those who are frustrated and just want to get back to a more predictable existence. Interestingly, our story at no point simply suggests that God's people get to just go back to the way it was, nor does the story suggest that restoration happens quickly. God's people are always reminded that our journeys unfold in God's time – a euphemism for “get ready to practice patience.”

But the other thing that God keeps challenging the people to practice in the midst of adversity is a different way of living for themselves and in relation to others. This month the word ubuntu has been running through my mind. This philosophy that comes out of the Bantu-speaking cultures of Africa captured the imaginations of many people some years ago with definitions of the ubuntu as being something like “I am because we are.” At its core, this African philosophical system speaks of all of us being interconnected and finding our humanness in that interconnection. Letseka and Venter speak about how Ubuntu refers to the interconnected-ness between human beings which reminds one of the isiXhosa proverb Intaka yakha ngoboya benye, "A bird builds its nest with the feathers of other birds."[1] That sense of interconnection is at the heart of God's narrative for God's people. And in this moment in time, it feels like that interconnection is desperately lacking in our society and in our world. But that’s nothing new. In that period of exodus and exile it is a common theme for God's people to whine about what they want, what they need, instead of looking around and claiming the strength of possibility of being woven together into the fabric of God.

In Isaiah 58 the people “Cry with full throat, without restraint” with a lament that they hope will urge God to restore them to the ways things had been. Here are the people at the end of the Babylonian exile, longing for their return to Jerusalem and they just want God to make everything the way that it was. They practice the fasting that had been their way to get God's attention and they just want everything to change. And then they’re frustrated: “Why, when we fasted, did You not see? When we starved our bodies, did You pay no heed?” The people are practicing their faith expecting God to take notice, and what they get in return is God admonishing them for their selfish behavior. The people are crying out to God for relief and return to a past that they remember as glorious while failing to place the needs of others before their own. God calls them to something more like that ubuntu philosophy. In Isaiah 58:6 God declares “No, this is the kind of fasting I want: Free those who are wrongly imprisoned; lighten the burden of those who work for you. Let the oppressed go free, and remove the chains that bind people. Share your food with the hungry, and give shelter to the homeless. Give clothes to those who need them, and do not hide from relatives who need your help. Then your salvation will come like the dawn, and your wounds will quickly heal. Your godliness will lead you forward, and the glory of the Lord will protect you from behind. Then when you call, the Lord will answer. ‘Yes, I am here,’ he will quickly reply…”

We are living during an exhausting time, and perhaps most exhausting of all is the deep divisions that are being fueled at every turn. We have had an extraordinary opportunity to come out of a global crisis stronger and more unified as a people who have looked to care for their neighbor, to consider how they might place their neighbor’s health and strength and wellbeing as important as their own. I am because we are… We have had that opportunity, but like God's people in the past we desperately struggle to get out of our own way.

My prayer is that this fall we will get to celebrate a choir returning to worship, that we will manage to keep singing and gathering in greater numbers, that our Faith Formation classes (Sunday School, Confirmation, Adult Ed.) will be in person, that we will keep sharing fellowship and keep moving forward as a congregation with the strength and care that has been our hallmark. I believe that we can do this if we all work together, if we humbly embrace a little ubuntu philosophy, if we hear those words of Isaiah spoken to a people filled with longing to return from so long ago. God has shown us what it looks like to heal the divisions in our world and to hear God's cry “Yes, I am here.” It always starts with that simple command to love God and to love one another.

I have great hope for us, and I have faith that God is far from done with shaping us into a glorious tapestry of God's people, but I am also humbled that it looks like we all have a long and arduous journey of healing our hearts and souls ahead of us, rebuilding our relationship with one another and with God.

May God bless us on the journey,

Pastor Eric

[1] Letseka, MM & Venter, E 2012. "How Student Teachers understand African Philosophy", Koers - Bulletin for Christian Scholarship 77(1):1-8.

From the Pastor's Study - August 2021

In just a couple of weeks a very small group of us will be heading north for a shortened week of wilderness canoeing. We’ve begun describing the trip as the “almost Canada” canoe trip – we’ll be going into the Boundary Waters, a reminder of yet one more change caused by our world’s current challenge of trying to navigate the best path forward in a continuing pandemic. We have been grieving our inability to embark on the trip to Canada due to border restrictions. We are grieving as we encounter the changes in outfitter, and menu, and restrictions for travel. At some point along our journey, we may be almost close enough to see Canada… but we won’t get there this year. We are reminded that we are still journeying in that liminal space. 

I have found myself repeatedly being drawn to the story of the Exodus as we’ve navigated the challenges of the last couple of years. The narrative can touch our journey of faith in lots of different ways – the theme that I keep hearing is that of moving from a people who are enslaved to the life-sucking-ways of being brick builders for Pharaoh, into being shaped into a people who are freed in order that they might learn to follow and serve God. That call to a different life orientation is at the heart of our story of faith. That call also constantly becomes one of the greatest challenges for any us as we journey with God. Like the Israelites, we are quick to proclaim the vision and value of freedom, but we are slow to embrace a vision that is about freedom for a path in service to something greater than ourselves and not merely freedom from a circumstance that we don’t like. It’s very easy to grieve change and complain about all the things that we don’t like or don’t have. It’s much harder to turn to God and give thanks for what we do have and to keep our focus on the direction toward which God is leading us.  

On that Exodus journey the people keep looking back and they keep grumbling and they keep doubting that they will arrive in the promised land. Indeed, their lack of faith, and their inability to work together with one another and with God at one point leads God to that proclamation in Number 14:11 that reads: “The Lord said to Moses, “How long will these people treat me with contempt? How long will they refuse to believe in me, in spite of all the signs I have performed among them?” God wants to wipe the slate clean and start over… but Moses convinces God not to give up on God's people. Perhaps you remember God's compromise, that the people would wander in the wilderness for forty years before arriving in that promised land. The people needed a generation to learn to work together and to trust in God... and even then it was often a struggle. 

We are living amid a world that I think God might judge in very similar fashion to that whining, selfish generation in the wilderness. There’s a desperate need for us to pull together, to work together, that we might choose to make meaning and strengthen our relationships with one another and with God during our wilderness journey. But that requires choosing a constructive attitude at every step along the way. 

We’re going to head into the wilderness with our little group, and I’m sure that there will be plenty of opportunities for us to whine about how our experience won’t be like what we’ve had in the past… or, we can choose to encourage one another to celebrate a long awaited chance to engage God's creation with one another. We can choose to let our time and our journey feed our souls and deepen our relationship with God. Every time that we do something as a group we are reminded of how much more fun, powerful, and rewarding it is when we work together.  

Around church lots of things are becoming re-energized. We are making plans for things like VBS, Sunday School, a Pignic, the Chancel Choir, Confirmation, Adult Faith Formation opportunities, and a Children’s Christmas program all to be unfolding in the next few months. Even as we return to soul-feeding opportunities that seem familiar, they will be different. Lots of activities may shift their times in the schedule. One of the things that many of you have noted is that a year ago when we were worshipping in the park on the first Sunday of each month that Communion shifted to the first Sunday instead of the last. By the end of the summer, we were talking about how much sense it made to align ourselves with most of the rest of our denomination and continue celebrating Communion on the first Sunday of the month. And so, we’ll continue with that new schedule for the future.  

My deep prayer is that as we continue this journey together, we all remember the power of working together. I also pray that we keep reminding ourselves and one another that our faith is about moving forward, and it is about humbling ourselves in loving God and loving our neighbor first and foremost. We are called to responsibility to all of God's people and creation. As a people of God, I pray that we can keep pulling together to bear witness to that freedom for which God has called us: the freedom to love like Jesus.