PASTORAL MESSAGES

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From the Pastor’s Study – December 2021/January 2022

“Welcome! Have you got any beer?” That’s said to have been the greeting that Squanto offered to the Pilgrims as he met them. He would become one of their lifelines after that first horrendous winter.

This year’s Thanksgiving marks the 400th anniversary of the occasion when our forebearers gathered for a thanksgiving meal after that deadly first year that had taken the lives of 50 of the 102 people who had set out on the Mayflower. They had finally managed to make a treaty with the Indigenous People (Ousamequin of the Pokanoket Wampanoag) and had managed to grow enough food and build enough shelter to think that they might survive. The Pilgrims’ religious practice was to gather for a feast of thanksgiving to God for the blessings. The stories always gather the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag together to share in a feast that many historians now say almost certainly didn’t happen as we’ve imagined it… but there was a gathering, and sharing, and thanksgiving.

Those Pilgrims are our UCC ancestors who, for my family growing up, were always a very present part of the Thanksgiving table. My ancestors trace their roots back to the immigrants on the Anne in 1623 (and Laura’s family on the Mayflower in 1620). The Congregational branch of the UCC traces back to those Pilgrim’s Puritan roots that sought to purify the church from the tradition that had emerged as the state religion: the Church of England (until 1534 England was a Roman Catholic nation, when King Henry VIII broke from Rome and declared himself head of the new national church). The Puritans wanted to reform the Church to get back to a simpler faith that was more aligned with the early Christians. Another group, the Separatists, wanted to break from the Church of England completely. Such are our roots – that commitment to return more closely to the ways of Christ and the early Christians instead of the trappings of the church or the ways that culture leads us from Christ’s ways of justice and love.

It’s interesting that it’s only been in the last couple of decades that I’ve started hearing Squanto and the Pilgrims’ story a little more deeply. “Welcome, have you got any beer?” is a greeting that could make any Wisconsinite smile. But most of us don’t remember why this Indigenous Person would offer this greeting. The greeting belies a sober story of Squanto knowing how to speak English and knowing of the blessings of beer because of his having been captured and enslaved. Enslavement allowed him to learn English and perhaps even be baptized prior to finding his way back to a land that would be renamed Plymouth – a land where his tribe had been all but wiped out by the diseases brought by earlier visits of Europeans. It’s interesting to consider how the survival of even the Pilgrims was dependent on this fruit of slavery and the inadvertent extermination by disease of the Indigenous Peoples. 

Part of what’s interesting to me is that these Pilgrims who were trying to purify their faith practices were clearly still having a hard time letting Jesus lead them into a relationship with God that was beyond their deep-seated cultural assumptions. This is always the case for us. We want to hear good news of God's love, but maybe only to the extent that it reinforces what we already believe. But that’s not the full message of the good news.

Very quickly our season moves from Thanksgiving to Christmas. We might move from giving thanks for the blessings of our lives and this year, to pondering what new stories we need to learn to truly be thankful for our lives and to be more closely aligned to God's ways.

Perhaps the journey toward Christmas might help us to be more open to God's challenge to grow with each day. As we hear “Away in the manger, no crib for a bed, the little Lord Jesus lay down his sweet head…” we might hear not only the magic of Christmas but also the challenge that this gift of God's love offered the world. It should be a little stunning to us when we stop and remember what scripture’s story of that first Christmas must have sounded like. Everything about the narrative is shocking, disruptive, perhaps even offensive!

John Dominic Crossan writes about how Jesus’ miraculous birth was a story that had roots in the culture of the time. He describes how the Roman Emperors would also have had miraculous birth narratives told about them in order to emphasize their power and importance, their divine sanction. But Jesus’ story took an outrageous, radical, twist away from the norm. Jesus’ story was the counter cultural divine birth story. Instead of his being born in all the powerful, auspicious, culturally celebrated, and acceptable ways; Jesus was born with a tenuous paternity, to a low caste single mother in a stable in the shadow of the empire. He was a nobody who was God's anointed. All of the titles that were used for Caesar Augustus: Divine, Son of God, God from God, Lord, Savior of the World, Redeemer, Liberator…; all of these terms were now shifted to this Jewish peasant child. Christianity hardly started in a place where the dominant culture would carry the story. No, the dominant culture found the story absurd and then offensive or threatening enough that Jesus’ birth precipitated his crucifixion. You don’t live a life that would dismantle the current cultural values without there being consequences.

Thanksgiving, Christmas, a New Year… God's story is inviting us to a place of growth, to a place of love, to a place of hope.

Christians have almost always been a part of the culture that much more closely resembles the powerful empire that Jesus was trying to transform than the community to which the Christmas story was made real. We take the message of a different way of being and turn it into cute, commercialized holidays that challenges none of our ways and only reinforce the brokenness of the world instead of transforming it with love.

We should hear the proclamation that “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” as a word of profound hope in a world that continues to be wracked with discord, distrust, and fear. That little child is born in all the wrong places proclaiming a different way. That light is Love that is humble and giving, that sees in the other not fear but hope and promise. The Christmas story is a gift that God offers us to draw us out of our cultural comfort zone to welcome the unpredictable divine.

May God bless us this season!

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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

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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

 

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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.

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