A Lenten Invitation

I’ve been on the job here at Emmanuel for nearly two weeks now, and this Sunday I’ll step into the pulpit for the second time. I appreciated the chance to meet many of you last Sunday and look forward to meeting more this week. Thank you for wearing your name tags! It’s a great help, not only to me, but I suspect to some others as well.

In my brief time here, I’ve already had the chance to meet with the Session and with the Preschool Board, both important bodies guiding the mission and ministry of this congregation. I want to thank everyone for making me feel welcome. I look forward to partnering in ministry with both of these groups, as well as with all of you, during this transitional time.

With so much focus on transition, including my own inaugural sermon, it seems there’s been little emphasis on Lent, except for the Ash Wednesday service led by Adrienne Schlosser-Hall. This Sunday, I’ll share a message based on the lectionary passage for the fifth Sunday in this holy season. Then we’re already on to Palm Sunday and Holy Week, which will include a Maundy Thursday service at 7:00 p.m. on March 28th. Then, of course, we’ll celebrate the Resurrection on Sunday, the 31st.

I invite you to make these waning days of Lent a time of reflection and prayer, pondering the magnitude of God’s love revealed in Jesus Christ, and considering your faithful response. If you haven’t done so in a while, this might be a good time to read through the Passion narrative in one of the Gospels, those stories leading up to Jesus’ crucifixion. Don’t hurry through just to get it done. Don’t even feel like you have to get all the way through, just to say you’ve done it. Take your time. Meditate on the words. See what speaks to you of God’s love, what reveals to you God’s grace. So may you be truly ready to celebrate the amazing news of Easter.

Pastor Janet

March 15, 2024

A Hint of Glory


“Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John,
And led them up a high mountain apart by themselves.
And he was transfigured before them,
and his clothes became a dazzling white,
such as no one on earth could bleach them.

And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking to Jesus.”
Mark 9:2-4

This morning, this last Sunday morning I am with you as your pastor, is designated on the liturgical calendar as the day commemorating the transfiguration of the Lord.  The day comes just before Ash Wednesday which begins the season of Lent.  We get a hint of Jesus’ glory and divinity just before we move into the season where we focus on his humanity and humiliation.

The thing I love most about the story of Jesus’ transfiguration has to do with what it says about us.  And it is Peter, as usual, who mirrors this characteristic.  Never at a loss for words, Peter responds to this invitation to silence and wonder with a commentary: “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses and one of Elijah.”  In other words: “Wow, this is really cool, Teacher!  Look how shiney you are.  We need to do something to commemorate this moment. Let’s build three shrines up here and turn it into a pilgrimage site.  Maybe we could even sell tickets.”
 
Yet when it was all over, and they were coming down off the mountain, Jesus invites them to a different response.  In fact he orders that response.  He essentially says, “Let’s keep quiet about this for now. The time will come for the celebration of my glory.  For now just keep this to yourselves; be still and savor it.”
 
As religious people we love to build shrines. It’s not necessarily a bad thing.  Afterall, it grows out of an experience of God’s presence, it points to an encounter with the Holy, a moment when eternity has broken into time and in which we feel confirmed in our faith.  So of course we quite naturally want to hold onto it, share it with others, do something to make concrete and permanent what is a momentary, almost subliminal, flash.
 
Yet we should take heed of Jesus’s advice to his disciples.  Often the best response to these visions is to plant them deep in our hearts and let them be part of what empowers us to take the next faithful step on the journey of faith.  These hints of glory are not ultimately given to draw attention to themselves and therefore something to be enshrined and celebrated, they are given to move us forward.
 
One of the things I deeply appreciate about my 11 years at Emmanuel as your pastor is that you were not a people who spent much time trying to draw my attention to and join you in a celebration of your past.  In fact I arrived shortly after you had torn down a couple of your shrines.  I arrived at a place where I rarely heard what is an all too familiar and unfortunate death knell in many congregations: “We’ve never done it this way before.”  By tearing down your building and rebuilding it you effectively pushed a reset button.  I suppose that most of you had little energy to call my attention to how things had always been done, instead you were primed to do something new in a new place.
 
Thank you for that.  And if I have a last word for you, it is: “Keep doing this!” Give your new pastor the same gift. Keep your eyes focused forward, looking for how Jesus is out in front guiding you into an awareness of what is yet to be.  Your foundation is not all the glorious things that have happened, it is the ever- growing relationship you have with the One in Whom all things cohere (Colossians 1:17).  In short, continue to strive to simply be the Church.  From this location at the intersection of 104th and 195th in Bothell, seek to do nothing more and nothing less than look for the ways that God is at work in you and around you and then reflect the light of God’s love to your neighbors.   
 
“Put these words in your heart and soul, and bind them as a sign on your hand and fix them as an emblem on your forehead”; take Hebrews 10:19-25 to heart:

Therefore, my brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary
by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us
through the curtain (that is, through his flesh), 
and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 
 let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith,
with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience
and our bodies washed with pure water.  
Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering,
for he who has promised is faithful.
And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, 
 not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some,
but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

 
David Rohrer
The Transfiguration of the Lord
2/11/2024

The Promise of an Open Future

“. . . and your old men shall dream dreams.”

(Acts 2:17 & Joel 2:28)

When I was a seminary student and a candidate for ordination in the early 80’s I attended a meeting of my Presbytery where one of the pastors preached a sermon that bore the title that I have borrowed for this essay.  I cannot remember the text on which the sermon was based; nor can I remember much of its content, but the title has bored its way into some deep space in my memory and imagination. I have thought of it often throughout my years in pastoral ministry and come to see it as one of the more important Divine promises to us.  What I see in this promise is an invitation to dream dreams.  The invitation comes as a response to the truth that the God who made us for relationship with himself, with one another and with all of creation has always been with us and will not leave or forsake us.

It is good to know that we never need to stop dreaming dreams.  As a 20-something anticipating ordination I was one of those young men with visions that Joel and Luke also speak about, and now as a mid-60-something anticipating retirement I am one of those old men who can still look ahead and dream dreams.  The diminution of youthful energy doesn’t diminish the hope born of the steadfast love and faithfulness of God toward us and while I may be stepping out of active service in the church, I am still very much involved in the drama that is being played out in our world.  And I have come to realize that it is the responsibility of the old to invite the young look into the unknown that is ahead of them, not through the lenses of fear and despair, but in the assurance that Jesus Christ will be with us “even to the end of the age.”

In saying this I in no way wish to imply that inviting the young to see the openness of the future is merely a matter of adopting a positive attitude.  If we invite the young to gaze into the unknown future in denial of the way present circumstances are inviting us to despair and anxiety, we do so to the detriment of our society.  If we merely point to some ultimate promise of heaven or resort to the simplistic invitation to relax because “God is in control,” we invite the apathy and passivity that comprise the soil in which selfishness and narcissism flourish and so waste the energy they have to be active reflectors of the love of God in our world.

In these days I take my inspiration from old folks like Simeon and Anna (Luke 2:25-38) who can hold an all but anonymous baby in their arms and give voice to the promise he embodies.  I aspire to be like Gamaliel (Acts 5:33-39) who invited younger Pharisees to step back from their righteous indignation, murderous rage and mission to purge heretics, and to take a long hard look at what God might be up to.  I want to be like the woman described in Proverbs 31 who wears clothing made of “strength and dignity” and who can “laugh at the time to come.”  Age gives us the benefit of a loose grip.  We simply do not have the energy to be a part of the tug of war that attempts to pull everyone over to our side.  We must instead resort to the gentleness that is born of the truth that “the Lord is near” (Philippians 4:4-7) and invite those around us to zoom out and take in the bigger picture that always dwarfs our particular affections and observations about the world in which we currently find ourselves.

What I am talking about is the choice to move forward in faithfulness as we respond to God’s faithfulness toward us.  I’m talking about the choice to “go out in joy and be led forth in peace.”  The call of Jesus is always forward.  Always, as C.S. Lewis wrote, a call to move “further up and further in.”  It’s a call to dream dreams because as we journey forward we are in the embrace of God and thus always facing into an open future confident that God is about to show us a new thing.

“For you shall go out in joy and led back in peace;
the mountains and the hills shall burst into song,
and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress;
instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle;
and it shall be to the Lord for a memorial,
for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.”
Isaiah 55:12-13


David Rohrer
01/14/2024

One Long River of Song

I will make a way through the wilderness, rivers in the desert.
Is 43:19

Lately, the words endurance and resilience have been on my mind.  As I have pondered these words and their relationship to our spiritual lives, I have imagined them in a kind of dance with one another.  They both describe resources we need to sustain the journey of faith.  In one way they are synonyms. They both speak of sustained dedication and perseverance.  Yet in another way they are almost antonyms in that one speaks to something we do and the other speaks to something we are.  Endurance is about an active exertion of our energy.  Resilience is a state we settle into but do not necessarily create. 

It's kind of like the difference between swimming and floating.  It’s the interplay between pursuing a goal and being carried toward a destination. What’s more, whether we think of ourselves as swimming or floating, when we are in the water, we are always doing a bit of both.  We are always buoyed up by the water and always moving our arms and legs (sometimes gently and sometimes vigorously) so that we can take a breath and see our destination. 

It's also like the difference between singing and listening to a song.  To sing requires breath and exertion.  We are participating in and cooperating with the work of a composer and an accompanist.  We are adding our voice to other voices, listening to what is happening around us and contributing to the making of melody and harmony.  But we are also surrounded by something that would sound whether we contributed to it or not.  The song carries us, buoys us up, lifts us to heights we would not scale if it were not sounding. 

Both of these metaphors come together in the title I have chosen for this essay, “One Long River of Song.” This title is not my creation. It is the title of a collection of posthumously published essays by Brian Doyle.  Maybe this title is the creation of David James Duncan who helped to assemble these essays in the wake of his friend’s death.  But whatever its source, it is a very apt description of this interplay between endurance and resilience, swimming and floating, singing and listening, striving and resting that characterizes the spiritual life.  The journey of faith is like the navigation of “one long river of song.”

Throughout my years in pastoral ministry, I have come to experience Isaiah 40-55 as one long river of song.  It is a series of songs the prophet gave to a defeated and exiled people who are on the verge of repatriation.  These songs seamlessly and fluidly move back and forth between a call to action and an invitation to rest.  Through these songs the Prophet invites his people to breathe in the air of God’s comfort and mercy and to float in the living water of grace.  But he also commands them to rouse themselves out of the stupor of a grievous captivity and to put on traveling clothes as they prepare to embark on a difficult journey towards home.  This road that they will travel will once again take them through a wilderness, yet there they will also discover rivers of living water.  

Beginning in Advent and continuing through my last Sunday in the pulpit at Emmanuel on February 11, we’ll be swimming in and floating on this one long river of song in Isaiah 40-55.  My prayer is that this exploration will both buoy us up and equip us for action.  The Way of Jesus is a gentle way that is about abiding in him and simply enjoying his presence, but it is also difficult way that demands tenacity and endurance.  Yet either way the journey is always accompanied by a song.  It’s a song that has been sounding since before the foundation of the world, a song that sang creation into existence.  Yet it is also a song that is new every morning and will sustain us for eternity.  It’s the song of God’s faithfulness and mercy and thus the source of what empowers us to respond in kind. 

David Rohrer
11/28/2023
 

Finally

“Finally, my brothers and sisters, rejoice in the Lord.”

One of the fruits of reading Jon Meecham’s biography of Abraham Lincoln earlier this year was the realization of the importance of presidential speech.  Lincoln understood that as President of the United States his public remarks could make a profound difference in the way people perceived and responded to matters of public policy and social concern.  In his first inaugural address he appealed to the “better angels of our nature,” and in his second inaugural address, delivered weeks before he was assassinated, he invited a war weary nation to move forward:

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan--to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations

Words can encourage and edify but they can also tear down and diminish.  They can clarify and confuse.  They can motivate acts of kindness and fuel violence.  As someone who has dedicated big part of the past 41 years to the work of preaching to congregations of Christian believers, I am well aware of the importance of words.  And in these days preceding retirement I am especially aware of being in that season of contemplating and composing final words. This season begs a question:  If I am going to stop talking, what do I want to make sure I say before that cessation?

Fortunately, preaching is primarily about crafting words that are drawn from and call attention to other words.  Preaching is about giving witness to The Word.  So, I am grateful that I have a great deal of support in this endeavor of composing those final words.  It is a task that is more about choosing what not to say.  Like the processes of reduction or distillation, choosing what to preach is about bringing the most savory and simple words.  

This is the reason I have chosen to include Paul’s letter to the Philippians in my list of texts to be preached this year.  Philippians is Paul’s final word.  It is a loving and warm letter written to a beloved congregation from a prison cell in which Paul had plenty of reflection space to contemplate his life, to ask questions like what is of primary importance, what is best?  And what is important to note is that this contemplation of his end produces the fruit of joy. 

Paul’s work in his Philippian epistle is an illustration of Habakkuk’s choice to “rejoice in the Lord” irrespective of life’s circumstances.  And his last word to this beloved congregation is essentially an invitation to do the same.  “Finally, my brothers and sisters, rejoice in the Lord. (Phil 3:1)”  “Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. (Phil. 4:8)”

Paul’s bottom line in this brief letter is to keep our eyes on the abundant love of God shown forth in the selfless love of Jesus Christ and allow that love to plant what becomes a harvest of righteousness that can be shared with our world.  I love this letter and I am grateful for the opportunity to feast on and savor this part of God’s word with you as we together look forward to bearing and sharing the fruit that grows from the seed of God’s steadfast love.

David Rohrer
10/12/2023

Faithfulness

“I will stand at my watchpost, and station myself on the rampart”
Habakkuk 2:1


One of the fringe benefits of 41 years of pastoral ministry is that it has afforded me the privilege of getting to spend many of my waking hours with the Bible.  I realize that sounds almost sickeningly pious. Yet this love I have for the Hebrew scriptures and the Greek writings of the early church was not born of my devotion and piety so much as it grew out of sheer fascination with the strange and wonderful collection of writings that our forebearers had the good sense to preserve and collect in one place.

The words of this book hook me. They can both draw me into a fulfilling conversation that I do not want to end and make me want to throw the book across the room in frustration for all they do not explain.  They mirror my experience, and they tell me stories that I have never lived.  They inspire me to aspire to something better and they remind me of how uninspired and base my life choices can sometimes be.  But what most arrests my imagination and defies my complete understanding is the way this book keeps giving me reasons to make space in my life for the God who created me.  More specifically, the way this book keeps reminding me that this One who created me actually wants to engage me, and not just me, but everything else this One has spoken into existence.

One of the gifts I am giving myself (and hopefully you) is to spend this last year before I retire working with texts that have been especially good friends to me over the years of pastoral ministry.  Part of what helped me to push the retirement button was the question: “What texts do I want to preach in my last year of preaching every Sunday to a congregation?”  I started this last year of preaching with Ash Wednesday and a Lenten series on Romans 8.  I will end with yet another a look at Isaiah 40-55.  I am now at the mid-point of this year and have decided to spend some time with an old friend whose name is Habakkuk.

Habakkuk is one of the 12 Minor Prophets whose works comprise the last 12 books of the Old Testament.  The Germans refer to these books as der zwolf kleinen Propheten, the twelve “little” prophets.  This designation is a measure of the length of the books and not the stature of the prophet or the importance of his message.  These little books pack a punch and Habakkuk’s contribution to this collection is profound.  For the message of this little prophet wraps itself around a very big question.  Namely, how can this God who is all powerful, all loving and completely righteous, permit evil to flourish in the world?

No one who works with this question ever arrives at a satisfactory answer.  For to “answer” it we have to deny at least one of the three propositions that go into creating it.  We have to minimize or deny the power of God and suggest that evil exists because God has no control of it.  Or we have to reason away the reality of an operative evil force in the world and suggest that evil is merely an appearance or illusion and can be wiped away if we work harder at focusing on the true reality of the goodness of God.  Or we have to deny the goodness and righteousness of God and suggest that God somehow is either unconcerned with evil, or worse, creates it and uses it for his own ends. In short, as I have said before, putting the caption “God is in control” under a photo of Boeing 767 flying into one of the Twin Towers brings me neither explanation nor comfort.  And I am not sure I see any reason to pray to the God whose “control” brings about ends such as this. 

So where do we go with this question and how do we continue to pray in the face of it?  Habakkuk gives us some direction in this matter.  He chooses to go directly to God and ask it.  By example he invites us into the struggle of prayer.  He jumps into the scrum and wrestles with God as he seeks an answer.  Habakkuk’s answer is to make the active decision to stay in relationship; to embrace and make space for the mystery of God and wait things out, trusting that God will be God, and justice and righteousness will be revealed.  “I will stand at my watchpost, and station myself on the rampart; I will keep watch to see what [God] will say to me and what [God] will answer concerning my complaint.”

Perseverance and patience hardly seem like a satisfactory response to the problem of evil.  On first viewing, the better choice seems to lie in walking away from the One whose apparent neglect or unconcern occasions the question in the first place.  Yet what leads Habakkuk and others like him to make their way to the watch tower and scan the darkness for some hint of light is the sense that they are being held by the One they are tempted to reject.  Faith at its most basic level is the choice to take the risk of trusting in the faithfulness of God.  Our faith is about faithfulness: Putting our weight down on, and resting securely in, the truth that God made us for relationship with Himself and will not let us go.

David Rohrer
09/11/2023
   

Neighbors

“Please won’t you be my neighbor.”
Fred Rogers

My sister tells the story of how her then 3 year old daughter ran into the kitchen one day and announced: “Mommy, the man on the TV said I am special.”  It’s one isolated example of what was the experience of probably millions of children over the years that Fred Rogers was airing his show “Mister Rogers Neighborhood.”  Mr. Rogers figured out how to reach through the TV and touch children with the good news that they were worth talking to and listening to.  He bridged the divide not with loud noises and outrageous slapstick designed to “grab their attention,” but with a still small voice that simply said, “I’d like to get to know you and be your neighbor.” And the kids he spoke to believed him.

Fred Rogers was ordained by the Pittsburgh Presbytery in 1963 as a Minister of Word and Sacrament with a special calling to be an evangelist through the medium of public television.  With that action the presbytery brought fresh meaning to the words evangelist and minister.  Yet this new meaning was actually the resurrection of a very old meaning.  For the good news evangelists are called to give witness is the love of Jesus Christ.  Their job, the calling that the Lord issues to all of his followers, is to give witness to him by loving God and loving neighbors.  Our call is not to grab attention and make converts.  Our job is to show-up and calmly point to the One whom we follow by loving others in the same way he loved us. 

In Mr. Roger’s neighborhood the word neighbor was as much a verb as it was a noun.  It was not simply a static concept defined by geography or status.  It was a choice to act in a neighborly way.  It was synonymous with the act of being a neighbor to another.  To neighbor was to extend oneself in service to another through acts of sacrifice, friendship, generosity and love.  Fred Roger’s neighborhood of make believe was a gentle place where even acts that threatened the neighborhood were confronted in a gentle way.  And because of this it could at times seem a bit unrealistic and maybe even a bit creepy.  It was therefore easy to make fun of it and many did just that.

I have certainly been among those scoffers.  But I must admit that when my children outgrew this show, I grieved a bit.  For I needed to hear Fred Rogers call me special as much as they needed it.  I needed to recognize the Lady Elaine Fairchild, the King Friday the 13th, and the Daniel Striped Tiger in me.  I needed to hear Fred Roger’s reach out to the cynic, the narcissist, and the timid, uncertain one who lived in me.  In his gentle way, Fred Rogers was calling all of us to be gentle with those parts of ourselves that needed to be invited into a bigger space.     

There is enormous power in this kind of confident gentleness.  It is the power that does not retreat from hard truth or attempt to somehow gloss it over with feigned kindness or cheap grace.  It is the power that chooses to engage and know the other even when all evidence suggests that the chasm between the other and us can never be bridged.  It is the power that enables us to become neighbors to those we never before acknowledged to be neighbors. It’s the power embodied in Jesus, who though he was in the form of God did not count equality with God a thing to be exploited, but emptied himself of that power for our sake and chose to become our friend and neighbor.

Rejoice in the Lord always; again, I will say: Rejoice.
Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near.
Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving
let your requests be made known to God.
And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding,
will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord.
(Philippians 4:4-7)

 David Rohrer
06/16/2023

Debt

“Neither a borrower nor a lender be.”
(Shakespeare,
Hamlet, I, iii)

Whether it is the advice that Polonius gives to his son Laertes, or the Proverb that reminds us that “borrowing leads to obligation and loss of freedom (Pr. 22:7),” it is not hard to find admonitions about going into debt in a broad range of wisdom literature.   Whether we are the lender or the borrower, what is clear is that when debt is involved in a relationship the cloud of money darkens the atmosphere in which the two parties’ dwell.  Openness and equality are harder to come by when the expectation of something owed is introduced into the chemistry of a relationship. So, when we are released from a debt, we feel the air clear and the lightening of our load.

In this season when we as a congregation have just paid off our mortgage, I am thinking a lot about the role of debt in our world.  My thoughts often go to matters concerning interest rates and credit scores, borrowing capacity and reports of foreclosures, discussions of forgiveness of student loans and bank failures. These things are a part of the atmosphere we breathe.  They are familiar companions, at the forefront of our daily consciousness, reported on with minute-by-minute market updates and in command of much of both what motivates us to go to work and determines when we can retire.  So, experiencing this little bit of freedom as a result of our mortgage payoff, is like being released into the “broad and open space” that the psalmists celebrate.

But all that said, I am reminded that this feeling of freedom is not merely rooted in the truth the building is now fully ours, that we now own it free and clear, or that the absence of that $4000 from our list of monthly payments has somehow made all things new.  In one world, I suppose, this mortgage payoff changes a lot, but in another world, it changes nothing.  In many ways our mission and ministry with respect to this land on which we have constructed these buildings is the same now as it was when we first occupied this space in the mid 1960’s.  We are still called, and always will be called, to love our neighbors. And I suppose the most prominent question before us in the wake of paying off our mortgage is: in what ways are we being called to express this love in such a time as this?

The eradication of a debt has the potential of eliciting two opposite responses. It can invite a sigh of relief that says: “Ahhh, now we’re safe.  Now we can rest.  Our house is secure.”  Or it can inspire the deep breath that one might take at the beginning of a new adventure.  We can stop and celebrate a job well done or we can come around the bend, look at the road in front of us, inhale and ask, “I wonder what awaits us down this road?” 

The accomplishment of paying off our mortgage is something we need to celebrate.  And we will celebrate and thank God for the resources to do this.  But instead of putting up our feet now that we are out of debt, I’d rather that we kick up our heels in joy and find in that joy the strength to embark on a new adventure to explore territory that we haven’t yet imagined.

I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions and your old men shall dream dreams.
Acts 2:17

David Rohrer
Pentecost 2023

Good Friday

“Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”
John 1:29

On this day I find myself replying to John the Baptist’s declaration above with the question: “Yes, but how?”  I know that somehow the birth, life, ministry, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus “takes away the sin of the world” but how. How is that cancerous tumor that exists in all of us removed?  How is the condemnation that sin dishes out, itself condemned?

As is often the case, a picture is worth a thousand words.  And one picture that is especially helpful is an icon in which John the Baptist himself is giving us the answer. In the crucifixion panel of the Isenheim Altarpiece by Matthias Grünewald the answer is found, as Karl Barth says, at the end of the “bony finger of the prophet.”  Stare at the suffering Jesus and the answer will come into view.  Take in those splayed fingers randomly writhing with his pain.  Look at his emaciated body, his stretched torso that sems ready to snap.  Notice the suppurating sores that cover his body.   He looks as if he is dying of the plague that was taking the lives of folks who were dying in the hospice in which this altarpiece hung.  The Christ depicted on this cross was somehow taking into himself the disease that was killing the community.

What is clear to me in pictures like this is that however it is that this lamb takes away the sin of the world, it isn’t merely because he is somehow paying a horrific debt that I owe and could never pay, or suffering for me so that I don’t have to suffer, or somehow appeasing the wrath of a distant God and so deflecting that wrath away from me.  It isn’t just because he takes the hit that I should be taking, or that he stands in the place where I should be standing so I don’t have to stand there.  He is taking away the sin of the world by joining us in our place.  He is taking in what is killing us and somehow killing it in the loving act of joining us in it.

In the third verse of chapter 8 of his letter to the Romans Paul writes “God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh he condemned sin in the flesh.” Similarly in 2 Corinthians 5:29 he writes “For our sake [God] made [Christ] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in [Christ] we might become the righteousness of God.” In both of these texts one gets the sense that in the act of joining us in this caustic environment of sin, breathing this toxic air that we breathe, being apprehended by the evil that has taken hold of us, infected with the disease that is killing us, he overcomes what we cannot overcome and effectively destroys what is destroying us. 

Maybe still that question “Yes, but how?”, remains unanswered.  Yet for me this act of empathy, this mercy of Jesus choosing to empty himself of his divine prerogative and instead join us in our experience and allow every human joy and every human pain to pass through his heart, points to the truth that it is ultimately love that defeats the power of sin.  The human willfulness of choosing to worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator, the narcissism that cannot take in a world bigger than the one we create for ourselves, simply cannot stand up to the power of a Love that has taken us in and eternally pledged itself to seeking our best.

Not long ago I was watching a stand up comedy special that featured Trevor Noah, the South African author and comedian who took over the Daily Show when John Stewart retired.  In this special Noah pays tribute to his mother Patricia and tells several hilarious stories about her.  At the end of his monologue, he tells the story of something she said to him after a man shouted a racist slur at them while they were out walking together one day.  He was about five years old and asked her, “Mommy what do we do if people do the racism to us?” She replied “If somebody is racist, we take that racism of theirs and we shake it up with the love of Jesus and then we send it back.”

Patricia’s wisdom is not lost on me nor it’s connection with the theological question with which this essay has been working.  How is it that the Lamb of God takes away the sin of the world?  He takes it in and shakes it up with his Love and so destroys its power to destroy us.

David Rohrer
Good Friday, 2023

More than Conquerors

“. . . we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”
Romans 8:37

Growing up in Southern California meant that I was exposed early to the great rivalry between USC and UCLA.  A member of my father’s Lion’s Club who was a USC alumnus would organize a bus trip annually to take club members and their families down to LA to attend the USC Homecoming game.  We would board the bus that morning and an hour later were on the USC campus for the pre-game picnic.  Then a little after noon we would walk over to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum to watch the game.

Thinking back on those times and the impression those games made on me, it is rather surprising that I ended up attending and graduating from UCLA. I have to say my nine year old soul was stirred by both the athletic prowess of OJ Simpson and the majestic entrances of Tommy Trojan riding into the Coliseum atop his white Andalusian horse Traveler.  As the USC band masterfully played Alfred Newman’s composition “Conquest”, horse and rider would emerge from the tunnel and majestically prance around the track to that place in front of the SC cheering section.  At just the right moment the music would hit its crescendo, Tommy would lift his sword, Traveler would rear up and the crowd would roar.  UCLA’s guy in the bear suit clumsily dancing with the cheerleaders couldn’t hold a candle to this.

The emotions that this spectacle aroused are still accessible to me. Everything about that moment said one thing: “We are winners and we don’t settle for anything less than winning.”  And to feel like you are a part of that victory, that you are on the side that has won and is going to keep on winning, is a heady thing.

What is interesting about Tommy Trojan is that the more appropriate name for him might be Ricky Roman.  The accoutrements of the SC mascot are drawn not from ancient Troy, but ancient Rome.  If Rome was anything it was an empire that knew itself to be the winners and they also knew how boast in and give witness to their achievement. They had pretty much conquered the world that surrounded the Mediterranean Sea, and they were moving out from there.  They were Conquerors, they were the Champions, and woe to anyone who failed to apprehend and stand in awe of this fact. 

This was the empire into which Jesus was born and the power that perfected the execution technique by which he died.  This was the world in which the Apostle Paul gave witness to Jesus.  This is where Paul preached the seemingly absurd Gospel that Jesus is Lord, not Caesar, and that the Roman conquest pales into insignificance when exposed to the inextinguishable light of Christ.  And this is why Paul makes the conclusion he does in the eighth chapter of his letter to the Romans that in Christ Jesus we are “more than conquerors.”

It’s tempting to hear in that phrase the message: You will one day put your foot on the neck of Rome. Or: One day you will be the winners and they’ll all be hanging on crosses. If we hear the phrase “more than conquerors” in this way we hear the proclamation that we are “uber-conquerors.”  We’ll have more power than the most powerful example of power.  But I think Paul is actually saying something quite different.  As he concludes this great treatise on the meaning of the birth, life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus he is not saying get ready to gloat in your victory over Rome.  Rather he is saying, get ready for the revelation of the truth that God’s power is based on and exercised in a way that is entirely different from expressions of human power.  God’s power rests entirely on the foundation of eternal, steadfast and indomitable Love.  What sang you into existence is what will preserve you for eternity and Jesus is the embodiment of that Love.

It's great to feel like winners. But at its core the Gospel of Jesus Christ gives witness to the idea that winning, as we have come to know it, is not God’s goal.  God’s goal is wrapped up in words like relationship, redemption and reconciliation.  And those things do not happen because someone overpowers another.  Those things happen because of empathy, sacrifice and an extension of oneself in love.

Every knee will bend, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord not because he won, but because he chose to give up his rightful power and divine prerogative to pursue us in love and invite us to extend ourselves toward others in the same way.  So, to be the recipient of this love and to share this love with others is indeed a matter of being much more than a conqueror.  It is to be wrapped in the arms of our Creator and to rest in the truth that nothing has the power to shake us loose from this embrace.

David Rohrer
Ash Wednesday
2/22/2023