Lent 2020

Hands down, Lent is my favorite season of the Christian Year.  This isn’t because I love the color purple, or because ashes and thorns and crosses are among my favorite things.  It’s because Lent is an unadorned appeal to simply step back, take a breath and then lean into the difficult, and yet liberating, labor of facing into the truth.  Jesus says the truth sets us free.  But before it leads us across the threshold of the broad and open space, it also frightens us.  And in the midst of that fear we have a choice to make: will we trust God, or will we try to go it alone.

One of the primary truths the Lenten season invites us to explore is the truth of our mortality.  The truth of our limits.  The truth that “we come from dust and to dust we will return.”  If we look full face into this truth of death, we come to grips with our vulnerability and the question of how we are going to manage this fact.  Will we try to overcome it ourselves and build walls of protection that will insulate us from it and allow us to temporarily defer or deny it?  Or will we recognize our Maker who made us out of love and for love and relax into God’s embrace?

Lent asks us to work with the very basic question of trust.  As vulnerable, limited beings we cannot survive apart from taking the risk of trust.  Infants need their mothers for food.  Children must accept their dependence on family for sustenance and protection.  Spouses give up some individual prerogative in order to create a covenant bond.  A big part of life is about taking the risk of trusting one who in some way has more power than us, one on whom we are in some way dependent.  And there’s the rub.  Dependence scares us and makes it hard to trust.  How do we know that the other is for us? 

There is a direct line between Eve’s conversation with the serpent in the garden and Jesus’ conversation with Satan in the wilderness.  The serpent and Satan plant the same seed.  They sow mistrust.  “Has God said you shall not eat from any tree of the garden?”  “If you are the son of God, turn these stones to bread.”  In other words, does God really care about you?  If so, why can’t you have the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, why are you out here in the wilderness hungry and thirsty? What kind of a God would deny you this wonderful abundance?  How can he be so stingy?  

When this seed of mistrust germinates and takes root in us, we run.  For the last thing we want to be is God’s toy.  But we are not God’s playthings.  We are not chess pieces on his great cosmic game board.  While we are indeed God’s creatures, we are also God’s children. God made us for relationship himself.  And Jesus’ birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension are all a testimony of the extent to which God has gone to pursue and maintain this relationship.   

Lent is not just about sin and penance.  It’s not simply a reminder of disobedience and rebellion that we must renounce.  It’s not primarily about admitting that we are bad and asking for God’s forgiveness.  At a more basic level Lent invites us to work once again with that ever-present conundrum of trust.  There is freedom in admitting our weakness and limits.  Facing into that truth doesn’t simply cast us into a fear-filled abyss of vulnerability.  It can also empower us to turn and see the face of God.  And when we do, what we see is the same longing we see on the face of Jesus.  A face that reflects his grief over our fearful rejection of him, yet nevertheless continues to shine with the invitation to us to accept the relationship and love for which we were made.

David Rohrer

Ash Wednesday 2020

Pastor's Annual Report

I have a good friend who is the president of a liberal arts university in Iowa.  As I have watched him do his job, one of the things I have been impressed by is the way he is always ready to “make remarks” at public gatherings of the university community.  As the leader of the institution he is attuned to the importance of using even the most mundane events as an opportunity to talk about the mission of the university. He finds a foothold in the ordinary to step up into something sublime.

As the pastor of Emmanuel I see this report as one of my regular opportunities to “make remarks,” and the foothold I want to use to step up into the grandeur of our mission is a colony of mice beneath our sanctuary.  Last winter as we endured the snow and ice that hung around a lot longer than it usually does, we were also greeted with the odor of dead rodents who sought refuge in our crawl space during the freezing temperatures.  Something this earthy is hard to elevate to a higher spiritual plane.  For as we consider this problem of mice seeking shelter and dying in our crawlspace, we, like the people around the tomb of Lazarus, are more aware of the presence of a stench than the presence of the Lord.

Yet there is in all of this a reminder of our mission and the implications of living into that mission.  A big part of who we are and what we do takes place in a wonderful space where we worship God, in which we are encouraged and equipped with the resources we need to persevere on the Way, and from which we are sent into our various worlds where we reflect God’s love and light.  In short, our building plays an important role in our mission and the mice are a reminder that the maintenance of our building is a big part of the equation of sustaining our ministry. 

The sparrows may indeed find a home and the swallows a nest for themselves in the Lord’s house (Psalm 84:3), but someone also has to clean up after them if the temple is going to be maintained for its primary purpose.

One of the things we came to know here at Emmanuel in 2019 is the obvious truth that our “new” building won’t stay new.  A big part of facing into 2020 will be living into the awareness of the costs associated with the upkeep of our facilities.  The session is identifying and prioritizing a variety of maintenance projects that need attention.  These projects will raise our annual expenses and we will be asking you to consider how you can be a part of helping us to meet these needs. 

The good news in all of this is that we have a significant amount of money in reserve to meet many of these needs.  We also have a congregation which has doubled in size since the completion of the building in 2009, and thus have twice as many people who can be a part of sharing this burden.  But as we continue to pay down the remaining part of the mortgage (the principal balance now stands at about $270,000) we will also need to be adding these increasing maintenance costs to our annual budget.

We have a lot to be grateful for here at Emmanuel.  Among those invitations to gratitude are our grounds and the buildings we have constructed on those grounds.  The best way to thank God for these gifts is to be good stewards of these resources.  Thank you for your commitment to participate in this expression of gratitude.

Dave Rohrer—January 23, 2020

January 2020

I have too many books to read.  I feel like that proverbial dog at a whistler’s convention.  A title presents itself to me and not too long after I crack the spine of that book, another title whistles and I set off in a new direction.  I am clearly following the advice of one of my theology professors in seminary who told us:  “Don’t read books.  Read parts of books.”  

The latest title to get my attention is a book I received for Christmas, Timothy Egan’s Pilgrimage to Eternity: From Canterbury to Rome in Search of a Faith.  It is a memoir about his recent pilgrimage along the Via Francigena, a medieval trail from Canterbury to Rome that winds its way through France, Switzerland and Italy.   What I am most drawn to in the book are Egan’s various reflections on the evidence of the dying European Church.  He keeps pointing to the tragic irony of how the continent, whose historic landmarks are legacies of Christian faith, is now primarily home to people who no longer believe.

Egan’s reflections about the European Church have fueled my own reflections about the sustainability of the American Church.  We’re not that far behind Europe.  Our statistics indicating active participation in organized religious communities might be higher than those in Europe, but as I drive around Seattle I am definitely noticing an increase in the number of “farewell” signs posted in front of churches that announce their impending closure.  Like the message on a marquis advertising the close of a Broadway show, these signs celebrate a good run that has run its course.       

Yet fear and anxiety about the survival of the Church is not a very good way to respond to these dour statistics.  In the end, the energy we expend in worry does little more than add to the depth of our grave.  Jesus has let us know in a variety of ways that the work of saving our lives pretty much depends on not thinking about saving our lives but focusing instead on living them, giving them away.  The church is heathiest when we settle into Jesus’ invitation to follow him.  Resting in the truth that brought us together is what keeps us together, and keeps us moving forward in productive, life-giving ways.

The Church is a means to a greater end, not an end in itself.  It came to be because followers of Jesus need each other to sustain the journey on which Jesus has invited us.  Each of us has a God-given vocation on which to act, and we need the people of the church to encourage us on the Way.  We don’t show up on Sunday with a lot to give.  We show up hungry, in search of the food we know we need to fuel the coming week.  So if we have a duty to the church, it is a duty to show up and take what we need to sustain the journey and give what we must to insure that the table can continue to be set.     

Nothing flashy, but vitally important.  The church offers the gift of encouragement that enables us to persevere.  Timothy Egan tells of a sign outside St. Martin’s parish in Canterbury that says it well:  

We do not have all the answers.

We are on a spiritual journey.

We look to Scripture, reason and tradition to help us on our way.

Whoever you are, we offer you a space to draw nearer to God and walk with us.

[Dave Rohrer—January 1, 2020]

Advent 2019

With tears he fights and wins the field;
His naked breast stands for a shield;
His battering shot are babish cries,
His arrows looks of weeping eyes,
His martial ensigns cold and need,
And feeble flesh his warrior’s steed.

(from the poem “New Heaven, New War” by  Robert Southwell)

About 35 years ago during the season of Advent I happened on a choral piece by Benjamin Britten entitled “Ceremony of Carols.”  One movement in this work is called “This Little Babe” and is a setting of a portion of a poem by 16th century English poet Robert Southwell .  The poem calls on the angels of heaven to behold a miracle taking place on earth that is virtually invisible to humanity.  It beckons them to visit the manger and take note of the strange and glorious truth of God becoming vulnerable, God choosing to pursue us by becoming one of us.

I keep returning to Britten’s anthem and Southwell’s poem each year at this time because they never cease to remind me of the sheer lunacy and perfect logic of what we believe.  They reduce me to wonder because they rip away any façade of sentimentality that we lay over the Christmas story as they strive to depict what cannot be contained in word or song:  God becoming human.  God vulnerably putting himself in our hands.  God as infant, reaching up toward us from the manger, asking to be picked up, inviting our embrace.  That God would choose to take this form in order to pursue relationship with us, leaves me dumbfounded.

I suppose this is why so many of our Christmas carols invite us to respond to the story with silence.  What more is there to be said?

“The word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth;
we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father.” John 1:14 

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Here is the text of Southwell’s poem and also a link to a performance of Britten’s “This Little Babe”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVE0WJfwVhAhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVE0WJfwVhA

New Heaven, New War

BY ROBERT SOUTHWELL SJ

Come to your heaven, you heavenly choirs,
Earth hath the heaven of your desires.
Remove your dwelling to your God;
A stall is now his best abode.
Sith men their homage do deny,
Come, angels, all their fault supply. 

His chilling cold doth heat require;
Come, seraphins, in lieu of fire.
This little ark no cover hath;
Let cherubs’ wings his body swathe.
Come, Raphael, this babe must eat;
Provide our little Toby meat. 

Let Gabriel be now his groom,
That first took up his earthly room.
Let Michael stand in his defense,
Whom love hath linked to feeble sense.
Let graces rock when he doth cry,
And angels sing his lullaby.

The same you saw in heavenly seat
Is he that now sucks Mary’s teat;
Agnize your king a mortal wight,
His borrowed weed lets not your sight.
Come, kiss the manger where he lies,
That is your bliss above the skies. 

This little babe, so few days old,
Is come to rifle Satan’s fold;
All hell doth at his presence quake.
Though he himself for cold do shake,
For in this weak unarmèd wise
The gates of hell he will surprise.

With tears he fights and wins the field;
His naked breast stands for a shield;
His battering shot are babish cries,
His arrows looks of weeping eyes,
His martial ensigns cold and need,
And feeble flesh his warrior’s steed. 

His camp is pitchèd in a stall,
His bulwark but a broken wall,
The crib his trench, hay stalks his stakes,
Of shepherds he his muster makes;
And thus, as sure his foe to wound,
The angels’ trumps alarum sound.

My soul, with Christ join thou in fight;
Stick to the tents that he hath pight;
Within his crib is surest ward,
This little babe will be thy guard.
If thou wilt foil thy foes with joy,
Then flit not from this heavenly boy.

Dave Rohrer, 11/27/19

Enough

Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding and my entire will,
all I have and call my own.
You have given all to me. To you Lord, I return it.
Everything is yours; do with it what you will.
Give me only your love and your grace; that is enough for me.
St Ignatius of Loyola

This past year I participated in a nine month Ignatian retreat called the Spiritual Exercises for Everyday Living (SEEL).  This retreat is an adaptation of the 30 day retreat embarked upon by Jesuit monks as a means of growing in their awareness of the gracious presence of God. From September through May, on one Saturday a month, I spent the morning at the St. Joseph Parish on Capitol Hill in Seattle and in between these meetings met twice with a spiritual director.  Through these meetings I was invited into a process of learning about prayer and discernment as we worked through the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola.  

The prayer above, which is referred to as the Suscipe (the Latin word for take or receive), is one of the final prayers in the Spiritual Exercises.   When we arrived at this final stage of the exercises in May and prayed this prayer, it was clear to me why it was the final and not the first prayer in the exercises.  It’s not something that is possible for us to pray if we have no experience of the love and grace of God. 

The faith journey can’t begin with the prayer “take all that I have and call my own.” No one is ready to pray that prayer when we first hear Jesus’ invitation: “Follow me.”  We have to grow into this prayer.  In order to pray this prayer we need to trust that we have nothing to lose and this kind of trust is something that develops over time.  It comes from experience.  It grows as we realize that the embrace of God is steadfast.  It develops as we learn that God is not the kind of parent who teaches us to swim by throwing us into the pool without any prior experience of being in water over our heads.  Faithfulness and trust are not born in a moment when we decide once and for all time that we are going to swim rather than sink.  They develop and deepen as we gradually learn and re-learn that nothing can separate us from the love of God. They are born of that ongoing process of deepening our awareness that the love of God truly is, ENOUGH! 

I suppose it is possible to read the call of the prophets, apostles and disciples of the Scriptures as a sudden adoption of radical faith and dedication of one’s life to God.  Isaiah experiences the overwhelming presence of God and says, “Here I am, send me!”  Peter, the fisherman, encounters Jesus and leaves his nets behind in order to follow Jesus.  Saul gets knocked to the ground by an encounter with the resurrected Christ and gets up with a resolve to renounce his former ways of trying to wipe out the followers of Jesus.  

But if we follow the life stories of these saints who dropped everything and followed Jesus, what becomes clear is that initial decision was just the beginning of a process.  It was the first “Yes” to Jesus that started a journey on which they each had to flirt with the possibility of saying “No.”  They each had to grow in trust.  They each had to gradually grow into the experience of knowing that the love of God is indeed, enough. 

I know of no special formula or practice that can suddenly deliver us into a place of absolute trust in God.  It’s not like we can pay for the app, download it to our souls and voila! all manner of things are suddenly well. As with any relationship, this trust in God develops over time.  It grows with experience that is peppered with episodes of courage and fear, confidence and doubt, hope and despair.  Yet within each of these chapters in our story one invitation persists.  God keeps showing us that his grace is sufficient.  One more layer of confidence is deposited with each experience of grace and we are gradually empowered to pray: “Take, Lord, and receive all I have and call my own [and] give me only your love and your grace; that is enough for me.”        

Dave Rohrer, 8/18/19 

Summer 2019

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim
release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
Luke 4:18-19

With these words from Isaiah, Jesus inaugurated his ministry. His work would be about release from captivity and restoration of sight.  The burden of oppression would be lifted and the favor of God restored.  They were big promises and spoken in such a way that the specifics of their meaning have been interpreted in a variety of ways. 

Just what was Jesus announcing?  The release from Roman oppression and the restoration of the glory of David’s Kingdom?  The promise of the “healing of all ills, in this world and the next”?  The forgiveness of sin and the resulting reconciliation with God?  Where on the continuum between physical and spiritual realities do we place these promises?  What can we expect from Jesus?  In light of this promise how should we pray?  From what oppressive forces is he promising to release us and to what state of being is he restoring us? And when is he going to do this?  In this life, or the next?

Good questions.

Good questions, for which I have few definitive answers.  These words have throughout history proved to be a sort of Rorshach inkblot into which biblical theologians have projected a variety of meanings. Jesus’ announcement of the character of his ministry has been the foundation for things as diverse as political revolutions and separatist apocalyptic communes, ecstatic worship practices and measured theological explanations, people who dedicate their lives to doing battle with demons and people who passionately work to establish justice in the broken social and political systems of our world.

If I am to take the opportunity to say what I see in the inkblot of these words, I would say I see the offer of relationship:  The offer to lift off the oppressive burdens that destroy relationship and so usher us into a place of liberty that fosters lasting relationship with God and others. I hear Jesus saying, “I’ve come to the end the isolation that leads you into poverty.  I’ve come to lift off the weight of loneliness that keeps you in darkness and chains.  I’ve come to reintroduce you to the reason for which you were made and restore you to the relationship that is at the heart of all of your other relationships.  I’ve come to remind you that you are loved by God and that this love has the power to shape you into all that you were created to be.” 

In another place Jesus says, “I’ve come that you might have life, and have it abundantly.”  That life can take a variety of forms.  Our prayers for that life express themselves in a variety of ways.  But beneath and above all this variety, what holds these various manifestations of goodness and abundance together, is the simple truth that we were created by God for relationship with God, and it is within the boundaries of this relationship that we are released into the broad and open space that we were meant to occupy.

Dave Rohrer, 6/12/19 

Holy Week 2019

 As we anticipate heading into Holy Week, the invitation that is shaping my journey is the one that comes from Hebrews 12:2.  I want to use this week to once again “fix [my] eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfector of our faith.”

 Walking through those events that took place in Jerusalem almost 2000 years ago gives us the opportunity to once again see Jesus at the height of his glory and the depth of his humility.  We get to see the crucified carpenter entering the pit of human despair as he endures the cross, “disregarding it’s shame,” and we get to see the risen Lord victoriously pronouncing peace to a quivering band of followers huddled together in a room while they fearfully anticipate their own arrest after his death.  We get to experience the truth of the phrase “God with us” as Jesus participates fully in both our despair and our hope.

 A passage of scripture that has helped me to fix my eyes on Jesus is St. Paul’s reflection on the cosmic dimensions of Christ’s life and ministry in Colossians 1:15-20:

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him.  He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.   He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything.  For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.

 The last line of this hymn to Christ is something that especially catches my attention: “making peace through the blood of his cross.”  I find myself wondering how something so violent, so arrogant, so dehumanizing and so hate-filled as death by a Roman crucifixion can create peace.  Frankly, if we let ourselves ponder that claim it ought to fill us with, at best, head-scratching confusion or, at worst, revulsion and rage.  There is nothing in the act nailing a human being to a cross that even comes close to what we might associate with peace.  On its face it is nothing short of a state sponsored lynching in order to make a point about who has power and who doesn’t and so induce fear among the people over whom the state wishes to assert its power.    

 The cross is not an easy thing to contemplate.  I think that is why theologians have been so quick to come up with explanations of Jesus’ cross that reduce it to the metaphor of an economic transaction: a deal worked out between the Father and the Son that benefits humanity.  A payment to end the war between God and humanity where humans get out from under the burden of their sin and God gets a just satisfaction for the wrath he feels toward his disobedient creatures.  In other words, on the cross Jesus pays the necessary price for our sins and so makes peace between humanity and God.  It would not be an exaggeration to say that this has become the predominant way we view the reason for and the effect of the cross of Jesus.  Yet here again, I see very little in this explanation that I can associate with the notion of peace. 

 I can only see peace resulting from this cross of Jesus if I think of the whole saga in terms of God as Trinity.  It isn’t a wrathful father being satisfied by a sacrificed son.  Rather it is God joining with us in Jesus.  God entering into the depths of our shame and despair.  God emptying himself of his divine prerogative.  God experiencing every human joy and sorrow, pain and exhilaration, glory and degradation.  God effectively and finally showing us how nothing can separate us from his love.

 The cross of Jesus is God with us in every way.  It is ultimate bridge over the chasm of shame and mistrust that separates us from God.  It is the loud and clear declaration that there is no reason to continue our futile attempts to run from God by covering our nakedness or pretending we are without need.  For God has become naked and needy and so reflected back to us the truth that we are creatures made for relationship with God and one another and that our weakness neither deters his pursuit nor repels his embrace.

 Jesus doesn’t merely purchase our peace; Jesus is our peace.  

 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.

Dave Rohrer, 04/10/2019

Lent 2019

Robert Fulghum’s 1986 bestselling book title All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten is something that I still hear quoted.  I suppose this is probably because its simplicity both captures our imaginations and calms our anxiety.  It is comforting to consider the thought that we already know all that we need to know in order to solve our problems of social discord and create harmony.  But Rodney King articulated a similar sentiment in the form of a question, when in the face of the riots occurring in Los Angeles after the acquittal of the officers who beat him he asked: “Why can’t we all just get along?”

We may have learned it in Kindergarten, but adulthood has a way of diluting and maybe erasing our memories.

It’s hard to argue with the truth of Fulghum’s assertion or King’s question.  The solution they both point to is pretty obvious.  If we want social order and communal harmony we need to acknowledge the value of all human beings, honor difference, restrain our reactive or violent impulses, learn to share, and grant one another the space to grow.  Or as Jesus put it, we need to treat others the way we would like to be treated.

Voila!  Problem solved!  Now let’s get on with life as we live into this value.

But of course the problem isn’t solved.  While we know what it would take to solve it, we somehow keep failing in implementation.  Wisdom allows us to observe the causes of our discord and posit the simple solution of stepping back from those behaviors that perpetuate the problem, but unfortunately it cannot explain or heal whatever it is that sustains us in our endless chain of destructive behaviors.   

I think this conundrum is one of the reasons why I have come to love the Book of Ecclesiastes.  I love the honesty of this book that over and over again points to the absurdities of human behavior and history.  It simply tells it like it is. This preacher in Ecclesiastes proposes no solution; he simply stares full face into the problem and chooses to continue to work with life’s questions.  Yet he does so acknowledging that while he may not have enough knowledge to figure out the “whys” of life, there is One who does, and we would do well to engage life in such a way that we acknowledge the presence of this One who made us.

Seasons come and go. There are times of war and peace, times of birth and death, times for sowing and reaping.  Yet as these seasons come and go we do not have enough “eternity in our hearts” to figure out the whole picture.  So we continue to struggle to figure it out, sometimes making progress and fostering life and at other times making old mistakes that merely add to history’s pile of death and decay.

Yet the preacher doesn’t just cynically shrug at life’s absurdity and say “deal with it.”  He doesn’t, like philosopher Albert Camus, point to Sisyphus pushing his rock up the hill only to watch it roll back down and advise us to seek our happiness within the limits of this absurdity.  He invites us to do something that will ultimately give shape and meaning to our lives.  He invites us to consider the God who made us and to be on the lookout for God’s presence even in the most confounding circumstances of life.

 Confronted with the frightful realities of the shaking mountains and raging and foaming waters of the earth, the Psalmist in Psalm 46 finds solace in the assurance that “the Lord of hosts is with us [and] the God of Jacob is our refuge.”  St. Paul tells us the same truth when he writes “whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s” (Romans 14:8).  The stabilizing truth that greets us irrespective of the ebb and flow of life’s seasons is Jesus’ promise that he will be with us always.   While this steadfast presence and companionship may not explain every mystery or solve every problem, it does provide us with a stabilizing relationship that enables us to navigate the twists and turns of life.   And so we pray, “O Christ, surround us.”  Show us where you are, and so expose us to the truth of who we are created to be.           

 (Dave Rohrer, 3/4/19)

February 2019

In my 37 years of pastoral ministry I have probably presided at about 300 weddings.  That’s a lot.  Sometimes it feels like too many.  Too much of a good thing can be too much.  Unfortunately, familiarity can breed contempt.  Or if not contempt, this familiarity with weddings has at times bred a certain degree of cynicism in me. 

I’ve had my moments when it has been hard for me to preside over these expensive celebrations of love.  Frankly, they can seem a bit delusional.   For I know at some point this love that the couple has fallen into, this power greater than themselves that has overwhelmed them, this storybook feeling that they think will never diminish, will in fact come under question.  They will experience that moment of waking up, looking over at their spouse and wondering who that person is and why they ever chose to get married.  With an exasperated sigh they will conclude “He/She is not the person I married.”  And if they happen to come back to me for counseling in the wake of this disturbing discovery, what I will eventually say to them is something like: “Thank God he/she is not the person you married.  Now you have the chance to get to know who she/he really is.  And the good news is that he/she is probably a lot more interesting and exciting than who you thought she/he was.”  

The love we fall into may be what initiates our relationship and inspires us to take the leap of commitment in marriage or friendship.  But the love that sustains any relationship is the love we choose.   Another name for it is covenant love:  A conscious choice to seek the other’s best and trust that the other is seeking your best.  When two people daily choose to love in this way, they grow into a deeper kind of love as they come to appreciate the gift that God has given them in the other.  They realize that this is a gift they will never stop unwrapping, for the depths of the mystery of the other are unfathomable and there will always be more to discover. 

It is this choice to love that describes God’s love toward us.  The New Testament writers used the word agape to describe this love.  “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son (John 3:16).” God chose to create us and chooses to pursue us and love us.  God seeks our best.  And God invites us to respond to that love by sharing the same kind of love with one another.  “We love because God first loved us (1 John 4:19).”  God’s love generates love in us.   My seminary preaching professor put it this way: “Agape, is the love that makes the loved one lovely.”  

God’s love makes us lovely.   It is a love that grows us in our ability to love others.  It is the love that both builds up our self-esteem and equips us with the energy to extend ourselves for the sake of the other.  It delivers us into a place that cupid’s arrows cannot.  For it does not mesmerize with passion as much as it calls forth gratitude for a gift that we cannot help but give away.  It is thus, as St. Paul says, the love that “never ends, (1 Cor. 13:8),” for the Source of this love will never stop loving us and therefore never stop growing that love in us.

(Dave Rohrer, 2/4/19)

A Reflection on Our Life Together

Annual Meeting - January 27, 2019

As we head into our 56th year of life together as a congregation, I am aware of a deep sense of gratitude to God for the gifts he has given us.  I’ve only been with you for six of those years, but that has been long enough to observe and benefit from these gifts.  The depth of our relationships with one another, a building that provides ample space for worship and fellowship, and houses our  Bothell Community Preschool and various community groups, and the beautiful piece of land on which our building sits are among the things with which God has blessed us.  We may not be congregation that has unlimited monetary resources, but we are nevertheless rich in the things that will sustain us and enable us to grow in and give witness to the abundant life that is available to all in Jesus Christ. 

 As I mentioned in a sermon series I preached in October and November, I see us as people who are poised on a threshold.  God has “set before us an open door” and it is fun to imagine what we are going to encounter as we cross over that threshold and take up God’s invitations to us in the next season of our life together.  As we do this, I think we are going to conceive of ourselves as more than a worshiping congregation.  While worship will always be central to who we are, what we do, and how we think about our building, I think we will be growing in our awareness of how this property is not just a resource that God is calling us maintain for our own activities, but also gift we are called to share with our community.

 This is not a new thing for us.  You were generous with your space long before now.  In fact, a few months after I started work here in 2013 I half-jokingly asked, “Does every member have a key to the place?” Openness and generosity, rather than fear and protectiveness have characterized the way you think about this place, and I thank God that I get to be pastor of a congregation of people who don’t give a second thought to how they can share this space with others who can make good use of it.

As we face into 2019 I think we are going to engage some questions that revolve around the stewardship of our buildings and land:

• Our sanctuary seats about 140 people and we average about 120 people in worship each Sunday.  If we want to make space for the people who regularly visit us on Sunday at 10 am, without having to wait until someone else leaves, we are going to have to face the question of how we are going to increase capacity.  Do we add another service on Sunday?  Maybe we think about starting a new worshiping community on another day of the week?  Maybe we do nothing.  They are all live options.

•  We are also currently without adequate space for adult education on Sundays.   While the sanctuary can be used for this kind of activity mid-week, we could greatly benefit from having some kind of meeting space other than what we have in our existing building.   It would also enhance our ability to offer space to various community groups?  What might that look like?  Where would we build it? Can we afford it?  How would having this space enhance our ministry and help us fulfill our mission?

• In 2018 we fenced in a big portion of our grounds to create an organic garden.  We created Emmanuel Farm. Our neighbors took notice and some pitched in to help.  Those six foot sunflowers screamed with the message that we wanted to do something productive with our land.  Perhaps it was also a way of telling the realtors, who regularly send us letters offering to help us sell all or part of our property that we want to make productive use of our green space and don’t want to cover it with more parking or another set of condos.  A neighborhood that is becoming more densely populated will value this green space.  It’s a gift we can offer them.  But there are all sorts of questions that we need to ask ourselves about the next steps for Emmanuel Farm.  How big of a role will it play in our decisions about stewarding our land?

These are some of the questions the Emmanuel Session will be working with in 2019 and beyond.  They are a part of the unknown that lies across the threshold of the open door which God has set before us.  God has given us an enormous gift and we have some decisions to make about how we are going to steward it.   Pray for us as we work with these questions and join us in discussing the implications of these initiatives. 

Trusting in God’s Goodness to Guide Us,

Dave Rohrer, pastor