Old, But Far From Irrelevant

One night during my first year of seminary my classmate and housemate, Keith, came into my room looking haggard, carrying a big thick commentary on some book of the Bible and announced: “Had God known what we were going to do with the Bible, he never would have given it to us.”  I remember this night fondly because it was such an incredibly funny and yet ironically cogent observation.  As is the case with some other good things that God has given us, we who are a part of the Judeo/Christian tradition have come up with a myriad of ways to misuse the Bible.

We have ignored matters of context and used pieces of Scripture as a religious weapon to beat people into submission or as a justification for bad behavior.  We have tried to make it into a modern science or history book or criticized it because of it’s failure to be either one of those things.  We have assumed this collection of many books written over thousands of years is one book and then either derided it for inconsistency or tried to explain away its apparent contradictions.  We have done things with it that are probably not within the Divine intention for it, and as a result when reading it we often find ourselves missing the beauty of the forest while we are lost in the examination of the bark on specific trees.

So what are we to do with this ancient collection of religious texts?  Just what is it?  What assumptions should we make about it and how should we read it?  Why should we bother with it at all?  These are all what we call hermeneutical questions. They are among the questions that help us to define the lenses through which we will read the Bible.  Whenever we read any book we come to it with a set of expectations that order how we read it, and the hermeneutic we apply to reading the Bible will say a great deal about what we bring to it and, more importantly, what we take from it.

For me the foundational answer to this hermeneutical question is to start with the assumption that the Bible is the word of God. However, I don’t mean by this that God dictated every word and people wrote it down word for word as he spoke.  I mean that we hear God’s voice in it because it is the report of his interaction with his creation.  So when I sit down to read the Bible, I assume that, first and foremost, it is going to tell me something about God: about who God is and what God has done.  And second, I assume it is going to tell me something about the people who have related to God: about who they are, how they have prayed to God and how they have been both challenged and changed by God.  In other words, when I read the Bible I don’t expect to find an answer to all of life’s questions, I go looking for direction in who God is and how I can relate to God. 

In worship we periodically sing a hymn that gives us some direction in this matter of Biblical hermeneutics.  It’s called “Ancient Words” and its chorus is especially instructive:

Ancient words, ever true, changing me, changing you. 
We have come with open hearts;
O let the ancient words impart.

The words of the Bible are well tested and have shown a kind of resilience that not all human literature can claim.  They speak with an unmistakable veracity that grabs and holds our attention.  We see ourselves in these words.  They tell us something about God and about ourselves as God’s creation.   In these words we hear something that we want to preserve and pass on because they challenge us and change us. They are old words that remain relevant even in new times.

For the next six weeks our sermons will be about listening to this old message in a new time.  We’ll look at some of the oldest stories in the Bible in the first eleven chapters of the Book of Genesis, and explore their applicability to our day and time.  These stories are some of the biggest targets of those who want denigrate the Bible and at the same time some of the texts most abused by those who claim to order their lives by the Bible. But what can be heard above the din of this atheistic and religious rancor is the crystal clear song of love that God has been singing to his creation since the dawn of time. 

David Rohrer
04/17/2020

Easter Sunday 2020

“Simon, son of John do you love me?” 
Peter said to Jesus, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” 
Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep.”
John 21:16

A commonly used exaggeration we often deploy in the midst of some discomfort we are enduring is the phrase, “This is killing me.”  After the long hike we say “My feet are killing me.”  After a hard day at the office, “This job is killing me.”  Or at the end of an afternoon spent bending over to tend the garden, “My back is killing me.”  When we use it in this way, the phrase is rarely accurate.  But in these days of our isolation due to Covid-19 it seems appropriate.  We are daily aware of something that is killing us.  And it’s hard to get our minds off of it. This novel corona virus is making many of us very sick.  It is easy to catch and hard to fight, and our response to it is causing all sorts of collateral damage.  So maybe in this case it’s not so much of an exaggeration to say, “This is killing me.”

Yet even so, even if it is true that Covid-19 is killing us, perseverating on this fact is also something that will rob us of life.  To survive this scourge and thrive we’ll need to do something more than work to avoid contracting this disease.  We’ll need to adjust our perspective and widen our angle to take in a bigger picture.  We’ll need to set this disease in a broader context.  And I propose a question posed by Barbara Brown Taylor in one of her books to help us do this.  She asks her readers the question: “What’s saving your life right now.” 

Easter Sunday is a good day to contemplate Taylor’s question to us.  On this day when we celebrate the truth that evil will not have the last word, it is good for us to contemplate what is saving our lives rather than what is killing us.  On the day when the ugliness of that Roman cross is fading into the background, it is good to look forward in hope and contemplate the life and light that flies in the face of death and darkness.  How is Covid-19 failing to get the last word even though it is still raging among us?  Truly living is not just about not dying.  So what is helping us to live?

At one level the post-resurrection encounter of Jesus and Peter in John 21 is an example of this work of reframing life’s central question.   While lounging on the shore of the lake after a big breakfast, Jesus asks Peter to think about what will foster life.  He asks the question three times.  Each time Peter answers the question in the affirmative.  Each time he responds to Jesus, Peter becomes a bit more irritated.  But Jesus is calmly persistent and offers the same rejoinder to each of Peter’s answers.  “Do you love me, Peter.  Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.  Then feed my lambs. . . , tend my sheep . . ., feed my sheep.”  In essence, Jesus says to Peter: “If you love me, then love as you have been loved.  Pass on what you have been given.  Reflect the light that has been poured out on you.” 

The contradiction to the finality of the Cross that occurs on Easter morning initially brings the disciples up short.  In all of the stories of encounters between the resurrected Christ and the disciples, they are rubbing their eyes and pinching themselves wondering if they are just having a dream.  Once they figure out he is alive and that they can believe their eyes, there is great joy and relief.  The snare of the fowler was broken (Ps 124) and death didn’t have the last word.  What they all knew was the exhilaration of being saved from the crushing grip of an oppressive opponent.  Yet once the adrenalin secreted by this awareness began to subside, there on the shore of the lake with full stomachs and the comforting presence of Jesus there was space to ask another question.  Just beyond the relief of being saved, the question that presented itself was, “Now what?” What does this mean?  What does it tell us?  What impact will this have on the way we live our lives?  Now that we know we’ve been saved from evil, what’s next?  What have we been saved for?

Notice that Jesus’ encounter with Peter in John 21 doesn’t answer this question with the command to develop strategy for a worldwide movement or to begin work on a theology that explains it all.  Jesus simply calls Peter to continue to do what he had already called him to do.  Follow me, Peter.  Abide with me.  Let me love you.  Then go in the strength of that love and love others.  Feed my sheep. 

Now what?  Basically it boils down to a one word answer: Relationship.  Love as you have been loved.
Many years later St. Paul effectively said the same thing in his letter to the Colossians:

As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved,
clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. 
Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other;
just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.
Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.
And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body.
And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly;
teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts
sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed,
do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
(Colossians 3:12-17)

David Rohrer
4/12/2020

Good Friday 2020

So Joseph [of Arimathea] took the body [of Jesus] and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn in the rock. He then rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb and went away. (Matthew 27:59-60)

Anyone who has ever been through the death of a loved one knows that strange and sometimes horrible awareness that crashes in immediately following the death.  Something is going to need to be done with the now lifeless body of our beloved.  In our day we refer to it as making arrangements, and it is largely about brokering the connection between the hospital and the mortuary.  Much of the transition from death to grave happens out of our sight.  It is not common for us to have the opportunity to do what Joseph of Arimathea did with the body of Jesus.  We do not personally carry the newly lifeless body of our loved one to the place where he or she will be entombed.  We do not experience the physical strain of leaning down to place them on a surface even more lifeless than their body. We do not struggle to roll a stone door over the mouth of the tomb.

Yet whether we have this more intimate experience of death or not, we all know, or will know, what it feels like to experience the overwhelming presence of our loved one’s absence.  The one who was alive and with us, is now dead and gone.  The tomb that awaited an occupant, is no longer waiting.  And once that space is filled, we have nothing to do but back out of the crypt, or fill in the grave with dirt, or watch the waves wash away the ashes, and then walk away.  Alone.

Death is an undeniable “full stop.”  It ends something.  Yet for those of us who are contemplating Jesus’ death on this Good Friday, we see death as a gateway as well.  Unlike Joseph of Arimathea, or Mary Magdalene, or Mary the mother of Jesus, or his disciples, we know the rest of the story.  We know that Sunday is coming.  We know the promise of resurrection.  So the breathless body on the stone slab in the crypt is not the only image we carry as we close the door of the tomb on Good Friday.  We hear the echo of his teaching about the grain of wheat needing to fall into the ground and die in order to bear fruit (John 12:24).  We remember the stories of his post resurrection appearances to his disciples.  We believe that he is alive and with us in a brand new way. 

But none of this counters the truth that he died.  And Good Friday and Holy Saturday are the days to sit with that truth for a while and ask ourselves what this death means.  What new life popped out of this seed that fell into the ground and died.  What new doors were opened when it broke the soil and opened itself to light?  What died with it?  And what part of it could that Roman cross not kill?

Once again Wendell Berry has been God’s gift to me in the contemplation of these Lenten questions.  He gives me a picture of the amazing work God does for us in death, how God’s experience of the grave is our gateway to life. 

What hard travail God does in death!
He strives in sleep, in our despair,
And all flesh shudders underneath
The nightmare of His sepulcher.

The earth shakes, grinding its deep stone;
All night the cold wind heaves and pries;
Creation strains sinew and bone
Against the dark door where He lies.

The stem bent, pent in seed, grows straight
And stands. Pain breaks in song. Surprising
The merely dead, graves fill with light
Like opened eyes. He rests in rising.

(1980 --  I  This Day p.25)

Our God in Christ participates in “creation’s groan” (Romans 8:22).  He enters into our bondage and decay in order to free us from it.  He descends into the ultimate pit and lets us know in no uncertain terms that not even death can stop his pursuit of us.  Not even death can separate us from his love.

David Rohrer

4/10/2020

A Welcoming Room of Song

A typical, pastor speak, opening line for this essay might be: “This Lent I have been daily thanking God for the black Labrador who was delivered to us in late January via the Guide Dogs for the Blind Puppy Truck.”  But to begin with an expression of what I actually feel, it's more accurate to simply say: “I am hopelessly in love with Tifah.” 
 
It’s hard not to love a puppy.  But I would have to say that my relationship with this puppy is markedly different than with any of the six previous Guide Dog puppies our family has raised.  I imagine this is a combination of my awareness and Tifah’s uniqueness, and to be sure, she does remind me of Pilaf, dog number three.  But she has one trait that is especially endearing and affirming.  She is a contemplative.  She loves to pay attention, watch and listen.  When we head down to the bottom of the driveway before and after her breakfast, she almost always pauses, sits and listens.  The birds are out in force, singing away; Tifah clearly notices and seems to enjoy their song.
 
Projection? Perhaps.  But if you saw her do this, I think you would agree with me.  She seems to understand that she has a job to do so that we can return to the house, but in her choice to sit and wait, I also hear her saying: “Don’t rush me.  I’ll get around to it.  But do you hear that? Take a moment to take it in.  You won’t be sorry.”  I do.  And I’m never sorry I did.
 
In this world of goal setting and to do lists, it is so easy to turn life into nothing more than the accomplishment of the tasks that we have carefully laid out the day before.  Success is gauged in terms how good we are at management by objective.  Wake up, review the list, attack each bullet point, and at the end of the day make tomorrow’s list.  But here’s the thing about these lists: they aren’t simply an end in themselves; they can take us to places where we discover things that we had not expected or imagined.  There at the end of the driveway I get a gift as I wait and listen with Tifah.  I hear an invitation to life that I would not have heard but for her choice and my willingness to join her in it. 
 
As I have previously mentioned, Wendell Berry’s poetry has been another thing that has been saving my life this Lent.  In one poem in particular he paints a picture of the lesson Tifah has been teaching me:

Off in the woods in the quiet
morning a redbird is singing
and his song around him
greater than its purpose,
a welcoming room of song
in which the trees stand,
through which the creek runs.
(This Day, 2011 --- VII)

 Like Tifah, the redbird is involved in a work he does not know about.  He is creating a “welcoming room of song,” and so inviting all in his hearing to listen and perhaps join in the song.  When I pay attention to and accept those invitations, my life is fuller.   Suddenly I am about much more than my goals.  I am a participant in something that I could not have created by myself or achieved merely through the accomplishment of my stated objectives.  And that’s a lot of fun.
 
In Luke’s telling of the Palm Sunday story (Luke 19), the Pharisees are uncomfortable with all the adulation Jesus is receiving and tell him to tell the crowds to be quiet.  Jesus’ reply to them is priceless: “I tell you if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”  The invitation to that room of song is sounding.  In fact, it can’t be silenced.  The question before us is whether or not we pause long enough to hear it and then take the step of entering the room to join in the song.  It means the sacrifice of laying aside some of our urgency and humbly recognizing the limits of our lists.  But it’s a heck of a lot more fulfilling than coming to the end of the day with nothing more than the anticipation of tomorrow’s list.
 
Dave Rohrer
4/3/2020

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 

-------------------------------------------

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