A Fond Farewell

Dear friends and members of Emmanuel Presbyterian Church,

As you will read in this newsletter, the Pastor Nominating Committee has selected a candidate to present for election as your next installed pastor. A special congregational meeting has been called for that purpose on Sunday, December 8, after worship. That means that it is nearly time for me to say goodbye.

It has been a privilege and a pleasure to serve as your transitional pastor over these last many months – longer than many of us were anticipating! Your faithful and hardworking PNC deserves your gratitude.

I am personally grateful to many here. I want to thank the session for their partnership and good work. Thanks especially to Susan Sprague, who has not only served as Clerk of Session, but also provided administrative support during this time. I’m grateful, too, to those who have given of their time and shared their abilities in enabling and enhancing our worship. Emmanuel is gifted with many talented and dedicated musicians, and worship is enabled by volunteer sound technicians. There are many others I could thank, of course, but won’t out of concern for leaving any out.

As you move forward into this next chapter of your life as a congregation, I will move on as well. While I’ve appreciated the relationships formed here, the ethics of this position require that I step aside fully to allow your new pastor to establish his pastoral role here. So, like all your previous pastors, I won’t be available for memorial services, weddings, baptisms or any other pastoral role or involvement. And, I won’t be in touch with you, not out of lack of interest or concern, but out of professional courtesy to Patrick, and for the sake of your common ministry.
 

Finally, I want to thank you for welcoming both Keith and me into your fellowship so warmly during our time here. We leave with much fondness and appreciation.


With Christ’s love,
Pastor Janet

Where Your Treasure Is, There Your Heart Will Be Also

Traditionally in many churches, fall is stewardship season. Some have campaigns that culminate with pledging, when church members and friends commit to what they plan to give to the church in the coming year. That’s not the current practice at Emmanuel. But that doesn’t mean that stewardship is not important. The ministry and mission of this congregation wouldn’t be possible without your support, not only financial, but also the gifts of your time and talent.

Our next sermon series, covering the four Sundays in October, will touch on the theme of stewardship, but somewhat indirectly. There won’t be an appeal for money. Nor will there be a pledge of time and talent. Instead, I’ve chosen passages that invite our reflection on the larger themes that inform our giving, not only to the church, but to the world – themes like worry versus trust in God, and a philosophy of abundance rather scarcity. Essentially, these are texts that speak to our relationship with our stuff. Oh, and of course, our relationship with God. The notions in these passages are both counterintuitive and countercultural, which is why they present such a challenge. But, the surprising thing is, if we buy into what they say, generosity doesn’t just benefit the receiver. The more important point, often, is that giving is good for the giver.

On October 6, the first Sunday in this series, we will celebrate World Communion Sunday, a day when Christians across the globe gather around the table, recognizing and affirming our oneness in Christ. This observance has Presbyterian roots. It was started in 1933 by Hugh Thomson Kerr, then pastor of Shadyside Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh. It has since spread and been adopted by other denominations.

Pastor Janet

September 17, 2024

Neglected Stories: Women in the Bible

Sermon Series Beginning August 18th

A comment made by Connie Weber, which she gave me permission to share, inspired the sermon series we’re about to begin. Her remark came during our recent book study on Eugene Peterson’s Eat This Book, which is about how we’re to read the Bible. It may have been when we were discussing the different ways people approach – and use – Scripture. Or, it could have been when we were reflecting on Peterson’s summons to not just read the Bible for information, but to actively participate in the world revealed by Scripture, to play our part in that God-revealed script.

Whatever the case, it prompted Connie to remember, and share, an exchange she had with the folks who produced the popular kids’ videos, Veggie Tales. While viewing that series with her own child, Connie noticed a clear lack of female leading characters. When she wrote to the company to ask about it, they responded by saying there just aren’t that many women in the Bible. And, as Connie remembers it, they said they lacked the talent pool to voice those characters. Hmm.

Not that many women characters? The Bible is filled with them! But how often do we hear about them? It occurred to me that giving biblical women their due may be as lacking in the church as it was on that series. We hear all the time, in Sunday school and in sermons, about Abraham and Jacob, Isaiah and Jeremiah, Peter and Paul. But how often do we hear about Sarah or Deborah, Ruth or Esther, or any of the other women who played a part in the biblical narrative? Not so much.

So, I’ve put together a series based on women in the Bible, all of these from the Hebrew Scriptures, since we’ve focused so much on the New Testament lately. As I identified the passages about these women, I realized I’ve never preached on them before. That surprised me. But then, I’ve typically used the lectionary, the cycle of assigned readings used by many churches. The fact that these texts rarely show up there says something in itself.

Since I haven’t spent a lot of time with these texts myself, I’ll be learning along with you. I look forward to this journey together, seeing what these passages have to teach us, men and women alike.

In anticipation,

Pastor Janet

August 8, 2024

July, 2024

“To everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven.”  So proclaims the writer of Proverbs, using “seasons” metaphorically to speak of the changing circumstances of our lives. Scripture also speaks of the seasons more literally, as in Genesis 8:22: “As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.” In this promise, following the flood, God pledges from that time forward to preserve the earth and its seasons. And so we, as part of God’s creation, continue to live our lives within the context of that rhythm of changes.

Each season brings its own delights, the colors of autumn, the freshness of spring, and winter’s invitation to hibernate and restore ourselves. Summer, too, bestows its particular blessings. This congregation experiences some of those in a unique way through your garden, “Emmanuel Farm.” Here summer means harvesting the fruit of your labor and sharing the earth’s bounty with others. Sometimes we have reminders of that, as when fresh sprigs of basil from the garden were offered last Sunday, alongside the cookies at coffee hour. That’s not something that happens at every church! Those sprigs were a reminder of the gifts of God’s creation.

While there are invitations in every season to appreciate those gifts, summer issues a particular summons to many. It’s a time to travel, to take in new sights, to hike in the mountains and enjoy the waters, or simply sit on our porches at night and gaze at the stars – the heavens which proclaim God’s glory. I encourage you to take time to behold that glory, which is all around us here in the Pacific Northwest and is especially evident this time of year. Our outdoor worship service on August 11 will focus on God’s creation. Your mindfulness to the ways God speaks to you through nature will help you prepare to enter fully into that time. Since that service won’t be “zoomed,” I hope some who usually join us online will join us in person that day and stay afterward for the barbeque.

Meanwhile, there are other events happening in August, which you will read about in this newsletter, opportunities for learning and for service. These various ways of being together strengthen your fellowship, and build up the body of Christ, which we’ve been hearing about in our series on Ephesians.

Happy summer!

Pastor Janet

God's Meta-Story: A Sermon Series on Ephesians

Dear Emmanuel Presbyterian church family, I’ve been with you nearly three months now as your transitional pastor. It’s been a time of learning for me, learning names, for instance. I’m still working on that! More importantly, of course, has been getting to know the people attached to those names. I’ve so appreciated how warm and welcoming you have been. This has also been a time of learning about you as a congregation, about your passions, like mission, and about your customary ways of doing things. Those are a bit different in every church, and I want to thank those who’ve helped me navigate my course here.

So far, my sermons here have been shaped by time and by context; first by a focus on transition, and then largely by the liturgical calendar. In June I will begin a sermon series based on the Letter to the Ephesians. Ephesians invites us to step back from our usual ways of viewing things -- the world, the church, our own lives – and to see them all, to see everything, in light of God’s big picture, God’s cosmic plan from the beginning of time. It calls us, in other words, to see ourselves within the context of God’s huge, unfolding story.

Eugene Peterson, in the book featured by our current book group (Eat This Book), calls readers to see Scripture as a narrative. The Bible, he writes, “turns out to be a large comprehensive story, a meta-story.” And a story “invites our participation.” When we read Scripture appropriately, he argues, we allow its stories to “form” us, to shape us. “When we submit our lives to what we read in Scripture, we find that we are not being led to see God in our stories but our stories in God’s. God is the larger context and plot in which our stories find themselves.” We don’t always reflect on God’s big story, but instead tend to focus on our own much smaller ones. Ephesians is about that larger story, God’s story, in which we’re called to find ourselves.

This epistle has traditionally been seen as addressed to the Christian community at Corinth, but that designation is missing in some important early manuscripts. It seems likely, instead, that it was intended as a circular letter, that is, one meant to be taken around to various churches. It’s suggested that the name of the addresses was left out so that it could be filled in with the name of whatever congregation it reached. And so, we may consider it addressed “to the church that is at Bothell, Washington,” that is, even to us.

Pastor Janet

June 1, 2024

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

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

Epiphany

“Sing to the Lord a new song, his praise from the end of the earth.”
Isaiah 42:10

I’ve had the opportunity to spend time with two babies this past week.  One of them a six-month-old human named Sully, the other a ten-week-old Labrador named Bryn.  Both Sully and Bryn have given me a picture of the result of having an epiphany during this season of Epiphany.  As I sat across the table from Sully during dinner at the Hackett’s home on New Year’s Day, and as I daily sit on our kitchen floor and play with our latest Guide Dogs for the Blind puppy Bryn, I am observing that they both display an almost uncanny ability to take in and celebrate all the new things that suddenly appear before them.  Whether it is the flannel tug toy wiggling in front of her, the smile on a face that has come into his view, the sound of Grampsy’s Donald Duck imitation, or the high-pitched repetition of “puppy, puppy, puppy,” these varied stimuli have a similar effect on these babies.  Sheer Joy.  Joy at the discovery and opportunity that has miraculously crashed into their presence.  An epiphany, an appearance, a sudden awareness of a gift.

Christmas is the story of God coming into view, suddenly appearing before us.  It is the announcement of an arrival.  It is a light that turns our head and a song that tickles our ears.  It is the experience of the brightness and the weight of God’s glory.  It is the opportunity for an epiphanic experience.  A sudden awareness that something new has appeared in our field of vision or sung its song within our hearing.  If we pick it up, if we take it in, we want to become a part of it; we want to revel in its light and join in its song.

To have an epiphany is to be captured by something that feels gloriously new.  Yet what we have experienced is actually something that is quite old.  Something that existed long before we did.  Something in which we were made to dwell.  Not something that we discover, but something that discovers us and invites us to abide in it.  Once there we want to sing what feels like a new song to us. But what we are actually doing is joining in a song that was being sung long before our voices were ever added to the chorus of voices who have been eternally singing it.

The One who appears in the manger in Bethlehem is also the one who is “before all things” and the one “in whom all things hold together.”  He is the inspiration for the new song that was also the first song, and this song that gives birth to all songs, never gets old.  For when he comes into view, when we hear him pass, it always seems as if he is doing so for the first time.             

David Rohrer

January 6, 2023