“When Mordecai learned what had been done, he tore his clothes, dressed in mourning clothes, and put ashes on his head. Then he went out into the heart of the city and cried out loudly and bitterly. […] a very great sadness came over the Jews. They gave up eating and spent whole days weeping and crying out loudly in pain. Many Jews lay on the ground in mourning clothes and ashes. When Esther’s female servants and eunuchs came and told her about Mordecai, the queen’s whole body showed how upset she was. She sent everyday clothes for Mordecai to wear instead of mourning clothes, but he rejected them.” Esther 4:1, 3b-4 (CEB)

On Sunday we met Mordecai from the book of Esther. When Mordecai learns of planned violence of genocide against his people, he is overtaken by grief. Grief over such callousness and disregard for human life, grief over such comfort with violence, grief over those who were to be harmed.

Two dozen women sat in a neat circle together, mostly strangers. At the head of the circle (if there can be such a thing), four facilitators convened. Well, more beamed at the group who had come from all corners of the country and the UK.

These joyful hearted facilitators held many professional titles between them: spiritual directors, professional coaches, clergy, seminary professor, former dean of Duke Divinity School, organizational developer, healer, yoga instructor, non-profit founder, abbess at a monastic community, and more.

School just started and already there is a holiday on the horizon. 
 
Labor Day began as a day recognized by labor activists and individual states and is rooted during a time when labor activists pushed for a federal holiday to recognize the many contributions workers made to the country. In June 1894 president Grover Cleveland signed a law making the first Monday in September of each year a national holiday. (You can learn more about the origins of the holiday here.) 

We are coming to the end of the summer season and gearing up for fall. The leaves will change, the rains will return, the air will smell sweet, the animals will begin eagerly gathering all they need for the winter months. In this liminal time it’s important to remember who we are and who we were created to be. 

I’ve been reading blessings written by Meta Herrick Carlson. She offers the following blessing for rest. 

The Northwest Harvest on Cherry Street had me hooked.

Every Monday afternoon a gaggle of students would pile (and pile) into too-full cars to go from the school parking lot just a few miles west to Seattle’s Capitol Hill. If we couldn’t press drivers into service, we’d squeeze into the 550 Express bus, schlepping our school bags up the steep hill until we reached the food bank’s metal gates.

Waking from sleep is a marvel. Some of us are groggy, slowly coming to consciousness as the last strange dream fades. Many of us are achey. Some, I have heard, are ready to jump up and greet the day. Some of us interrogate that tickle in our throats: is it from allergies, post-nasal drip, or our immune systems being tested by a cold or covid?

However we wake, each new day is a gift. The moon retreated, the sun rose, and the world kept turning! If we’re fortunate, nothing shook or erupted in the night. If we’re fortunate, there’s running water to wash our faces and something to wrestle up for breakfast.

As each new day brings new stories from occupied or war-torn communities with restrictions on humanitarian aid, piled on top of the stories from our own community of those in desperate circumstances, we don’t take these morning miracles for granted.

What do we do with this gift of each new day?

“Your paperwork is a little off balance.”

A dozen of us sat at the conference table. Perched to my right, a silent advocate. To my left and around the table, members of the Board of Ordained Ministry. We were there for my written and oral doctrinal examination to be commissioned as a provisional Elder in the Texas Annual Conference, one of the many steps along the way toward being ordained.

At commissioning, the Board focuses on your theology. At ordination several years later, the Board wants to see the fruit of your ministry. This was theology time. A member of the Board remarked with gentle criticism on my paperwork, having noticed that it contained three times more on inclusion in the church than on the nature of the Holy Trinity. Whoops!

“How is it with your soul?”

We have been hitting deep (and sometimes poorly worded) questions through our worship series, “I’ve Been Meaning to Ask.” In our weekly conversations, we have found other ways to be curious and courageous with one another, using questions as: What has shaped who you are? What makes your heart hurt? How can I show up for you in this moment?

Those who aren’t the touchy-feely type may be uninterested or even intimidated by these questions. But these aren’t questions just for folks like the Care Team to ask alone; they are for all of us!

A new book, Calling In: How to Start Making Change with Those You’d Rather Cancel  by Dr. Lorette Ross,  has recently been added to the library collection and is ready for checkout! Read on for a review by First Church member Susan Duncan.

The newest revision of our United Methodist Social Principles is hot off the Cokesbury press!

The Social Principles are our denomination’s ethical aspirations for the common good in public policies and personal commitments.

I first encountered these principles in confirmation class. Boy did they pack a wallop! I remember the pride I felt when I learned that in the stickiest, murkiest, and most important issues of our day, the United Methodist Church knew where it stood.

For the first time since they were first approved in 1972, the social principles have undergone a complete revision with 4 primary focuses: the community of all creation, the economic community, the social community, and the political community.

What a terrible and meaningful question!

On Sunday, we saw how this question can be asked with unchecked assumptions that prevent us from the kind of curiosity we need for meaningful connection (catch the full conversation and sermon here).

After worship, many of you shared about the times this question has been posed to you because of how you look or how you speak. Some also shared times that you asked this question yourself, not realizing the assumptions that you had made about the person you were asking!

Doom to you who legislate evil,
who make laws that make victims—
Laws that make misery for the poor,
that rob my destitute people of dignity,
Exploiting defenseless widows,
taking advantage of homeless children.
(Isaiah 10:1-2, The Message)

The line zigzagged down the church sidewalks, longer than I’d ever seen it before.

The Lift UP food pantry was about to open for the day. Patiently waiting in a well-ordered line stood beautiful folks of all ages and stages of life, all races and ethnicities, all in effort to stave off the pangs of hunger.

For United Methodists in our region, the annual session of the Oregon-Idaho Annual Conference is the room where it happens. As we sleepily shared last Sunday, our own Portland First delegation has returned from three very full days of Annual Conference* in Salem.

Our lay members to Annual Conference were responsible for supporting creation care legislation, participating in our legislative sessions, leading music in worship, praying over the conference, and taking part in the Young People’s Address. Portland First was well represented amongst our Methodist siblings.

Jesus’ march to Jerusalem at the start of Holy Week is full of clues for us today.

From time to time, I get sucked into a good murder mystery. The less expressly realistic, the better. I’m not here for the gory details or the moments of depravity; I’m here for the curiosity.

In a good mystery, you wonder and discover your way through the lives of everyone involved: the suspects, the witnesses, the deceased, even the detectives themselves.

Jesus’ march to Jerusalem at the start of Holy Week is full of clues for us today.

Scripture study tells us that there were likely two marches happening that week:

Jesus, coming from the east, and Pilate, from the west.

The backdrop for the scene is the Feast of Passover. Passover in the ancient world (when there was still a temple standing in Jerusalem) was a remarkable, exciting, high-energy, and chaotic time.

“When Pentecost Day arrived, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound from heaven like the howling of a fierce wind filled the entire house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be individual flames of fire alighting on each one of them. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit enabled them to speak.” – Acts 2:1-4

“I solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

There are a lot of half-truths hanging out in our world. Some are innocent and simply don’t catch the whole picture. Others are intentionally deceptive. We encounter these half-truths all over the place, from legislation (especially their titles) to marketing campaigns to our understanding of complex social issues to our relationships to our life of faith. Fact checking is no longer a measure of extra precaution, but a regular way of life.

Nothing worth doing can be accomplished in a lifetime;
therefore, we must be saved by hope.
Nothing true or beautiful or good makes sense
in any immediate context of history;
therefore, we must be saved by faith.
Nothing we do, however virtuous,
can be accomplished alone.
Therefore, we are saved by love.

-Reinhold Niebuhr

Long partners in crime, Brent Tanaka and I were on deck to preach. We’d known each other since we could remember, having been raised up week after week in the comfortable wooden pews of First Church’s 1908 Beaux-Arts sanctuary. Seattle First Church, that is.

No longer toddling around the nursery, we were now part of a small-but-mighty group of youth who descended upon this old downtown church each Sunday with powdered sugar donut holes in one hand and Starbucks coffee in the other. To jazz it up, we painted a labyrinth on the wall of what we affectionately called “the Crow’s Nest”: a random, disconnected room in the corner of the upper balcony that served as the youth space. It was a long stair climb down to the main floor of the Sanctuary and an even longer climb down to the Blaine Room - notable, as it held more snacks.

No powdered sugar on our hands today, though. Today was Youth Sunday.

I’ve been thinking about the moms this week.

On Monday, I had the joy of making a house call to two new moms in our congregation and coo over their 10-day-old bundle of delight. On Sunday, a couple of our musical offerings will be from or about Mary, Jesus’ mom. This weekend, I’ll miss out on the All-Church Workday because I’ll be on our monthly trip to my mom’s adult family home. I’ve been looking at old photos of her, such as the header photo taken the year she began to lose her memory.