This month of November is Indigenous Peoples Month, and in the spirit of learning more about and celebrating a culture that is not my own, I learned a very interesting story about the Navajo people that is one to be proud of. Early in World War II, the Japanese army was alarmingly adept at deciphering the codes American forces were using in the Pacific theater. Their ability to anticipate American military actions, as well as to transmit false orders to American troops, was causing massive confusion and giving the Japanese the upper hand in the war.

The U.S. army responded by developing ever more complex codes, but these became burdensome and made effective communication almost impossible; generals complained that some messages took up to two hours to encode, transmit, and then decode. 

The Navajo people had the answer. Led by Philip Johnston, the son of a white missionary to the Navajo reservation, they made a presentation to the military, using the Navajo language as a military code. The Navajos were able to transmit in twenty seconds a coded message that was taking the military coding machines thirty minutes to handle. And so, the Navajo code talkers program was born.

Navajo code talkers transmitted messages during every major American campaign in the Pacific arena from that time forward, and the Japanese were never able to decipher their code. At the famous battle of Iwo Jima specifically, six Navajo code talkers transmitted more than 800 messages over the course of two days, all without a single error. Major Howard Connor, 5th Marine Division signal officer, declared, “Were it not for the Navajos, the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima.”

It’s scary to imagine what might have happened in World War II as a whole without the Navajo code talkers. They were courageous soldiers—and a key part of America’s victory—who used their language to save thousands of American lives and win the war. (I find it particularly ironic that it was through their language that the Navajos came to the aid of America, since the U.S. government has tried hard to take the Navajo language away from them through the boarding school system. It’s a good thing, on so many levels, that those efforts failed.)

The more you know…

 Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson

Pastor for Spiritual Formation

In our facing the global coronavirus uptick, staggering fatigue and flagging energy and optimism for many, natural disasters and mundane domestic crises in our families, and a fraught Presidential transition, we can grow weary and disheartened. Leaning into the invitation to examine the barriers to full expression of God's Mosaic Kingdom is personal and challenging for all. It requires stamina and intentionality. Where will we find our strength and hope? With none but the High God:

God is a safe place to hide,
ready to help when we need him.
We stand fearless at the cliff-edge of doom,
courageous in sea storm and earthquake,
before the rush and roar of oceans,
the tremors that shift mountains.
Jacob-wrestling God fights for us,
God of angel armies protects us.
River fountains splash joy, cooling God's city,
this sacred haunt of the Most High.
God lives here, the streets are safe,
God at your service from crack of dawn.
Godless nations rant and rave,
kings and kingdoms threaten,
but Earth does anything he says.
Jacob-wrestling God fights for us,
God of angel armies protects us.
Attention, al! See the marvels of God!
He plants flowers and trees all over the earth,
Bans war from pole to pole,
breaks all the weapons across the knee.
"Step out of the traffic! Take a long,
loving look at me, your High God,
above politics, above everything."
Psalm 46 (The Message)

Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

I shared with you last week one of W. David O. Taylor's (Fuller- Texas) prayers before the election, but I so appreciated his full complement of prayers-- they can still be prayed, beyond Election Day, as we are in this period of waiting for clarity and finality in our fractured country. Lord, hear our prayers:

Starting on October 28, I committed to writing seven Collect Prayers connected to Election Day 2020. I wrote them in response to specific events of the particular day, such as my visit to the local polling station in order to vote early and the kind service of poll workers that I experienced that day, and to things that I observed in the news as well as on social media. Here they are, in the order in which they were written, and I am more than happy for people to make use of them in their personal or communal contexts.

A COLLECT PRAYER FOR PEACEMAKERS:
O God, you who are the lover of concord, we pray that we might not become needlessly anxious over the political tempests that rage across the landscape of our country but rather trust in your sovereign care, so that we might remain a peacemaker to friend and stranger alike. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

A COLLECT PRAYER FOR POLL WORKERS:
O Lord, you who come to us as a servant, we pray today for all who serve as poll workers. Bless them with joy, protect them from harm, and shield them from all technological failures, so that they may fulfill the good work that you have called them to do. In your name. Amen.

A COLLECT PRAYER FOR DISAGREEMENTS WITH FAMILY AND FRIENDS:
O Lord, you who tell us to turn the other cheek, we pray that our disagreements with family, arguments with friends, and troubling encounters with strangers will bring out the best, not the worst, in us so that we might be living emblems of your gracious kingdom in a chronically and regrettably graceless time. In your name. Amen.

A COLLECT PRAYER FOR THE LOVE OF TRUTH:
O Lord, you who come to us as the Truthful One, keep our tongues, we pray, from bearing false witness against our neighbor and guard our mouths from lies, and nourish within us a love for the truth wherever we may find it, so that we might be a people who bear your name. In the name of the One who comes to us full of truth and grace. In your name. Amen.

A COLLECT PRAYER FOR OUR WOUNDED COUNTRY:
O Jesus, you who are the Wounded Healer, we offer to you our wounded lives, our wounded communities and our wounded country and ask that you would heal them, so that we might know you as the One who daily bears our burdens and who consoles the brokenhearted. In your name we pray. Amen.

A COLLECT PRAYER FOR UNITY OF CHRIST’S DIVIDED BODY:
Lord Jesus, you who prayed that we might be one as you and the Father are one, grant us the grace this day to extend the right hand of fellowship to fellow saints across political lines, so that a watching world may see that your Spirit’s power is far greater than all the fracturing powers that would keep us separated and suspicious of one another. In your name we pray. Amen.

A COLLECT PRAYER FOR THE PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE:
O Lord, to you whom all our loyalties are due, we pledge allegiance this day to the Lamb of God and to the upside-down Kingdom for which he stands, one holy nation, under God, the Servant King and the Prince of Peace, with liberty and justice for all without remainder. In the Triune Name we pray.

Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

Found prayers for the week before Election 2020:

I wait quietly before God,

For my victory comes from him.

He alone is my rock and my salvation,

My fortress where I will never be shaken.

            Psalm 62:1-2

Lord, in these dark and difficult times, grant us grace to seek your face with undiminished love. Replenish our reserves for the road is long. Surprise us in the coming day with glimpses of your goodness, hints of your holiness and a song of hope in this very strange land.

(Lectio 365)

Yet this I call to mind

And therefore have hope:

Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,

For his compassions never fail

They are new every morning:

Great is your faithfulness.

I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion;

Therefore I will wait for him.”

The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him,

To the one who seeks him;

It is good to wait quietly

For the salvation of the Lord.”

            Lamentations 3:21-26

O God, you who are the lover of concord, we pray that we might not become needlessly anxious over the political tempests that rage across the landscape of our country but rather trust in your sovereign care, so that we might remain a peacemaker to friend and stranger alike. Amen. (an election day collect prayer for peace of mind by W. David O. Taylor)

Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

Forgiving Our Differences

I want to share an extended essay by Fr. Ron Rolheiser, written ten years ago. He has beautifully described the challenge of embracing differences in a world designed by God for variety and diversity. 

In the first volume of her autobiography, Under My Skin, Doris Lessing, shares this story: During her marriage to Gottfried Lessing, it became evident to both of them at a point that they were simply incompatible as a married couple and that they would eventually have to seek a divorce. However, for practical reasons, they decided to live together, as friends, until they could both move to England, at which time they would file for a divorce. Their marriage was finished but unexpectedly their friendship began to grow. They had accepted their incompatibility as a fact and as something that didn’t call for resentment from either of them. Why be angry at someone just because she feels and thinks differently than we do? 

One night, lying in their separate beds in the same room, both smoking and unable to sleep, Gottfried said to her: This kind of incompatibility is more of a misfortune than a crime. That’s a mature insight: It’s not a crime or a sin to be incompatible, it’s only unfortunate.
 
Would that in our daily lives we could appropriate that truth because there is an important emotional, intellectual, moral, and religious challenge contained in it. We spend too much time and energy angry and frustrated with each other over something that basically we cannot control or change. Our differences, however much they may frustrate us and tax our patience at times, are not a crime, a sin, or indeed (most times) even anyone’s fault. We don’t need to blame someone, be angry at someone, or resent someone because he or she is different than we are, no matter how much those differences separate us, frustrate us, and try our patience and understanding. 

We shouldn’t blame and resent each other for being different. Yet that is what we invariably do. We resent others, especially those closest to us in our families, in our churches, and in our places of work, because they are different than we are, as if they were to blame for those differences. Funny, how we rarely reverse that and blame ourselves. But, generally we blame someone or something. Incompatibility within families, church circles, and professional circles, rarely helps produce respect and friendship, as it did between Gottfried and Doris Lessing. The opposite is true. Our differences generally become a source of division, anger, resentment, bitterness, and recrimination. We positively blame the other person for the incompatibility as if it was a moral fault or a willful separation…

Who is to blame? Who’s at fault? If anyone is to be blamed, let’s blame nature and God. 

We can blame nature for its prodigal character, for its overwhelming abundance, for its staggering variety, for its billions of species, for its bewildering differences within the same species, and for its proclivity to give us novelty and color beyond imagination. We can also blame God for placing us in a universe whose magnitude, diversity, and complexity befuddles both the intellect and the imagination. Our universe is still growing both in size and in variation, with change as it’s only constant. God and nature, it would appear, do not believe in simplicity, uniformity, blandness, and sameness. We aren’t born into this world off conveyor-belts like cars coming off a factory line. The infinite combination of accidents, circumstance, chance, and providence that conspire to make up our specific and individual DNA is too complex to ever be calculated or even concretely imagined. 

But blame isn’t the proper verb here, even if in our frustrations with our differences we feel that we need to blame someone. God and nature shouldn’t be blamed for providing us with so much richness, for setting us into a world with so much color and variety, and for making our own personalities so deep and complex. How boring life would be if we weren’t forever confronted with novelty, variety, and difference. How boring the world would be if everything were the same color, if all flowers were of one kind, and if all personalities were the same as ours. We would pay a high price for the easy peace and understanding that would come from that uniformity.

Gottfried Lessing was an agnostic and a Marxist, not an easy friend to Christianity. But we (who vow ourselves by our baptism to understanding, empathy, forgiveness, and peace-making) should be strongly and healthily challenged by his insight and understanding: It’s not a sin or a crime to be incompatible, it’s only unfortunate.
 
Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

Some Christians think that racial reconciliation is a liberal, politically motivated social agenda that has nothing to do with their faith as followers of Jesus Christ. So many discipled Christians don't know that the gospel includes reconciliation across racial, gender, ethnic, social and cultural barriers. Discipleship is an invitation to follow Jesus into a new community, the Kingdom of God, where we are called to make disciples who create corporate social change as people who love the Lord with all our heart, mind, soul and strength, and love our neighbors as ourselves. This means that all churches must face the ways in which they have fallen short of this gospel mission. God has the power to raise up disciples who are agents of racial healing. We need the Holy Spirit to transform us and dismantle the racism that is insidious and entrenched in hearts, systems and institutions. We are members of a Kingdom that prioritizes racial justice, patterned on the reconciliation won for all by Jesus' death and resurrection. May God be glorified as we pray for him to bring his resurrection power to the brokenness all around us!

Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

We are designed for good! There is beauty inherent in each of our ethnic identities, but cultural idolatry and racial brokenness have torn apart God's intended multiethnic community. 'Colorblindness', though originally well-intentioned, is inhospitable, a failure to recognize the beautiful differences that must be acknowledged order for us to move forward in grace to others. We all need to be 'ethnicity aware' , examining what we need healing from, so that we do not unintentionally or willfully cause damage to others with our unexamined sin. Our Growth Groups are asking these questions in the coming weeks:

What are some broken responses you have had to your ethnic identity? What are experiences of ethnic tension or racism that have affected you, your family or those close to you? How might you engage in confession, lament and repentance for the pain in ethnic communities? Can we weep with Jesus for this brokenness and seek his mercy and restoration? 

Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

As World Communion Sunday approaches this year, I have never been so hungry to live into the words of this blessing or simply to gather with others in the ordinary act of sharing a meal. In these days, when that is so often not physically possible, may we learn anew what it means to make the table wide, and wider, and wider still.
 
AND THE TABLE WILL BE WIDE

And the table
will be wide.
And the welcome
will be wide.
And the arms
will open wide
to gather us in.
And our hearts
will open wide
to receive.
And we will come
as children who trust
there is enough.
And we will come
unhindered and free.
And our aching
will be met
with bread.
And our sorrow
will be met
with wine.
And we will open our hands
to the feast
without shame.
And we will turn
toward each other
without fear.
And we will give up
our appetite
for despair.
And we will taste
and know
of delight.
And we will become bread
for a hungering world.
And we will become drink
for those who thirst.
And the blessed
will become the blessing.
And everywhere
will be the feast.
 
            Jan Richardson

Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

The great mystery of God’s love is that we are not asked to live as if we are not hurting, as if we are not broken. In fact, we are invited to recognize our brokenness as a brokenness in which we can come in touch with the unique way that God loves us. The great invitation is to live your brokenness under the blessing. I cannot take people’s brokenness away and people cannot take my brokenness away.  But how do you live in your brokenness? Do you live your brokenness under the blessing or under the curse? The great call of Jesus is to put your brokenness under the blessing.

~Henri Nouwen from a Lecture at Scarritt-Bennett Center

This week our sermon series shifts from the beauty in God’s creation design for rich, harmonious diversity, and the commission for people to move out across the earth and establish people groups, cultures, languages and differences (multiethnicity), to the grievous brokenness that quickly dominates the earth. From the Table of Nations to the tower of Babel. From affirmation and embrace of the glorious fullness of God’s gifts to the need for confession, lament and repentance. In short, to the reality of sin. In order for us to fully and honestly participate in God’s Kingdom of reconciliation, we must examine our brokenness, individually and corporately. As we examine the biblical accounts of idolatry, ethnic division, prejudice and minority fears, we are invited to place all of our brokenness under the blessing of God’s undeserved gift of grace and forgiveness. This is our only hope. Thanks be to God.

 Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

Rev. Brenda Salter McNeil, recognized internationally as one of the foremost thought-leaders in reconciliation, is an ordained pastor in the Evangelical Covenant Church and on the pastoral staff of Quest Church in Seattle, WA. In her book, Roadmap to Reconciliation: Moving Communities into Unity, Wholeness and Justice, she helps to set the tone that we are seeking at Pasadena Covenant as we begin our year-long focus examining the Brilliance of the Multiethnic Kingdom. Here are some of her reflections:

It’s vital in the task of restoration, however, that we experience enough safety to open ourselves to one another and allow hope to penetrate the dark places between us.

Reconciliation is possible only if we approach it primarily as a spiritual process that requires a posture of hope in the reconciling work of Christ and a commitment from the church to both be and proclaim this type of reconciled community.

The challenge comes in accepting that if there is any hope of birthing new life, chaos must be part of the environment for a time.

My hope isn’t that we change the social order but instead that, like Jesus and his disciples, we build small cadres of the Beloved Community that can infiltrate society and change it from the inside out over time.

In small and big ways, we give people glimpses of what the future vision looks like. This is our mission, and we must never lose hope, knowing that God has the power to bring the kingdom — on earth as it is in heaven. God has the power to bring shalom.

What we need is an ongoing spiritual process that involves forgiveness, repentance and justice that transforms broken relationships and systems to reflect God’s original intention for all creation to flourish

Amen, Sister Brenda, Amen. Let us all continue to pray for the Spirit to help us in our weakness, as we have conversations and prayers around ethnicity, race, discipleship, reconciliation and being the Beloved Community in a world that desperately needs shalom. 

 Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson

Pastor for Spiritual Formation