After writing and praying my pleading pastoral prayer last week, a friend and I connected about our shared sense of anxious uncertainty in facing the fact that we are living through historic changes in our city, country, church and the world. It may well be that what is being asked of us as Christians at this particular moment in time, this kairos moment, is renewed resilience of faith, a defiant hopefulness and a determined refusal to let the seeds of resignation take root in the soil of despair.

I turned to the book of Hebrews this week, and one of its texts spoke powerfully into my uncertainties and my hoped for resilience. "Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire." (Hebrews 12:28-9) 

What if God should also speak in an unexpectedly shocking and powerfully challenging way? Hebrews was written to people whose faith was seriously shaken, whose inner core was being destabilized by events around them, and often against them. The preacher-pastor who wrote this long letter of encouragement and warning, aimed at hope building, faith strengthening, with the goal of instilling community resilience in the face of threatening change and felt inadequacy.

In the midst of all that is shaking, "we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken..." To put it in the equally astringent words of Jesus, "I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it." (Matthew 16:18)
 
Grace and peace, 

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

"But the person who is forgiven only a little will love only a little."      Luke 7:47b (NRSV)
 
 Do not hesitate to love and to love deeply. You might be afraid of the pain that deep love can cause. When those you love deeply reject you, leave you, or die, your heart will be broken. But that should not hold you back from loving deeply. The pain that comes from deep love makes your love even more fruitful. It is like a plow that breaks the ground to allow the seed to take root and grow into a strong plant. Every time you experience the pain of rejection, absence, or death, you are faced with a choice. You can become bitter and decide not to love again, or you can stand straight in your pain and let the soil on which you stand become richer and more able to give life to new seeds.
                      Henri Nouwen     The Inner Voice of Love

Grace and peace, 

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

           “Here am I; send me!”
                            —Isaiah 6.8

But where?
Help me discern clearly, God.
Neither to gallivant off in every direction
as if I’m supposed to heal every hurt;
nor to shrink back because the need is so great,
but to listen for where you are calling me,
and to go there.

To say ”Here am I,” must include all of me,
not just parts. What calls to the whole of me?
What seems most harmonious?
What neither dulls nor depletes me,
but (even if it scares me)
energizes and enlivens me?
Where do I sense your energy moving,
that I may move in harmony with it?
Not what I want,
but where your Spirit blows.

Breath prayer:
                             Loving me … send me

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light

Grace and peace, 

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

“Hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit whom he has given us!

Romans 5:5 

The Holy Spirit is God’s giving gift; the Gift that keeps on giving. Faith, hope and love are the foundation pillars of Christian character, and the greatest of these is love. Why? Because it is the divine love poured out upon us and within us, as God’s gift. We love because he first loved us; and we love with the love that is the overflow of the Spirit of God within us. We are conduits of love, channels through whom God’s love flows out in blessing, compassion and life-giving service in Jesus’ name.

 “There is now therefore, no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.” 

Romans 8:1-2

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of life, the vivifying, energizing, creative power of God. Paul says elsewhere, “For freedom Christ has set us free.” Here Paul is celebrating the work of the Holy Spirit in setting us free from the guilt and shame of sin, and from the fear of death. The law of the Spirit of life is the truth that, by faith in the faithfulness of Christ on the cross, and in the renewing power of the risen Christ, we are liberated, heart and mind set free to love and serve and worship God.

“Never flag in zeal, be aglow with the Spirit, serve the Lord.” 

There’s a three point sermon if ever there was one! Give the Holy Spirit freedom, live the life God gives, use generously the gifts God gives. Let the Holy Spirit ignite everything in you that is fuel for service. This is also a three point team talk, Paul the motivator is encouraging believers in Jesus to go out and express themselves with all the talent, energy, experience and positivity of those who know they can win. 

Grace and peace, 

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

This Sunday is Pentecost Sunday, celebrating the Holy Spirit descending upon the Apostles and other disciples as Jesus said it would. Pentecost falls 50 days (seven weeks) after Easter and 10 days after Jesus' Ascension into heaven, and it marks the beginning of the church's mission into the world.

Pentecost

Today we feel the wind beneath our wings
Today  the hidden fountain flows and plays
Today the church draws breath at last and sings
As every flame becomes a Tongue of praise.
This is the feast of fire, air, and water
Poured out and breathed and kindled into earth.
The earth herself awakens to her maker
And is translated out of death to birth.
The right words come today in their right order
And every word spells freedom and release
Today the gospel crosses every border
All tongues are loosened by the Prince of Peace
Today the lost are found in His translation.
Whose mother-tongue is Love, in  every nation.

Malcolm Guite (born 1957) is an English poet, singer, song writer, Anglican priest, and academic. He was born in Nigeria to British expatriate parents, and today lives in Cambridge, England. He has published fourteen volumes of poetry and Christian theology.

Grace and peace, 

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

One of the fundamental things to grasp about our prayer lives is that we are always beginning again, always beginners on a path we have trodden countless times already. It ought to be one of the first things we learn, but somehow it never is—the penny only seems to drop after years of practice, years of expecting to "get somewhere".
 
Of course, God being infinite, God is always infinitely beyond our understanding, and so we can never really ‘make progress’ in the practice of prayer. We can only begin again, each time we sit. 
 
This is one of the things I most like about the Jesus Prayer, that it quite explicitly eschews the idea of progress, of levels of attainment and things like that. It is such a simple practice, open to anyone. You don't need to be ordained, or theologically educated, or have made a certain number of retreats, or have studied the right books: you just sit down and say, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." That's all. It takes about 12 seconds, and the rest of one's life, to pray that little prayer.
 
Grace and peace, 

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

I learned a new word this week when I went to tea with a Japanese longtime friend. When our waiter brought our food, she murmured, "Itadakimasu." Itadakimasu, a Japanese word said before eating, roughly translates as "I humbly receive." It's an expression of gratitude for the meal and for those who prepared it.

In all the whirlwind of these days that one word — said so quietly, so matter of factly — touched me deeply.

I’m grateful for so much lately. I’m trying to “wear gratitude like a cloak” (to quote Rumi) to let it be what I wrap myself in, to let it be what I show first to the world. Itadakimasu.
 
Grace and peace, 

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

The Avowal

As swimmers dare
to lie face to the sky
and water bears them,
as hawks rest upon air
and air sustains them,
so would I learn to attain
freefall, and float
into Creator Spirit’s deep embrace,
knowing no effort earns
that all-surrounding grace.
                      Denise Levertov


Grace and peace, 

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

Now Thomas (also known as Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came.  So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord! “       John 20:24 

I’m reflecting on Thomas this week, and his encounter with the resurrected Jesus. He's the disciple who argued they should all go to Jerusalem and die with him. For whatever reason he wasn't with the gathered disciples when Jesus first came, stood among them, said “Peace be with you”, and proved he was alive.
When Thomas said he wouldn't believe till he saw and touched Jesus, he was asking for no more than had already been given to the others. 

Peter couldn't face going into the tomb. If Jesus was still there and dead, he didn't want to see him. If Jesus was indeed risen, then Peter wasn't ready to meet him. The Beloved Disciple did go in, saw Jesus wasn't there and believed—but he still had no evidence and Jesus was elsewhere. Mary simply thought Jesus’ body was stolen. It's not only tears that blurred her vision; grief closed down her perceptions. Until Jesus spoke her name.
Then there is Thomas. Passionate, courageous, intelligent and realistic Thomas, not to be taken in by the wishful thinking of others. What is telling about John's telling of the story is that Thomas who had demanded to see, and touch and invasively poke the wounds of Jesus, did none of these things when the time came. Jesus invited Thomas to touch the evidence, but Thomas is far ahead of such needs for proof. His confession, "My Lord, and my God" are the crowning words of faith in the entire Gospel and of John's art as a storyteller of the Gospel. 
The Gospel of John starts with "In the beginning was the Word", the creative, light-shining, life-giving Word. And Thomas saw that Light of Life.  "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth," and Thomas was persuaded and won by that same grace and truth. Throughout John there are signs of Jesus as the Word of God, water into wine, the feast of the 5000, the raising of Lazarus, and now Thomas was seeing in the risen Jesus the new wine, the bread of life, and the resurrection as promised. 
 
Grace and peace, 

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
Galatians 5:22-23

I've read those words hundreds of times, it might be thousands. Many times I've prayed them as I read them. Often, too often, they have been prayers of confession that whatever fruit there might be is unripe, maybe even unformed.

As with everything else in Christian experience, the fruit of the Spirit is sown in grace and harvested in the life of those who are in Christ, who live by the Spirit, and whose first confession is of grateful praise for the love of God in Christ. 

And yet. The last thing Paul intends by listing the fruit of the Spirit is that those virtues should be a further checklist of our failures. They are to be looked for as the natural outcome of God's gifting grace, Christ's reconciling love, the Spirit's liberating power. 

Instead of seeing the fruit of the Spirit as mere aspiration, what we'd like to be but never will, (or even worse, as a hit list of our chronic failures), take to heart Paul's advice to another group of Christians whose behavior was at times far from exhibiting the fruit of the Spirit: "He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion until the day of Jesus Christ." (Philippians 1:6)

We are called to live into the freedom of Christ, to walk and live in the surrounding environment of the Holy Spirit. Crucified with Christ, and living by faith in the faithfulness of Christ, knowing that the Son of God loves us and gave himself for us, we live in Christ and Christ in us, and the fruit will appear.   
 
Grace and peace, 

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation