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
We all seem ripe for a blessing of peace this week. As the days and our hearts feel heavy with the weight of all of the painful events of these past months, as we make our best efforts to enter into fall and the new school year, may we all know the peace of Christ that passes all understanding.
Deep peace of the flowing air to you
Deep peace of the quiet earth to you
Deep peace of the shining stars to you
Deep peace of the gentle night to you
Moon and stars pour their healing light on you
Deep peace of Christ
Of Christ, Of Christ, the light of the world to you
Deep peace of Christ to you
Deep peace of the running wave to you
Deep peace of the flowing air to you
Deep peace of the quiet earth to you
Deep peace of the shining stars to you
Deep peace of the gentle night to you
Moon and stars pour their healing light on you
Deep peace of Christ
Of Christ, of Christ, the light of the world to you
Deep peace of Christ to you.
John Rutter
Gaelic Blessing
View video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qvMFlL62XA
Grace and peace,
Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation
Here are some Scripture prayers that we can all pray for each other as we persevere under challenging pandemic circumstances - beginning a new school year, juggling work and home needs, dealing with loneliness, depression, exhaustion, health issues, fears, irritability and weariness. Take heart, from Eugene Peterson's The Message:
We pray that you'll have the strength to stick it out over the long haul—not the grim strength of gritting your teeth but the glory-strength God gives. It is strength that endures the unendurable and spills over into joy, thanking the Father who makes us strong enough to take part in everything bright and beautiful that he has for us.
Colossians 1
Is anyone crying for help? God is listening, ready to rescue you. If your heart is broken, you'll find God right there; If you're kicked in the gut, he'll help you catch your breath.
Psalm 34:17-18
Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.
1 Corinthians 13:13
Take the old prophets as your mentors. They put up with anything, went through everything, and never once quit, all the time honoring God. What a gift life is to those who stay the course! You've heard, of course, of Job's staying power, and you know how God brought it all together for him in the end. That's because God cares, cares right down to the last detail.
James 5:10-11
Grace and peace,
Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation
Out of words myself this week, I relish these poems from Christian writer of poetry and essays Luci Shaw at age 91, in her new book The Generosity. She reflects on this anxious time which we find ourselves, reminding us that the Spirit has us tethered…
VIRUS
The absurdity of a world
on its knees, behind its doors,
whose fingers, even, may be traitors
and whose breath, created for living,
may breed death. Its instruction:
Split up. Stay apart. This is now
The ultimate act of friendship.
Like the moon of light at the bottom
of the well, hope shines small,
But if we stay, head over edge,
we may watch the deep water shimmer
with supple possibilities. At noon
a pale sun shines, telling us
we may still live in the light.
HOW?
How shall we sing the Lord’s songs
in a strange land? The old rhythms,
the melodies of praise, strangle
in our throats and the words
fall to the ground like leaves in autumn.
The air thickens with suspicion and doubt
and who’s to say anymore, what
is true enough to last, to prevail?
Isolation feels like a punishment
for offenses we never performed.
Let us trust, now the ground under
our feet—that which has proven steady
for generations. Look up. The heavens
are still there unclouded beatific.
We breathe, even though masks clothe
our faces. Prayer surrounds us, close
as our skin, weaving for us garments of
trust and solace. Even in our isolation
we are joined in love, never alone.
Grace and peace,
Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation
My race/antiracist reading list this summer includes some of the usual suspects (Caste by Isabel Wilkerson and How to Be an Antiracist, by Ibram Kendi, among others). But just as crucially, I’ve been spending time with Mildred D. Taylor’s Logan family. Outspoken, whip-smart Cassie Logan entered my girls’ life in the fourth grade, when they first discovered her story in Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. Unusually for Depression-era Mississippi, Cassie’s tightly-knit Black family owned their land, and the book tells of a year when they fought to keep it. I adore Cassie and her brothers, their no-nonsense grandma and their wise, thoughtful parents. I remember the girls’ extensive classroom discussions about racism, and it was also important for them to encounter a Black protagonist who was not a slave.
We also read and loved Taylor’s powerful sequel, Let the Circle Be Unbroken. I’ve reread both books this summer, and they are as rich and compelling now as they were years ago. But there’s more to their story, and I’ve been relishing and learning from the new-to-me chapters of the Logan family saga. Taylor’s 2001 prequel, The Land, chronicles the childhood of Cassie’s biracial grandfather, Paul-Edward Logan, and his quest to acquire his own land. Born to a plantation owner and a slave woman, Paul-Edward has to reckon with his heritage and make his own way, and he does both with strength and spirit. I also picked up The Road to Memphis, which follows the teenage Cassie, her brother Stacey and several friends as they spirit a friend out of town after a racially charged altercation with three white men. (Bonus: the reissued paperbacks feature covers by 2020 Caldecott Medalist Kadir Nelson, who recently illustrated a New Yorker cover featuring George Floyd.)
Taylor’s concluding Logan novel, All the Days Past, All the Days to Come, picks up Cassie’s story in adulthood. She travels the country as part of the postwar Great Migration, finds both love and grief in California, and goes back home to Mississippi to participate in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Taylor returns to her perennial themes of justice, equality, fierce pride and the Logans’ deep love for their land and one another. If you and your family are looking for great read-aloud books, Mildred Taylor will stir your hearts about the painful black experience in America.
Grace and peace,
Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation
But blessed is the one who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in him. They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit. — Jeremiah 17:7-8
Grace and peace,
Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation
