​Teaching my dog, Rory, has been teaching me. We have steadily been working on his ability to remain calm when seeing other dogs. This requires rewarding him for good behavior, and ignoring him and just hanging on when he starts pulling and lunging. Every week I see him improving. I also notice that if we run into too many dogs on a walk, or if there’s too much stimulation around him, he gets worse. He may have been behaving great at the beginning of the walk, but by the end, I’m dragging him along. Or, he’ll have a great day, and then the next day, be an overly excited and anxious pup.

Teaching him has been teaching me.

Growth is often a slow process. The results are not always readily visible. I cannot see from day to day how he is progressing….but I can certainly see it from last spring! Steady small steps with the expectation that there will be bad days, and overwhelming triggers, and a need to wait until calm returns. 

Faith, as well as life, may be about the small steady steps, as much as the big ones. It will include the days when we forget who we are (child of God). It will include the days when there is too much stimulation – too many fears, too many anxieties, too many hurts. They are not too many for God, but we forget. And in our forgetfulness, we do what we wish we did not do. Or we stop altogether – impatient with our progress or stuck by some hurdle that has appeared in our way!

Yet, we are invited to return to the slow steady steps of the Spirit. Healing is sometimes slow and meandering. Faith is often filled with questions. Joy comes in the morning, but we may be awake at night for a while. The evidence may not yet be visible to us – how the Spirit is strengthening us, or how God is sheltering us, or how we truly are learning to lean on the secure foundation of Christ. But then we look back! And we see how far we’ve come.

May you follow Jesus, no turning back, and may your slow steady steps take you to a surprising place, people of Hope. May you be surprised by the abundance of growth all around you and in you. And may your growth be a testimony to the love and wonder of God.

Ask me next year how well Rory walks past dogs.

Peace,
Pastor Liz

Dear People of Hope,

​​“We interrupt our regularly scheduled program…”

As a kid, this usually brought many groans from me, especially if it was a speech. I want to watch my favorite TV show! Of course, the groans might disappear when faced with an interruption that was startling or sad, but as a child, I would still feel the disruption of what I thought my time in front of the television would be. Interruptions may bring all kinds of thoughts and emotions.

Holy Week sometimes feels like an interruption to our regularly scheduled program. Suddenly, it interrupts our typical week and asks for our attention — Do we really have the time to stop? Do we have the time or the energy to walk from Palm Sunday to Maundy Thursday to Good Friday to Easter? 

I think that is one of the gifts – that our regularly scheduled programming is interrupted. We immerse ourselves in gathering together with prayer and song and Scripture. We do not know what to expect even though we may have done this before. We seek a new understanding and a new encounter with Christ. We may follow a rhythm familiar to us, but that nonetheless disrupts our daily rhythms. Or, this may be an entirely new experience. We gather and gather again, asking that God interrupt our thoughts and lives. 

I encourage you to join us for Holy Week and be interrupted! Begin the week on April 2 with Palm Sunday as we mark Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and the events that will lead to his death and resurrection. Come and eat with us on Thursday, April 6, as we hear again Jesus’ commandment to love one another. Sit with us and pray as we hold space for all that we confess and lament in our lives and in our world on Good Friday, April 7. And then…then, celebrate with us the resurrection on Easter!

We interrupt our regularly scheduled program…may it be a Holy interruption.

Peace,
Pastor Liz

​Dear People of Hope,

Often in our public confessions during worship, we leave a moment of silence so that we can name our specific confessions silently before God. Once when I led this prayer, my sister told me that I needed to leave more time for silence. “I wasn’t done yet. I got a loooooong list,” she told me. 

If we’re being honest, we’ve all got looooong lists, even longer if we added those things we don’t know we’ve done or left undone. Public confession can be a reminder that we are all in the same boat. We are all in need of forgiveness and grace. I am just as much in need of God’s grace as my neighbor standing next to me. They are just as much in need of God’s grace as me. Public confession gives us an opportunity to acknowledge this together as a community. 

Public confession can also become just words we say, but reflect very little on. Like any tradition, we can lose sight of its meaning as we stumble through the words and hope to get to the part of the service we like better. We can also have mixed feelings about it - is it intended to simply make us feel guilty or unworthy? Or is something more meaningful or powerful at work when we say these words together?

There is another form of confession as well. We don’t always talk so openly about individual confession, but it is also available to us. Sometimes we need another person to hear our confession. I have experienced, both as the one confessing and the one hearing confession, the importance of naming out loud to another person what is heavy on our hearts.  As your pastor, I am also here to hold that space for you – not only in the community of worship, but in the holiness of listening. 
 
We are entering the season of Lent. Lent is often a time where we focus on the importance of repentance and reorientation in our lives. One way we do this is through confession. And in doing so, we hear the words of forgiveness spoken over us. God forgives. There is life-giving forgiveness to be found, as we seek together, all of us in need, all of us received by God. 
I hope you’ll join us this Lent as we gather together to confess, to pray, to sing and to seek. Seek and you will find God’s mercy. Again and again.

Peace,
Pastor Liz

​Dear People of Hope, 

There’s a phrase that the late Christian writer Rachel Held Evans would often say: “On the days when I believe…” It is a phrase I love. It acknowledges that doubt and questioning is a part of our journey. There are days when we “believe,” and there are days when we don’t. There are days when we feel secure in what we believe, and there are days when it is hard to say what we believe. 

And whether we grew up in the church or not, we likely have all kinds of questions that show up for us in worship, Bible study, and life. They are not always questions of doubt, but a desire to understand with more clarity and greater knowledge. Sometimes they are questions we are afraid to ask – doesn’t everybody else know the answer??? (Chances are lots of people around us are wondering the same thing.) They may be as simple as, “why do we do that thing we do every week in worship?” Or, get more nuanced: “What is salvation?” They may be questions of theology (what we say about God), or anthropology (what we say about humans), or the Bible, or ethics, or day-to-day living. So many questions! So many possibilities!

For the season of Lent, we will be meeting around a meal on Wednesday nights to explore questions. We still have some time before Lent begins, but I share this with you now so that you can share your questions with me. In the narthex (Why do we call the space outside the sanctuary “narthex”? That’s a good question!) is a box with index cards. I invite you to write down your questions and place them in the box. What are you wondering about? What would be good to discuss with others? We may not get to every question in Lent, but we will get the conversation started!

Seek and you will find. Questions are a gift. They help us grow. May we be a courageous space where we are welcome to ask questions and receive the companionship of fellow seekers along the way. 

Peace, 
Pastor Liz

Dear People of Hope,

As I reflected on what might be our congregation’s theme for the new year, a phrase bubbled up: “Seek and you will find.” An irony because I was seeking a theme…but a message that sent me to my Bible to read the Gospel of Luke. Jesus says, “And I tell you: Ask and you will receive. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened to you.” (Luke 11:9) These words are spoken not too long after the disciples ask Jesus to “teach us to pray,” and Jesus gives them the words of the Lord’s prayer. Jesus continues by describing us as ones who can pray with persistence, brashness or shamelessness, and shares an image of God the Creator as a parent who is generous in response to the needs of the children. The whole passage is also about the gift of the Holy Spirit — that as we ask, seek, and knock, we are given what we need – that is, God! We are shaped and formed by the Spirit. 
That’s a lot, right? Just coming from some words that bubbled up…seek and you will find.
This is our theme for 2023: Seek and You will Find. It is always the invitation, throughout our life, but there is goodness in making it our focus for a year. What deep longing of and for God is present in you? In what ways are you being invited to “ask, seek, knock?” What amazing promise we are given that when we do, we will receive, find and be opened to!
In this past year, we began a new ministry of offering prayer during communion on the first Sunday of the month. This is an opportunity to bring concerns, burdens, griefs, needs, hopes or whatever is on our hearts and minds to God, alongside and through the prayers of siblings in Christ. For the month of January, we will offer this every Sunday. I encourage you to let it be the start of a year of asking, seeking and knocking. May we as a community be shaped and re-formed again and again in our seeking. May we find the goodness of God in our midst. May the will of God be done and may the kingdom of God come among us. May we seek and find.

Peace be with you,
Pastor Liz

​Dear People of Hope,

As I am writing this, I am watching the sun, low in the sky and shining for the few hours it will today. The winter months are filled with these long nights and can awaken feelings of sadness, loneliness and melancholy. Which is why I am also sitting in front of a happy light! At the same time, the winter can be an invitation to join creation in a long rest. Whether our plans are completely disrupted by a winter storm or we must physically slow down our walk to trudge through the heaps of snow, we join the earth of the northern hemisphere in discovering what goodness comes out of the darkness of rest, renewal and preparing for new life. 

My hope is that you will find the rhythm of Advent as you prepare for Christmas. May you take notice of your longings and hopes that may have been lost to your senses in the summer bustle. May you discover God dwelling with you in any feelings of sadness or loneliness that emerges. May you slow down and encounter Christ in the eyes of those you meet and in the quiet cold air that fills your lungs. May this be a season of preparation even as it is also a season of joy. 

And I hope that you will join us in community as we near Christmas together. We hope to worship with you, share meals together and celebrate with joy!

God’s peace be with you, 
Pastor Liz

​The ministries of a congregation are often determined by the gifts of those in the congregation. A good indication of what God is calling us to is what God has equipped us for! For this reason, we can always expect that our life together will change and grow in different ways over the years, as we ourselves change and grow. The longer we have been a part of this congregation, we have probably seen a lot of changes! And if we are new to this congregation, we can expect that our very presence will change LCOH because we have our own gifts and callings to offer from God.

We are experiencing change and growth at Lutheran Church of Hope and this year’s theme has been “Called and Appointed.” We want to explore together more and more what God is calling us to. This may mean new ministries or it may mean a renewal in ministries that already exist. I would like to highlight some areas that we may need to discern together and that you may consider if God is calling you to get involved:

1. Children and Youth Ministry: So much has shifted for us since the pandemic. We no longer have Sunday School during the service. Our kids in Heavenly Sunshine have grown up and are now in Confirmation. We are currently working on an area in the sanctuary (a “prayground”) for our littlest ones, but how else might we serve and minister to our children and young people? This is a part of our commitment to them when they are baptized. Is this something God is calling you to?

2. Providing meals at Clare House: This ministry has occurred for a long time, but in recent years it has struggled to have enough volunteers. In its current setup, it is a big job for one person to sign up to provide a meal, but there may be possibilities for someone to organize the job so that it is shared by many people. How can we make this a sustainable ministry? Or is it no longer a ministry we are called to do?

3. Community Organizing: LCOH has been a part of AFACT (Anchorage Faith & Action Congregations Together) for a long time. This organization has now merged with another to form JOIN (Justice Organizing Interfaith Network). This is an excellent way to get involved in our community and to engage in God’s calling to “do justice.” Are you interested in participating in a team to listen, learn and address the needs of our neighbors?

4. Artistry, Creativity, Crafts: In the past, we have had sewing circles and quilting groups. There may be new interest in forming groups to learn and practice these skills. Are you interested in such a group? Would you participate or help to lead?

In addition to these areas, there are so many other aspects of our lives together! They fill the pages of this newsletter. And there may be new projects, groups or ministries that the Spirit has been placing on your mind and heart. There may be others who are experiencing the same promptings! We can pray about it together and follow the Spirit’s lead as we change and grow together. 

Let’s start and continue a conversation together: What needs to rest or end? What needs attention and fertilization? What is growing with abundance? What do we see God doing in our midst? How can we get involved?

Peace,
Pastor Liz

Two older nuns, their lives dedicated to ministry, grasped the hands of the preacher in gratitude for hearing the Word of God from a woman. 

A young boy, after hearing God referred to as a girl, argued “God is not a girl. God is a boy.”

A young girl argued the same. 

A woman cried while hearing a sermon on the lost significance of Mary Magdalene in Church history. 

A scholar shared her emotional experience of seeing the Black Madonna for the first time and proclaimed, “I am sacred.”

A man, with a difficult relationship with his earthly mother, shared that a sermon on “Mother God” was a comforting and healing Word for him.
​
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God is no gender. God is all genders. God transcends gender. All our names for God, and all our images for God, and all our descriptions never adequately capture who God is. God is Mystery. God is Other. But God also desires to be known by us. And if we are each created in the image of God, to know God is also to come to know ourselves and to know others.

So we keep finding the words. We keep searching for images and metaphors: Father, Mother, Refuge, Shelter, Fire, Rock, Wind…. We seek God and we seek the words to describe what we are seeking! As these brief stories show, it is important to keep expanding our vocabulary, our pictures and our stories. It is important to deepen our understanding and widen our gaze. It is important to recover what we may have lost and gain what we never knew we needed. For us and for our children. 

For this reason, we will be venturing into something new at Lutheran Church of Hope. Dr. Wil Gafney – a Hebrew biblical scholar, Episcopal priest, former Army chaplain and pastor in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church – has translated and compiled a new lectionary, “A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church.” A lectionary appoints Scripture to be read for each Sunday of the year. We most often use the Revised Common Lectionary. In the past, LCOH has also used the Narrative Lectionary. A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church seeks to share more stories of women in the Bible than previous lectionaries, uncover and center feminine language in translations, and listen to Scripture in a new way. 

I am so very excited to enter this journey of Scripture with you! And I am really thrilled to be preaching from these texts. We will begin at the start of the Church Year – Advent on Sunday, November 27th. If you would like to know more about Dr. Wil Gafney’s work in creating this lectionary, we will be discussing and learning about it on Wednesday nights, Nov 2 - 16, at 6:30pm. Just a month away!

To get our juices flowing now, consider for yourself: What are images that resonate with you? What are words or names that you use to describe God? What have been the stories that have been important to your understanding of who God is and who you are?

I’d love to hear about them!

Peace,
Pastor Liz

It has been three weeks since I’ve been present for worship at LCOH. I was first on vacation, and then I missed two Sundays due to a COVID-19 infection (and am doing much better!). And this one thing is very true – I miss you all. 

I loved my time away on vacation, and it was very needed. And I slept and watched a lot of TV (hello Harry Potter movie marathon!) while I was sick. As I gingerly return to my everyday practices and tasks, I am most looking forward to greeting you on Sunday - seeing smiling eyes, singing songs, sharing jokes and hearing what is going on in your lives. 

My rhythm has been disrupted, and will probably not get back into full swing immediately, but I know it will come back. I will find it. Just as I am continuing to find a rhythm that works since the pandemic disrupted our lives. Disruptions of all kinds happen, and every time, it is good to find a (new or old) rhythm that nurtures, sustains and connects. 

I hope that you, too, are seeking and finding a rhythm that nurtures, sustains and connects as we continue to recover collectively from the disruptions of the last few years. And I hope that if you have fallen out of the rhythm of in-person worship, you will start joining us again so that we can see your smiling eyes, sing songs, share jokes and hear what is going on in each other’s lives. 

Because I need you! Truly. After three Sundays away, I am going to set multiple alarms to wake myself up on Sunday so that I can see you. You are a part of a rhythm that I need. 

Peace be with you,
Pastor Liz

I love this quote from Father Gregory Boyle in Tattoos on the Heart: “Here is what we seek: a compassion that can stand in awe at what the poor have to carry rather than stand in judgment at how they carry it.”
​
I’ve been considering that quote this week in relation to the recent overturning of Roe v. Wade, and I am altering it slightly for this moment – Here is what we seek: a compassion that can stand in awe at what those whose bodies are capable of pregnancy carry rather than stand in judgment at how they carry it.

Pregnancy arises and exists in complex situations. I could never fully capture the realities of individuals, their partners and their families. I could never fully take in what I have heard and witnessed in what others have carried. 

I value the life and potential for human life of a fetus. I have held others’ stories of excitement and joy at each ultrasound and image of life growing in the womb. I have witnessed the wondrous and scary complicated births of my nephews. I have held others’ stories of deep grief around miscarriages and stillbirths of wanted pregnancies – grief over life lost. I value the life and potential for life of women, trans men and non-binary people. I have held others’ stories of supportive families, life-giving relationships, joyful milestones, triumph over struggles, and growing self-knowledge. I have held others’ stories of abusive relationships, health complications, lack of family or social support, economic struggle, shaming by others, sexual assault, and pain caused by sexism and other injustices. All stories potentially made more complicated by pregnancies. Since the removal of the right to safe and legal abortion, I have listened to the news reports of woman after woman who suddenly feel even more vulnerable and marginalized in their situations today. And I stand in awe of what they must carry. And I weep for the ways we as a community have asked them to now carry it - without the protected ability to discern and make judgment for oneself in relation to one’s health, circumstances, ethical agency, and relationship with others. 

I have used the word “them,” and yet it is “us,” too. I have a body that can give birth. While I have not experienced pregnancy, I have experienced the disdain and shaming placed on bodies like mine, as well as the sense of powerlessness when agency is stripped away, pressured or questioned. As a woman and as a pastor, I desire to see my community arise to answer the ethical question of what we owe to one another – how we will support and value women and those who can become pregnant; how we will value the life in the womb by supporting life outside the womb in tangible, physical, life-giving ways through healthcare, childcare, parental leave, and living wages; how we will give accurate, truthful information and access to contraception; how we will hold and listen to each others’ stories with compassion and without judgment; how we will walk with one another in the midst of difficult situations; how we will create safe spaces for courageous sharing; and how we will honor each other by respecting each one’s agency and decision-making. 

We are called to “bear one another’s burdens” (Galatians 6:2). And so I do not want us to only stand in awe of what others must carry, but to lend our shoulder, our back, our arms, our lives in bearing the weight of what they must carry. If you are angry, afraid, and grieving today, know this: we are not left powerless. The Spirit breathes in us and unites us in community. We are yoked to Christ, whose burden is light, while the world’s burden is heavy. We are empowered to fully know and live into our calling as people of God in every situation. We are sent to live alongside others in the midst of their burdens, to witness against unjust laws, to speak to and experience God’s abundant life, and with power, to love. Love, love, love.

Peace be with you,
Pastor Liz

If you desire conversation, prayer or pastoral care regarding this recent Supreme Court decision, please do not hesitate to reach out to me.

You may read Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton’s statement here.