Happy New Year, 2019!

Happy New Year!

May the Beloved Three in One bless this new year with wonder, beauty, and joy—holy moments that cause you to catch your breath in awe. One of my favorites in 2018 is Sue Holland becoming a part of staff in February while she waited for call and her ordination. It has been a joy to see how life unfolds. God keeps watch over all, especially this congregation here in Half Moon Bay. On January 6, we will vote to extend a call to Sue as Associate Pastor here. I’ve asked her to share call story. Watching and waiting for God with you in 2019, Pastor Dawn

Following the Light

In January, the twelve days of Christmas concludes with the celebration of Epiphany, the revelation of Christ to the world and we read the story of the Magi who followed the star, first to Jerusalem and then on to Bethlehem in search of the newborn king. I’ve often thought about the story of the Magi. Matthew’s Gospel doesn’t give us many details about their trip before they reach Jerusalem other than to say that they noticed an unusual star rising in the east. Our traditional Christmas nativity sets conflate Luke’s account of Jesus’ birth with Matthew’s and place the Magi around the manger in the stable alongside the shepherds and the heavenly host, but if we continue reading Matthew’s account, the Magi tell King Herod that the star appeared as much as two years before they arrived in Jerusalem and before they find the child Jesus in a house with his mother. And so I wonder about the Magi. Surely a new star in the sky would have been visible to many people and certainly would have caught the eye of all those claiming to be astrologers, which is a more accurate translation of Magi than kings. What was it about this twinkling light that caught their eye and maybe more importantly, what was it that prompted them to set out on a two year journey? And what did that journey look like? Was it a straight line from their observatory somewhere in the east to Jerusalem or did they wander about, making discoveries along the way, and even needing the unlikely help of anti-heroes like Herod to lead them to the babe in Bethlehem? And when they finally found the child, the newborn king whose birth they were convinced had been heralded by the cosmos with this mother (and not a royal entourage) in a house (and not a palace), did they find what they had expected? And then after that initial encounter with joy, was the quest over?

In many ways, I feel like the journey of the Magi could be a metaphor for my own faith
pilgrimage. I was baptized a Lutheran as a young child and taught about Jesus, the light of the world but left the church in my teenage years because I didn’t experience that light in that place.

My high school and college years were spent, as I can see in retrospect, searching for something; practicing Buddhism for a brief period of time and attending other churches with friends, but primarily focusing on my studies and my career as a systems engineer. After graduating from college, I married but my marriage fell apart by the time I was 30. From the deep darkness of that period, I saw a twinkle of hope when I was introduced to a group of young professionals from St. John’s Lutheran in NY who welcomed me into their circle and gave me a home. There was peace and love in this community, and I remember thinking, “I don’t understand what these people have, but whatever it is, I want it.”
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When Bill (who I was dating at the time and would eventually marry) and I were transferred to North Carolina, I searched for a similar community and was welcomed by what would become my home congregation, Christ the King Lutheran Church. It wasn’t until shortly after Sam, my second son was born and required surgery at the tender age of four weeks that I realized that what I was desperately searching for was to have God with me. Pastor Ray of CTK baptized Sam on the operating table before his operation and stayed with Bill and me until the surgery was over. Through Pastor Ray’s presence, I could feel the comfort of the Spirit. Months later, another crisis would lead me to pray and this time, I felt God speak directly to my heart and I was overwhelmed with a feeling of peace and love.
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From that time on, I have been hungry to know God better. I began attending Bible study at CTK and in my neighborhood and exploring the scriptures. In some of the studies I participated in, I once again encountered some of the same troubling theologies that had driven me from the church as a youth. This time, however, instead of walking away, I found myself more committed to getting to know this God that I had fallen in love with. This was what led me to take my first classes at Duke Divinity School.

At the same time, participating in the life of the church helped me to see God’s power in action. I felt the movement of the Spirit when the women of CTK were ignited by the Spirit to help our sister church in Malawi feed the orphans of the AIDs epidemic there. The campaign we initiated to raise a modest amount of money took on a life of its own and raised over three times that much. As a Stephen Minister (a lay person trained to provide spiritual care), I’ve walked on “holy ground” with people facing divorce, marital strife, illness and grief. As a chaplain intern, I’ve felt the love of God pass through me as I held the hand of a scared, lonely man awaiting surgery. And in worship, I have felt the power of God’s love, inclusion and forgiveness in the sacrament of Holy Communion. I keep finding God and Jesus in unexpected places: in people who were just like me, in people very different from me, in little kids, in the elderly, in the sick, in the poor, in a new state on the other side of the country, in wine and bread; and I keep discovering that the Spirit is always one step ahead of me. And with each step of the journey, I find myself compelled to continue to seek Jesus and to invite others to “come and see.”

Through it all, I have felt a call to use my gifts and experiences in God’s service to speak God’s word of love and inclusion to a suffering world, and to offer myself as a vehicle through which God can reveal God’s love to a world filled with fear and hate. One step has led to another: from those first classes at Duke Divinity School, to applying to the Master of Divinity Program there, to applying to be a candidate for ordination in the Evangelical Lutheran Church and then completing a Master of Sacred Theology at Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary and a year of internship at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Durham, N.C. Each step of the journey has had its challenges but has also been filled with unexpected joys. This past year, it has been a pleasure to journey with all of you here at Coastside Lutheran. Like the communities at St. John’s, CTK and St. Paul’s, I have seen the movement of the Spirit and have experienced the love of Christ here. And, just like the Magi, I have been filled with joy. As we again
approach Epiphany, I can’t wait to see how the journey continues.

In Christ’s love, Pastor Sue