What a strange January we’re having! After such a frigid cold Christmas, we suddenly have relative warmth. We’re back to ordinary time after the holidays (holy days), and much as we love the celebrations, there’s usually a sense of relief at getting back to the calm.
I’m right there—having loved and celebrated Christmas, I’m now relieved and enjoying the relative calm.
I’ve been thinking lately about how much the church has been affected by the consumer model that surrounds us: what do I get for what I give? I’m not actually talking about money here, but time. We expect a “return on our investment”—we expect to “get” something for going to church. And mostly, I hope that’s true: I hope that you get something out of the time you spend in worship and in study with your fellow Christians.
But what about the times when you don’t? What if you leave the church building feeling essentially unmoved, or unchanged? Because that can happen to us, sometimes.
This week is my very favorite part of Christmas these days: the projects are over, the shopping is done, there’s plenty of food left, and we can just relax and enjoy the lights on the tree. If you know me, you know I’ll be reading a book as I sit by that tree, basking in the quiet. My kids love games, so in the evenings, if they’re home, we might be found in the dining room, gathered around some complicated board game that they understand better than I do.
With Advent we began a new church year, but in our secular calendar the year is coming to a close—one foot in the new year, one foot in the old. New beginnings and saying goodbye, all at once.
But that kind of both-and is a constant part of Christian life, if you think about it. We know that Jesus came to be with us and to save us, but we also know that we are waiting for the next step, when all will be made new. And sometimes the waiting is very difficult, in a world full of events that make it clear how broken so many things still are. And so we pray, we wait, we hope, we work.
A word about Advent, from scholar Matt Skinner. Let us tell the truth; let us bear witness.
Christianity is, at root, an Advent religion. That is, [we are, in our time,] in a cleft where promise and fulfillment don’t quite meet. Our experiences situate us there, too, as people keenly aware that our institutions are full of prejudices but resistant to healing. And yet we stick to a different narrative, a hopeful narrative. We don’t believe God leaves the world to its own pernicious and violent devices. We never stop expecting new life to break onto the scene. We have work to do, but we simultaneously recognize it as God’s work done on God’s terms. We try to live in a peculiar combination of patience and urgency. Different New Testament authors characterize our sense of “in-betweenness” in different ways; the variety in our scriptures respects the nebulousness of our circumstances.
Advent is all about the waiting. We anticipate. Those of us who already know what’s coming—those of us who are already Christian—are lucky enough to know that the darkness will end, that it will only stay dark for a little while, and that then the light will come.
Right now in church we’re recognizing the “not yet,” the fact that the world has not yet fully been made new. We notice the darkness, and the need. But we do it in faithful anticipation, that God is faithful and that God’s promise will be fulfilled. We sing, “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” and “Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus,” because we trust that in God’s good time, the work will be finished and the world made new.
And in the meantime, even as we worship and wait, we anticipate in other ways: . . .
Halfway through Advent, I was finally able to track down where the Advent study books were shipped. In spite of my entering the new address, the computer system evidently overrode my entry in favor of the church I was serving before—such a frustration when I had ordered in a timely way!
Sometimes our plans are like that: well-thought-out, even well-executed, and yet something still manages to surprise and to interfere.
I wonder if Joseph might have felt that way, before the visitation from the angel. He had all of his ducks in a row, had followed the appropriate cultural protocols for finding a wife, had chosen Mary and become betrothed. And then . . .
Even as I know how complicated and sometimes very difficult early American history is, I love what Thanksgiving is now. I love the invitation to celebrate all of the gifts we have, and the people we love, and simply to gather—no gifts necessary. We might eat a little too much, but it’s a festival everyone can participate in.
That said, precisely because it’s a time of gathering, Thanksgiving can be a tricky time of year for those of us who miss family or friends who have died, especially if the death was recent. Or for people far from home, or unable to travel. And it’s tricky as well for families with more conflict than they can handle, or with difficult members. So say a prayer for each other and for your community as you gather around the table, and look around you to see if someone you know might need an invitation.
November is always an excellent time to talk about Stewardship. Even outside of the church walls, we’re planning ahead for next year even as we are giving thanks for many of the gifts we’ve received this year, and heading towards the close of the calendar year. Awareness of our blessings and planning for a new year actually make for a great mix—that simultaneous awareness of our responsibility and our giftedness is exactly how we should live our lives. So as you think about the grocery list for Thanksgiving and the gift lists for Christmas, take a minute to evaluate how you might help your church’s mission in the coming year, and please bring your pledge card on Sunday if you can. Many of them have already been received, and we plan to have a moment of blessing and celebration during the service.
As we move toward the end of this calendar year, and even as we rush headlong into the holidays, as a church we need also to be thinking about next year. We’ll be considering the budget—which is one expression of our goals and priorities—and making plans.
The tricky part of making plans, of course, is refusing to let the past hold back the future. And this is especially tricky when we liked the past. Maybe we preferred it to the present. Let’s be honest: most of us do, in this time after (we hope) the worst of Covid. We liked assuming that we were neither especially vulnerable nor likely to be a vector of disease toward someone else more vulnerable than we are. We liked the freedom and security we used to feel. We liked what things used to look like.
However . . .
In November, we often think of gathering. In our location, we don’t have the same agricultural rhythms that sustain farming communities, that daily awareness of bringing the harvest home while it is ripe and ready and before bad weather sets in, but we do still have some primitive internal response to the nip in the air and to the cold winds, sending us homeward. And we also have the annual rhythms of the calendar of our culture, prompting us to think about family and feasting and thankfulness.
I heard a talk last night on pastoring, from a professor of mine from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. Dr. Owens always stretches me. I prefer to think of to-do lists and goals and tasks accomplished, and he invites me to take a little time to just sit in God’s presence. For me, and I imagine for some of you, it is very difficult to sit still sometimes.
His talk was about pastoring after the pandemic, and some of the things we should consider. I’ll be thinking about his talk for some time, but here’s one aspect I thought I’d bring to you this week; it’s time to step back from our ideas of the way things are “supposed” to be.
My current morning reading is for my clergy community, from Mindy Caliguire’s Discovering Soul Care. This morning’s passage started like this:
Transformation occurs through a joint effort between God, who supplies the power, the love, the knowledge and the vision, and each one of us, who bring nothing more to the table than our openness and willingness.
Caliguire wants to remind us that our relationship with God is not all about work and activity—it’s not all about us applying our efforts. We Methodists love to “do,” and while applying ourselves can be useful and effective for many things, and even for some aspects of our life with God, we also can be confident that God is always seeking us, always reaching out. So, sometimes, all we need to do is receive.
This past weekend I spent three and half days with other clergy, thinking and talking about church plants and revitalization—and it was good. Covid has forced churches from around the country to think and talk about what’s next, and while it’s difficult work, it’s also a blessing. We have a clean slate—a fresh start. And we can do the work to make sure it’s a good one.
I’m heading out tomorrow for an “immersion retreat” called Rooted. It’s a small, focused Methodist conference that D.S. Ackley-Killian nominated me for, about building the church from wherever we find ourselves. I’m looking forward to many conversations about what’s reaching different groups now, and how to build on that.
On the Sabbath, we remember that we receive, as well as work and give. We take time to remember and spend time with the God who created us, and who creates all things, including the food we eat and the air we breathe and the time we inhabit. Even though what we do matters, the world’s running does not depend on us.
This week we’re gearing up for the Meet the Pastor event on Sunday—we’ll worship together and then have refreshments after. I’m really looking forward to it, to meeting some people who haven’t been able to make it back yet.
In my reading and preparation for this week I came across this definition of community: community is people who know you and whose stories you know. That’s the kind of community we already have at McKnight, and it’s one of the blessings of a small-to-medium church: it really is possible to know your entire church community.
I started a new Parables class at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary this week. Theoretically I’m done with seminary—I do have my M.Div.—but I miss that particular challenge. Plus it was a chance to take another class with a favorite professor, even if I’m auditing this one in order to make sure that it only adds to and doesn’t take time from my primary focus on McKnight, where we’re starting to see some new things come together!
My office is in good order, and we’ve been quietly working on making the upstairs even more welcoming to families, because I heard your interest in including new families in our outreach efforts.