This week I’ve been working on a summary of the mission and disaster work that we as a congregation have done over the past year, and I thought you might like to see what we’ve been up to. 

1.       We continue to contribute $1000 and about 10 bags of groceries to the NCHO each month. 

2.       We collect and donate medical equipment for Global Links. 

3.       We collect and donate used glasses for the Lions’ Club.

4.       We collect and donate household, laundry, and personal hygiene items for Crisis Center North.

5.       We collect and donate clothes and other items for the North Side Feeding Program.

6.       We (and the M&Ms in particular) have done several short term projects, including blankets for the homeless, cleaning items for flood buckets for the Mission Barn, and contributions for medical bills for a congregation member. 

7.       We have our yet-to-be-counted Lenten Coin Collection, all of which will be donated to pay down the mortgage of the the new Mission Barn location.  Speaking of which, if you forgot to bring your coins on Easter, as I did, please bring them this Sunday so we can tally them all together and share the good work!

But let’s resist our impulse to skip to Easter morning, to “brightside” everything.  In seeing what actually took place before that morning, there is, for some of us, something deeply reassuring in knowing that Jesus, too, faced painful and difficult things.  That Jesus knew how dark life could be, and that his resolve and his willingness to share even in the depths of our lives affirms in itself just how beloved we are. 

And as I was reminded this week, there is something deeply important about the act of bearing witness.  I was in conversation with a woman whose work concerns end-of-life issues for cancer and ALS patients.  She cannot “fix” their situations, but she can be with them—bear witness to the realities of their lives.  So let us bear witness to these final days of Jesus, honoring the work that Jesus does, even to the crucifixion.  Easter will come, but first we have this week. 

I invite you to our Good Friday service, if you can make it—in it, we will bear witness.  And then, after the quiet of Saturday, we’ll celebrate the resurrection on Easter morning.  I’ll see you in church—

Becky

Prayer

Gracious God, we thank you

For a love so deep and true that you refused to isolate yourself from our pain.

You stand with us,

Showing us that you know what it is to feel pain,

            physically, emotionally, and even socially.

You seek us even when we turn away from you,

Even when we are the ones who hurt you. 

We are grateful for your love

            and for your persistence.

Enable our ability to respond to you.

Form us in ways that enable us to see you as you should be seen.

Teach us how to live in that awareness

            and to return your love wholeheartedly,

And to share it with the world.  Amen. 

Within Christianity as well as Judaism, the Psalms have always had a special place—as you can see simply from those little palm-sized books of scripture that get handed out sometimes, and typically include the New Testament and the Psalms.  In the Roman Catholic tradition, the Benedictines incorporate the Psalms in their worship such that they recite every Psalm every single month. 

I’ve been thinking this week about how there’s still so much anger, and even bitterness, about how things “turned out” after the most difficult part of the pandemic—both inside and outside of churches.  About losses, and change, and shifting ground. 

I see the grief behind that anger, and some wishing for things to be “the way they were.”  And I get it.  I liked that we had a little more confidence back then, more of a sense that we could control the way things turned out.  We still have a voice, of course, and an ability to act, but we’re more aware now that even in a culture in which we can push buttons to make some things happen, there are still many things that are not under our control. 

I love to watch British TV shows, especially British mysteries.  Father Brown, Death in Paradise, the old Miss Marple series—I love them all.  I think I like them because they look at real human troubles, not all of which can be solved but many of which can still be addressed.  However messy the story gets, the detective still maintains that some things are worth doing, or worth responding to.  Some standards matter, even in the mess of life. 

One of my professors at seminary was the Rev. Dr. Steven Tuell, who is now retired but still writes about the Old Testament, or, as he preferred to say, the Hebrew Bible.  He happened to post some commentary recently about one of this week’s Bible passages, Genesis 12:1-4a, in which God sends Abram to what we later learn is Israel.  It’s the beginning of that whole set of stories in which God chooses a people, starting with Abram and his family.  Dr. Tuell writes:

 “It is tempting for us, with the benefit of biblical hindsight, to think that this passage marks the beginning of Abram’s singular, goal-oriented pursuit of God’s promises: that he would find a homeland, become prosperous, and have many children. But our text cannot support such a reading.

I recently read an article which called patience “a long obedience in the same direction.”  The author, Samuel Wells, wants to remind us that patience doesn’t necessarily mean just waiting, passively and inactively.  This is especially important for our Christian lives:  we know the world is not yet right, that sin continues, that wars are happening, that grief affects all of us at some point.  We, as Christians, are waiting for better things, and we trust that they are coming. 

But we don’t wait passively.  We continue to pray, and to act, and to love. 

Lent is many things, but one of the things is noticing.  It might be noticing that your life is actually pretty good:  you might not worry about where your daily meals are coming from, or whether you’ll have a roof over your head.  You have many friends, and you get to go out for social time and food or drinks of some sort.  You have transportation to church, and to the grocery store. 

And in the midst of all of this noticing, and the gratitude that comes after noticing, you’ll likely remember that not everyone has all of those things.  Which is not an invitation to guilt, because food and housing security is what we want for everyone.  And this is where the invitation comes in.

February Greetings!

This week I’d like to invite you to think about community.  In Scripture we see the people of God referred to as the Body of Christ, and there are many things we can say about that, but for today, let’s focus on the body as one.  We, together, are this thing:  individually we may have many differences, whether of skill or opinion or temperament, but collectively, together we make up the community that is the body of Christ. 

Our individual congregation is only one instance of this—and we here and now are also only a part of the larger body, the worldwide body of all believers throughout time.  But I’d like to invite you to think about how that unity applies here, locally. 

I keep up with a variety of calendars and almanacs, as a way of being mindful of people and events from our history.  Rosa Parks came up this week, and her story is well worth a little of your time.  She was a Christian woman, whose faith was important to her:  she wanted to love her enemies AND stand up for what is right.  Her life invites us all to consider the courage of simple, everyday actions, and how they can lead to change.    The following is from the SALT almanac: 

February 4 is the birthday of Rosa Parks, born in Tuskegee, Alabama, in 1913. In the 1940s and 50s, she served as secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP, working as a civil rights organizer and activist.  

This week we decided to share this prayer with you instead of the usual ponderings. See you this Sunday at 10AM!

Click below to view prayer.

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.

This week I want to share with you from my own reading, part of a thoughtful and moving piece by Alison VanBuskirk Philip, a United Methodist pastor in New Jersey.  It’s a short piece about how the church “works,” as we come together. 

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.