I hope you are all keeping warm during this cold, snowy week!  Please let me or the church office know if you have any needs that we can help you address in this weather, as we know that it is not easy for everyone to get around in the snow. 

Here at church, I am finalizing my ordination papers (one more paper to proof!), and I will send both an email and a paper copy of everything later today.  And next week, on the 4th, we have our site visit scheduled—all are welcome.  We’ll start at 5:00, have dinner at 6:30, and you’ll have an opportunity to speak with the District Superintendent as well as the ordination site-visit committee about how things are going in church.  Church Council members are especially encouraged to attend, if possible. 

Please keep an eye out for announcements regarding Sunday’s events – both worship and our visit from Dr. Creach, who is scheduled to speak with us about the Psalms.  He prefers to speak in-person, so if it is not safe to meet for worship that day, we are likely to also reschedule his visit. 

This is turning into a cold January!  Council has been discussing church this Sunday, as it is predicted to be quite cold, and there are varying predictions of exactly how much snow there will be.  No decisions have yet been made—we all know how changeable Pittsburgh weather can be—but however the weather turns out, please stay safe on Sunday, and remember that services can be streamed via Facebook. 

For what is going on in the church, I invite you to look further into this newsletter.  As has already been announced, we will have the Rev. Dr. (and Professor!) Jerome Creach come and speak to us about the Psalms on February 1st, and I am in conversation with Barry Steiner-Ball, who is the bishop’s husband and a retired law enforcement officer, about coming to speak to us about drug addiction.  As you can see already, topics will vary.  These are good opportunities to invite friends to church, too—whether or not they choose to come to the event or afterward to worship, it is a good thing to make the world aware of the church’s work, both in itself and in the world around us. 

Part of the ordination process is a site visit by members of the Board of Ordained Ministry.  This is an opportunity for them to speak with you and with me and to see how our ministry is going together.  It has been determined that my site visit will take place here at McKnight, on February 4th, from 5:00-9:00.  We will have dinner together, and I'll do a slide presentation on the Vacation Bible School we did this year, and the board will have a chance to speak with all of us.  The invitation is open to everyone, so if you're planning to come for dinner, please let us know so that we can have enough for everyone. 

I was so happy to see so many of you on Sunday morning when the bishop came to worship with us—I’m glad you all could make it!  Bishop Steiner-Ball is a gifted speaker and a wonderful bishop, and you have now had a chance to see her in action—and she has had a chance to meet us and to see what we have been up to as well! 

I would like to ask your prayer:  I have just finished the first batch of my ordination paperwork, and the next set is due on the 31st.  I have done half of that next set so far.  I keep telling myself to “keep on swimming,” and I think things are going well, but your prayers are still very much appreciated, for me and for all of the other candidates, as well as for the committee that will review our work and interview us. 

Please keep in mind our Love Baskets/Bags as you go about your errands during the week.  These are an excellent opportunity for us to let our shut-ins and some others who have been having a rough time that we love them and that we are thinking about them.  Hand lotion, chocolates, small games or treats are all good options for them.

I’m writing this on a snowy day near the end of December, and thinking back on a busy month of services and of beautiful moments together. Thank you to all of you who participated in our Advent services, either by simply attending or by reading, decorating, ushering, or lighting candles—or anything else! Your love and your service are a gift to the church.  

Thank you to Carla for coordinating our Hanging of the Greens, and for the many participants both in the service itself and in the preparations beforehand. Thank you to the M&M’s for the cookie walk, which was very successful even after a weather delay. Thank you to Jen for preparing the luminaries, and to the people who set them out and lit them on a cold winter night. And finally, thank you to Samantha for creating beautiful posts for our Facebook page, and thank you to Alex and Anna (and Yan!) for the beautiful music for our Christmas Eve service!

As we look forward into January, please note that Bible study starts again not on January 6th, as previously announced, but on the 13th. As my son Matthew was sick over the Christmas break, Wayne and I did not have a chance to travel to see Wayne’s parents after Christmas, and I simply kept on working that week. We will be traveling on the 6th instead and be gone for just a few days.  

I will, however, be back for the service on the 11th, and—great news!—the bishop will be with us that day to give the sermon. I hope that you can all attend, and that you have a chance to meet her. Bishop Steiner-Ball is very interested in all of us in Western Pennsylvania gaining a better sense of our Methodist connectionalism, and so I invited her to come and meet you all.  

As we get closer to day Advent points us toward, the activities are ramping up, the shopping list is (hopefully!) getting shorter, the plans and arrangements are getting firmed up—

Christmas can be a lot!  Take a breath, and know that however your plans turn out, you are beloved by the God of the universe—so much beloved that God came to live with us and show love to us, and to give us hope. 

In the midst of the bustle, I’ll repeat here the invitation to you to come tomorrow night to our Longest Night service, not because you need another thing to do, but because maybe, like me, you need a moment of quiet in this season of rushing around.   And especially come if you need a place not to be merry, but simply to sit in the presence of God, as your real self, amidst all of the ups and downs you’re living with, and maybe also with the memories of the ones you miss, especially now.  

Please also note that since we weren’t able to do our cookie walk last Sunday, we’re doing it this Sunday.  So come to church on Sunday for worship, and for fellowship, and for some lovely treats made by talented and loving bakers! 

I just finished reading The Choice: Embrace the Possible, which is a story of surviving the Holocaust—as well as its aftereffects—by Dr. Edith Eva Eger.  After she is freed from the concentration camp, and some time passes, she eventually moves to the United States and, after some time, becomes a psychologist.  Some of the people she works with are soldiers who have faced unthinkable things, and who have had great losses, and she has great sympathy for them, as well as an experienced understanding of trauma.  

I was deeply moved by her love for the world, and by her continued determination to seek life and hope after so much suffering.  But I was also moved by her interest in the people around her, which persists after life has given her every reason to insulate herself for her own safety.  Near the end of the book, Eger says to the reader, “And here you are.  Here you are!  In the sacred present.” 

Here you are—in the sacred present.  What an excellent reminder of where we exist in time.  Even in the Advent scriptures, which take us into some of the dark and difficult places of the world’s need and its disinterest in healing, there is an assertion that life is sacred—that all of our time belongs to God.  I could not think of a better phrase for this season than the “sacred present.”  Because even if our Scriptures were written long ago, we know that they also describe the humanity of today, which includes us, too. 

On Sunday, I spoke about how Advent “begins the dark”—how, in this time of the year that has actual darkness, as the days get shorter, the lectionary has us thinking about why the world needed Christ to come.  And since we are in the world, too, we know also that we needed Christ to come—and that we still need Christ to come, and so we look forward to Christ coming again.  We Christians hold all of these truths together—because they are the same idea.  We remind ourselves of both of these things every time we have communion, saying together, “Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again.” 

So we hold these two truths together:  the reality of the darkness in the world, and our trust in the coming of God’s light.  We know that whatever mess we human beings—including us Christians—get ourselves into (or have already gotten ourselves into!), we can trust that God, in God’s own time, will set things right.  And we give thanks for all of this, knowing that we, too, need to be set right.  We give thanks both for the grace that we are given, and for the overwhelming love that gave us that grace.   

So I invite you to think about light and dark this Friday, which is the McKnight neighborhood’s Light-Up Night.  One of our church families will be here at church that night, lighting candles in our sanctuary windows and shining a spotlight on the stained glass over our front door.  We do this partly to participate in our neighborhood, simply to be part of our community, but more importantly, we do it because, as Fleming Rutledge says, “The church keeps her lamps burning through the night, because she still expects her Lord.” 

As we give thanks this week, I want to say how thankful I am for this community.  I am always impressed by how you look out for each other and for the church.  I hope that your Thanksgivings are happy, that the stress level is low, and that you are able to find some peace in a busy week.  I’ll see you on Sunday, if you’re in town. 

We had another visitor this week at church, and I was so glad so many of you were there. What a witness to our community is your presence! And what an encouragement and support to each other—it is good to be in the house of the Lord with the fellow members of the body of Christ.

All of which is not to say that I am offering you a guilt trip if you were not there. I trust that each of you makes what decision you can given your own circumstances, and we pray for those of you who watch online or who are traveling, and you are loved.

I do hope, though, that all of us know that when we can attend worship, our presence is a witness and an encouragement to the other members of this community, as well as to people who visit our church, and who are hoping to find a church home.

It is also simply good to participate in worship, because worship is more than an abstract acknowledgement of the God whom we love and serve. Worship is focusing our time and attention on God, and in that very time and attention, and in the words that we say and sing together and meditate on, worship is also formation, shaping us into the people God has called us to be.

As I was reading the Christian Century earlier this week, I came across an article about a specific Eastern Orthodox icon of Christ called Christ Pantocrator, which is an icon of Christ as omniscient and as the “almighty ruler and judge of all humanity.” I don’t know very much about the Eastern Church—only the broadest strokes, really. But curiosity can lead interesting places, so I read on.

The author of the article, Arthur Aghajanian, acknowledges that the idea of Christ as judge makes most modern people pretty uncomfortable—even if they’re Christian. Most of our ideas about being observed come from cameras, especially those installed or used by a government. We Americans worry about those cameras, and about privacy, and sometimes those cameras make us defensive. And this defensiveness can transfer to our sense of God always being aware of us. As Aghajanian says, “No wonder the medieval embrace of divine omniscience seems so alien to us.”

But this sense of defensiveness and that watchfulness is hostile has not always been the case. Aghajanian again: “for early Christians, the ever-watchful gaze of God was not an intrusion; it was a guiding presence that gave life meaning and direction.” In other words, the idea that you and I are and always have been in God’s view can also be felt as a comfort and a steadying presence.

But Aghajanian points out something else as well, about how we process the reality of always being observed electronically: “we don’t tremble or cry out against the faceless judgment of the digital age, because it asks for nothing.” I think he may be missing here all of the ways our data is used for political ends and for profit, but even so, he’s right about this: we feel we can opt out of what is offered in the product of data surveillance. But a person who knows God also knows that God is one from whom we can’t simply turn off the machine in order to retreat.

But hopefully a person who knows God also knows that in that constant presence there is much more than any human enterprise can offer us:

“Unlike the cold calculus of surveillance, divine judgment is not mere observation. The Pantocrator’s gaze unsettles not because it’s oppressive but because it’s intimate. We might attempt to keep God at a distance, safely divided, but the truth is neither so simple nor so comfortable. The One who walked among us, who overturned tables and wept at tombs, is the same who called forth light and set the cosmos in motion.

“To behold Christ Pantocrator is to become aware that love judges—not to condemn but to make whole. The question is no longer whether we are being watched. Every day, we submit to invisible gazes. The question is whether we will recognize the one gaze that truly sees us.”

There is such a thing as judgment, and even if we’re not comfortable when it’s directed at us, we likely know of cases where we want someone to rule something out of order and unacceptable. The genocide in Rwanda. Abuse of children. Stealing money from vulnerable older persons.

God does know everything, and we depend on that because we depend on God making things right, in God’s good time. And we depend on that, because in the end we need God to make us right, to heal us and to redeem the world from the damage we’ve inflicted, both on the world and on each other.

Here at McKnight, for the past two Thursdays, we were privileged to host the Rev. Dr. Ken Woo, professor of Christian history, who came to talk to us about the Nicene Creed and the Council of Nicaea that wrote it. We learned together the history of the questions that the church was debating together at that time, 1700 years ago, and how at its root the Council was trying to discern together how to talk about Jesus and God, given our New Testament scriptures.

We also learned something about the context of those questions, and about Emperor Constantine’s role in pulling the Council together. Constantine’s interest was more about peace in the empire than about questions of faith or scripture, but he had a role to play nonetheless—and from this secular interest came a witness that continues to be important in the church almost 2000 years later.

I heard more than one person say, after both sessions were over, that what we talked about was “mind-blowing.” And it can be—to know that many of the things we now consider obvious were once in question. But the longevity of the outcome tells us that the church in that moment, with God’s help, came together and saw something that God wanted us to see.

And I also think it’s important to see the church as often and throughout history wrestling with questions. We are not the first to wonder how to understand certain Scriptures, or how to live them out in our own context. This kind of wrestling is exactly what the church is to do together (although of course it is not the only thing we are to do together!). We are to listen and to try to understand God’s word together, as well as how to live it out, and this is not always an easy task—which is one of the reasons why it is so important that we come together, in worship and in study, to talk about these things together. Other people’s insights—as well as other people’s questions—can lead us to think with more breadth or depth, even if we don’t necessarily all agree on every point.

As we get deeper into Fall, our planning begins for next year.  Some of you heard Bob Moore’s presentation on Sunday about our current financial outlook, which is what Bob called “a great success” for the second year running.  We’ve reprinted that report for you in this newsletter, so you can see the highlights—there’s some really good news there, and some evidence of good ministry and good stewardship of our resources.   

Also given the season, please consider getting Flu and/or Covid shots this season, whether for you or for the vulnerable ones in our church community.  We do have people in our congregation whose immune systems have been negatively affected by medical treatments, and as Christians concerned for each other and for all of our neighbors, we can consider immunization an act of love.  I was at first reluctant to say anything on this topic, wondering what the fallout might be of writing on it, but then I learned that President Trump had both vaccines at his annual check-up a few weeks ago.  So while there may be different opinions about vaccination, it cannot be called simply a “political” issue.  Please know that I wish only the best for you and for this community, and that you are always free to follow your conscience. 

As we come to the end of the calendar year, we are also planning the next stages of our McKnight Caring activities.  I still have all the sheets that were filled out for us about these ministry possibilities, and am planning to use that feedback in our planning, but if you have a fresh idea or a new opinion, your input is still very welcome.  The papers with our ideas remain on the counter in the narthex for you to look at, but you can also contact me directly if you prefer. 

One of my most loved forms of prayer is one I learned from my pastoral care professor in seminary.  Essentially, I set a timer for 10-15 minutes, depending on the day, and then I simply sit, usually looking out the window—observing the command to “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10).  It is a different kind of prayer than I had learned before seminary—rather than always forming words, for this I simply rest in the presence of God.  The timer is necessary for me because I am often restless, and I feel the call of the many tasks that await my attention.  That 10–15-minute timer helps to set me free from my task list, giving me permission to simply rest in God’s presence.  Nearly everything can wait 15 minutes.  And when I find my mind wandering, I just quietly remind myself, to “be still, and know” that God is God.  

This morning, as I observed this practice sitting in my office, I was watching the trees outside the window, moving in the wind.  There are different tree shapes and different leaf shapes, and the various kinds move differently in the wind.  I could see the complexity and the constant variation of the air currents in those different movements outside my window.  I could see different shades of green, and in contrast, some of yellow.  There were sometimes single leaves blowing through the air, some floating, some tumbling.  It reminded me—a necessary reminder in times of stress or worry about the world—of the vastness and complexity of God’s creation. 

It all made me think of Job 38:4-7, in which we find God speaking directly to Job:

“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
    Tell me, if you have understanding.
Who determined its measurements—surely you know!
    Or who stretched the line upon it?
On what were its bases sunk,
    or who laid its cornerstone
when the morning stars sang together
    and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy? 

It is good, sometimes, simply to be amazed—to be awed, to be drawn into wonder with our Lord.  It is good to see both a wider picture and the details of God’s work, and to see that work continuing in the world.  It is good simply to be reminded of how great our God is.  I wish you some wonder and some awe as you go about your week, that you might know that God is God. 

As some of you may know, I celebrated my first wedding last week, co-officiating with the groom’s father—it was such a delight to see our beautiful sanctuary used for a young couple’s wedding!  They’re from outside our church; she’s a nurse and he’s an engineer, and we wish them all the blessings in their new life together. 

An important upcoming event here at McKnight:  as you know, this year is the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea—from which we get our Nicene Creed.  I am very happy to tell you that the Rev. Dr. Ken Woo, a professor of church history at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, is going to run a 2-session class talking about the Nicene Creed and the council itself, and helping us to understand what was so important about that time.  In light of Dr. Woo’s availability, we’ll have the classes on Thursday October 23rd and Thursday October 30th, both at 7:00 p.m. in the fellowship hall.  I hope you can come—this is a great opportunity!  

In light of these classes, we will delay the start of our Psalms Bible study by two weeks, so we will begin regular Bible study on November 4th.  And speaking of weekly studies, thank you to everyone who read the book While the World Watched for our book study, whether or not you were able to attend the discussions!  The book revealed much about both the realities and the consequences of living during the Civil Rights era, and is well worth reading.  As soon as I am done with the study at Epworth (which started later than the one here), I will be putting my copy into the church library so that anyone who missed it can still read it. 

I was reading an article this morning about how to measure vitality in small to mid-sized churches.  In the article, Dr. Lewis Parks suggests that even in an often fast-changing context, there are five markers of a vital church: 

1.       The congregation maintains vital worship of God. 

2.       The congregation is a surrogate family.

3.       The congregation is a blessing to the community where it finds itself. 

4.       The congregation maintains its space for holy space and mission. 

5.       The congregation passes its faith to the coming generations.[1] 

Regarding the first criteria, we can certainly attest to vital worship at McKnight.  We don’t have a flashy band or a fog machine, but we come together on Sunday mornings to offer our praise and prayers and thanksgiving to our God, and we think about our Scriptures together faithfully, and reflect on our faith and our lives. 

Regarding the second point, I have mixed feelings about the term “surrogate family,” because I know that for too many people “family” is a complicated term, but “community” can sometimes sound too big or too distant.  The point, though, still holds, that people are seeking “a place to be known by name, to share their hearts and their resources, and to be enveloped in the warmth of family-like ties,” and repeatedly, I have heard from visitors that our congregation offers warmth and welcome.  And I believe you all can attest to the comfort of having a community in which you can find support and love and prayer. 

For the third point, we have multiple ministries in our community.  From feeding programs to the Mission Barn projects to coffee for the homeless, along with several other ministries, we participate in our community in multiple ways.  For the fourth, we have a beautifully maintained facility, thanks to the faithful service of our trustees and council.  Consistent attention is given to anticipating the upcoming needs of the facility. 

And for the fifth criteria, about passing on the faith, we may not have the biggest program, but we do faithfully work to pass the faith on to our youth and to the young people in our community:  with our church school, in offering opportunities for service and participation in worship, and with our VBS. 

[1] https://www.churchleadership.com/to-the-point/point-new-way-view-small-church-vitality/#prettyPhoto

First of all, thank you to all of you who worked at and/or attended the Thrive Refugee dinner Sunday night—it was a wonderful success!  We were sold out well ahead of the event, and it was wonderful to see our tables so full and so many people encountering not only the refugee family in question, but also our own church.  We are now “on the map” for a whole new group of people! 

At the same time, we had some good food, and we also learned a little about Guatemalan culture, about different kinds of refugees, and a little bit more about being a neighbor to someone in need.  And many of us saw, even if in small increments, the amount of work that the family in question put into this dinner.  It was two full days of cooking to prepare for that many people, and even with help, that’s a great deal of work.  We thank them for their willingness to share with us for our own education.

Second, please be aware that our book club dates have shifted back by one week, and we are meeting at 6:00 to better accommodate the people who have been attending. 

In the many uncertainties of our time, one thing is very clear:  we are seeing fractures everywhere.  Between family members, between neighbors, between community members—and certainly all over the country at this particular moment.  The last is painfully visible to us all right now.  This tendency to fracture matters for us Christians, and specifically for us Christians here at McKnight, because we have been called into this community.  We are called by God to be the body of Christ. 

In order to remain together as a called community—as we are told to do, again and again in the New Testament—and also in order to be Christian participants in the discussions in our wider communities, we will need to think about how we handle disagreement and conflict.  Because we are always imperfect and finite people, and we are always still learning, and still listening.  And because disagreements will happen. 

So I was delighted to find in my email this morning the following excerpt from Kate Bowler’s conversation with Dr. Becky Kennedy:  “Repair is the most important thing. You don’t have to get it all right. You just have to be willing to go back, acknowledge the rupture, and choose connection again.”  Dr. Kennedy is talking about parenting, specifically, but the ideas still apply to us in our community. 

Kate Bowler follows up:  “Repair is never simple. It’s tender, humbling work. But it is also what keeps us human—and what keeps us the Church. You don’t have to have the perfect words or the flawless strategy. You just have to stay connected.  No perfect reconciliation. No story tied up neatly with a bow. But the faithful practice of choosing connection—again and again and again.” 

This week I have been working on reports for our annual Charge Conference, and I want to say … we have been busy at McKnight UMC!  Our participation in multiple concerns continues steadily, including the North Side Feeding Program, Victims of Domestic Violence, Global Links, Lions Club, and the North Hills Community Outreach, particularly the Millville Food Pantry.  We continue to support the preschool with our visits, with low rent, with love gifts such as Halloween, Easter, and Christmas treats, as well as with our participation in their graduation each year.  This summer, we had a successful Wild Wonder VBS, drawing from the neighborhood as well as from the preschool. 

Additionally, we have begun our McKnight Caring program.  Our first quarter of the program was “Caring for our World,” and included that science-based VBS (Wild Wonder), an e-cycle event, a visit from Michael Airgood who spoke to us about the current situation in Ukraine, and we have started our anti-racism book study, While the World Watched, by Carolyn Maull McKinstry (meeting Tuesdays at 7:00 p.m.—we’d love for you to join us!). 

We move now into our “Caring for the Community” part of the McKnight Caring plan, looking more locally.  Knowing that this church has a long history with Church Union/Bethany House, I have been in discussion with Rev. Larry Homitsky of Church Union, and he is planning to speak to Council on the 8th of October and to our congregation during a worship service afterward, date TBD.  Later in October, we are planning to participate in the McKnight Village Halloween festivities, which include both a parade on October 25th at 11:00 a.m. and trick-or-treating on the night of Halloween (please email if you can participate!). 

As we enter fall in earnest, things really are ramping up here at McKnight!  I’m looking forward to the beginning of our book club, which starts Tuesday the 16th, and I’ve noticed that (as planned) we have two books left on the counter, because I ordered a couple extra.  If you have asked for a book but not picked it up, please let me know as soon as possible, so I can put a post-it with your name on your copy.  If we don’t hear from anyone, we’ll assume that all “orders” are now fulfilled and that the books are free to anyone else on Sunday.  (And here’s your gentle reminder that the book is also in our library system, and it’s really easy to reserve a book online now—and then all you have to do is go to your local front desk to pick it up!)

We’re also well into preparations for our refugee dinner—many thanks to all who have signed up to help and to everyone who has purchased tickets!  I’m really looking forward to this time of good food and fellowship together, and to learning more about the situation of some of the refugees who have been settled in Pittsburgh. 

And of course, the students are back at the preschool as well—it is so good to hear their laughter and their play when they come outside for playground time!  I invite you to keep the students and the families and the teachers all in your prayers. 

I was delighted to see that our books, While the World Watched, (finally) arrived today!  I ordered one for everyone who asked, plus two extras, and I’ll have them ready this Sunday.  Our local public libraries have copies as well.  You are welcome simply to read them on your own, but if you’ll be joining us for discussion, we will be meeting four Tuesday evenings at 7:00 p.m.:  the 16th, 23rd, and 30th of this month, and the 7th of October.  These meetings will be in place of our usual Bible Study, which will begin again on October 14th.   

If you’re joining us, the schedule is as follows: 

            For the 16th:  chapters 1-6

            For the 23rd:  chapters 7-12

            For the 30th:  chapters 13-18

            For the 7th:  chapters 19 through the end of the book (5 chapters)

Let me know if you would like me to set up a Zoom link; otherwise, I will assume that everyone wants to meet in person. 

October 14th will begin our study of the Psalms, which you might think of as the hymnbook of the Bible.  The Psalms have been important throughout both Christian and Jewish history.  They are acts of prayer and worship, and they include celebration and praise and petition and lament.  They cover the spectrum of human life, and they bring it all—and I do mean all—before God.  I am looking forward to studying them with you! 

Also, please remember to buy your tickets for the THRIVE dinner, either online or this Sunday, as after the 8th of this month we will open up sales to the community.  You can also follow the volunteer link to help out with set-up or cooking either Saturday or Sunday, or with clean-up on Sunday.