A New Church Year ... A New Start

ADVENT 1B (November 27, 2011)

OK, so here goes another try. This Advent I'm off-lectionary; it does happen once in a while. I was captured by a series highlighted in Reformed Worship entitled 'looking for the REAL Jesus' which uses passages from Colossians 1. This week we have vs. 1-8 and 28-29 (the 'bookends') and are given the theme or title: 

       Jesus, Our Good News.

So what is there to say, really, about the truth of this statement? That the one we are preparing for as a darling baby is our Good News ONLY because he has bought us our salvation at so dear a price? That the only real hope we have is in a baby, vulnerable and powerless, who allows himself to be crucified for our sakes? That all this is by the grace of our loving and forgiving God without any means of meriting it ourselves? 

Some hear that and call it a downer. What do you hear?

And how do we respond? Has it indeed been bearing fruit in you from the day you heard it and truly comprehended the grace of God?

How will we move through this week, shopping and wrapping and decorating, now that we are reminded of this good news?

May the blessings of Advent time -- a time of preparation -- examen -- be with you.

Entrance to The Heugh, Lindisfarne (Holy Isle), England

                  

Looking from The Heugh down at the outline of St. Cuthbert's cell, Lindisfarne

OLD arches signifying the entrance to St. Andrew's, Scotland

Elegant stairway in Sir Robert Scott's home, Abbotsford, England

'Faery Steps' and path on Iona, Scotland

Road to north pasture and bathing beach on Iona, Scotland

Walking down from the 'Beehive' atop Dun I, Iona, Scotland

Pentecost A (June 12, 2011)

Looking back at the event called Pentecost (Acts 2:1-21) I have been affirmed and uplifted by David Lose' Working Preacher blog. One of my deepest connections to Celtic Spirituality is that it refuses any attempts to 'tame' the Holy Spirit by imaging her as a dove. For the Celtic Christians, the Spirit is and always will be the 'Wild Goose,' untamed, unpredictable, and (once we open our ears to her) demandingly raucous! 

David captures that truth about Holy Spirit is listing two paradoxes of how we have come to (comfortably!) 'settle in' to Pentecost celebrations. 
    The first: Holy Spirit comes NOT to solve our problems, but to CREATE them
    The second: Holy Spirit does NOT PREVENT failure, but INVITES it

Seventeen months ago the congregation I serve was brought up short (as was I) to have our financial situation put in very stark black and (red?) white, with the only solution forseeable to reduce the terms of call for the pastor to 60% time. 

I would not be able to stay on at that rate.

Less anxious minds were gathered and a plan to move forward over three years was proposed and accepted (but only by a margin of about 2 to 1) at a special congregational meeting that February. Yet through the extended additional stewardship campaign that preceded that meeting and the work of Holy Spirit throughout the remaining spring, we stepped out into a risky venture we absolutely KNEW we could not sustain on our own: to open an emergency food ministry run by private donations, available to anyone in need, AND to be a Food Pantry for the county Food Bank, with monthly distributions of government food. 

We helped our first 4 families one year ago next Saturday. And a month later I left on vacation, feeling very unsettled about my future ministry in that place.

When I am at the beach I am renewed in many ways. One of my personal paradoxes is that only at the beach does my internal clock waken me to go watch (and shoot) the sunrise. That Tuesday morning I had a profound experience which I will share this morning with the congregation. 

 

What an odd cloud strata

(moment of awareness)

A window into heaven?

Or a window to us?

Oh! God's eye shining a profoundly felt message:

Do not worry

I am watching over you

I am watching out for you

I do not slumber

Nor do I sleep

I am with you always

Forever

ALWAYS!!!

My Pentecost prayer is that we all continue to face the Spirit's problems, accept her invitation to risk failure or setbacks, and be daily renewed and strengthened to let God be God. Only then can we be the Pentecost people we are called to be. 

PS: We are now serving about 40 families regularly, giving additional food at distributions from our food ministry called 'Feeding the Flock'. We have distributed boxes and bags of gently used clothing, a bicycle (complete with helmet) and other children's toys. We have outgrown our freezer and are buying another. And we have friends and neighbors coming to volunteer and help out, even some strong young men who unload bigger and bigger pallets each month. And we have yet to use a single dollar from our church budget. 

To God be the glory!!! 

Easter 7A / Ascension  (June 5, 2011)

I'm a little 'after the fact' this week, but had been mulling it over in my mind for several days and feel it's still worth posting. In considering the texts from Acts 1 and 1 Peter I am in debt to Fr. Rick Morley's a garden path blog. I was already 'seeing' the cloud in my mind and considering various perspectives that it was a fulcrum (of sorts) for.

And a whole lot of song lyrics were floating about in that consideration. 



flying to Boise, ID 2009 



Sunset at 35,000 feet



Music lyrics by Lady Gaga (Edge of Glory) started off Rick's blog; I had been thinking in terms of Joni Mitchell's Both Sides Now. (Is my generation showing?) For some reason the old Ray Coniff Singers cover of I'll Be Seeing You (I was VERY young when my parents were playing that LP!) came to mind as a nostalgic view of Jesus' ascension which spun off to a more realistic imagining the disciples paraphrasing The Clash: Will you stay or will you go?



Western PA


But the cloud isn't the main thing; the main thing is the presence and glory of God in Jesus and promised in the gift of Spirit.






at 45,000 feet over the Atlantic

Where is it that you most easily 'see' God's glory?

Bethany Beach, DE

What does the experience feel like?

Bethany Beach, DE

How do we share that glory and presence with others?

Easter 6 (May 29, 2011)

 ¹⁸For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, ¹⁹in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, ²⁰who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water.

²¹And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you—not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ...   1 Peter 3:18-21 (NRSV)

Obedience has certainly gotten a bad rap these days; it is probably running neck and neck with discipline for the bottom of the barrel in terms of desirable qualities. Status is more likely to be bestowed on those who cheat the establishment (and get away with it) or ones who flagrantly defy authority (even if they get  caught). 

The Greek word translated 'obey' (and the Hebrew Old Testament also rendered 'obey') do not carry the meaning to adhere to orders or commands; in both cases the  root meaning is to listen closely. 

How do you listen to God?

Lindisfarne, England

In what ways do you hear God?

George Wishart Memorial, St. Andrews, Scotland

Bethany Beach, Delaware

Are we listening deeply as a people?

Lindisfarne, England

Pasture beside Kilmartin Church, Kilmartin Glen, Scotland

How can we better practice a radical (foundational, deeply rooted) obedience?

With thanks to the Rev. Donna MacArt Havrisko for permission to include 

photos with her image from the Redstone Presbytery 2006 Celtic Spirituality Pilgrimage.

 

Easter 5A (May 22, 2011)

I'm looking this week at the First and Second lessons -- stones we throw and living stones we are called by God to become. I was really struck by David von Schlichten's comment on the 1 Peter text: 

  'What does a living stone look and act like? ... like Christ, 

   being a part of the building called the Church, and, 

   of course, being strong, solid. 

   Being a LIVING stone means not being passive 

   but being organic, active, growing.
   We are to be strong but also growing and active. 

   Stone-strong but not petrified. '

Stone-strong but not petrified. That's all.

It's just that there's an awfully fine line between the two.

Glendalough, Ireland

Even for stones, if they are living, then my inner image requires movement, like living water

Staffa, Scotland

Or, at the very least, unexpected plantlife growing from between the carefully placed stones

 

 

The Nunnery, Iona, Scotland

What signs of life are there in your stone?

In the stones that are your congregation?

Easter Sunday,(April 24, 2011)

The epistle passage  from Colossians 3 says 

    "you have been raised with Christ ... for you have died,

     and your life is hidden with Christ in God."

TTh

This is baptism talk and baptism promises lived out. It is in the act of baptism that we die with Christ, go to the tomb with him, and are raised up with him. And we live that new and renewed life through faith, according to Russell Rathbun (Hiding with God and from Myself: The Hardest Question), because in being dead and hidden with Christ .... we are hidden from ourselves. We only glimpse what we have already become in the love and mercy of God.

 

Oh, yes, and his hardest question? If I am clothed with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator, how do I make sense of the self I see in the mirror?

the restroom at Hell's Kitchen, Minneapolis, MN

May we all be blessed with a new glimpse of the self we already have become in the covenant promises of baptism this Easter Sunday and throughout the whole of Eastertide.

Waterfall garden at New Hope Presbyterian Church

 

4th Sunday in Lent (April 3, 2011)

The man born blind  (John 9:1-41) has greater insight into who Jesus is than do the Pharisees. Thanks to John Shearman's Lectionary, Russell Rathbun's The Hardest Question and Laurel Dykstra in Sojourner's Living the Word I think I have some new 'in-sights' about this passage. 

Jesus uses this healing as another of so many teachable moments. In the blind man's affliction  being healed Jesus' true identity is more clearly revealed, yet the Pharisees fail to see it.  They are not only fearfully blind to God's power and glory in Jesus, their inability to fathom how God continues to do 'new things,' to create newness in the world, is fully exposed. They stand bare naked, not only before God, but before those who have eyes to see.

Sunset over Dover, PA

Do we have eyes to see the beauty of God's new creating in bareness? Are we able to stand fully exposed before God and humanity? Are we ready for God's continued work of new creation in and around us?

Woods near I-70 (Taylorstown)

 

Cattails along New Salem Road

Pittsburgh Theological Seminary Chapel