Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Journey of a Congregation

The church that I pastor is a very small Presbyterian congregation in South Minneapolis.  So much is happening in the life of our congregation and we are learning how to understand and tell our story.  This is one attempt to put words to part of our unfolding journey.



Lake Nokomis Presbyterian Church has been in a period of radical reflection and change over the past year. We determined to allow ourselves to break free from the ruts of habit while honoring our traditions, becoming open to new experiences and possibilities. We began by striving to put language and actions to the concepts and values that had been bubbling up within the congregation for years.
The three central practices that we have named and are using to guide us as we seek to meet God in our humanity are:
Worship - encountering the Triune God as we gather in community to explore who God is and what God is up to in scripture, our lives and the world around us.
Hospitality - living in God’s abundant welcome and welcoming others in authenticity and mutuality.
and Sabbath - practicing God’s rhythm of work and renewing rest. 
Desiring to live authentic lives before and with God, we are weaving worship, hospitality and Sabbath into our practice as a congregation and finding that we are being transformed in the process.

Worship has been central to our identity, and a source of delight for us for a long time.  Our exploration last year involved visiting very different congregations to experience different styles of worship, and spending an evening with local artists and musicians (from outside our congregation) to brainstorm with us how music and art function in worship, and how we could create authentic and creative experiences in worship and community.  We held long conversations about what we believe worship to be and how we live that out in our context.  Because we see isolation, brokenness, and lack of belonging as prominent experiences in the lives of people today, we desire that our worship extend a different kind of invitation, to participate in a place where all come to be real, to share pain and suffering, to rejoice together and hold one another in prayer.   We want to seek faith through doubt, hope through despair, and make worship a space for God to encounter us in our humanity.    
                   
 Hospitality is also central to who we are and who we wish to be.  While we are limited in finances and “manpower,” we have our physical space and our very selves to share.  We opened up a room in our basement to an artist in residence for studio space, begun offering our building more widely for community use (including helping to start a neighborhood job networking group), and we relandscaped our front yard to be a place of peace and welcome for the community.  We also began exploring how hospitality challenges us to be radically open to one another and to God, including hosting Rev. Nanette Sawyer, author of Hospitality, the Sacred Art and artist Shawna Bowman who explored the concept with us in a worship service and a mural.   Just recently, the Rev. Dr. Theresa Latini from Luther Seminary joined us as our Parish Associate, to help us explore more fully in all aspects of our congregational life, how to deepen our hospitality and openness to God, each other and the world.

Sabbath rest was an intriguing concept to us. We began exploring this as a congregation, including reading Wayne Muller’s book, Sabbath together, and spending a day with the Sisters of St. Francis at “Sabbath House” for a retreat focused around the concept of Sabbath.  Sabbath means setting aside time intentionally for rest, community, celebration, reflection, gratitude… By deliberately honoring time spent in being rather than doing, we move into a way of facing the world and our lives with eyes open and spirits ready.  We wondered what it would look like if we incorporated intentional Sabbath rest into our rhythm as a community. 

Through session meetings reformatted around worship, and a session retreat of prayer and exploration, then a series of small group and whole congregation meetings, we decided to radically alter our worship schedule.  We decided to gather for worship first and third Sundays in the manner we were accustomed to.   Second and fourth weekends we would gather on Saturday evening, which would shape a worship service to be a doorway into Sunday as a Day of Rest – with no Sunday service but instead exploring worship and faith in a variety of ways in our own lives.  Finally, we determined that fifth Sundays were to be somehow beyond ourselves, for others, connected to the larger community.  There was an opening to lead worship for fifth Sunday chapel services at St. Joseph’s Home for children just up the block from us – an emergency shelter and long term rehabilitation center – (chapel there is usually done by pastors volunteering from churches around the cities), and we arranged for our whole congregation to come and worship there with the children as our 5th Sunday worship service.

This pattern has opened the door to more thoughtfully and intentionally create worship experiences using music, art, and practices drawn from a variety of Christian traditions (such as lectio divina, centering prayer, silence, a labyrinth, etc).  It has made us more deliberate and reflective about our connections to others and God's presence in our own lives.  We are excited about how this is shaping us, and are continuing to explore how to form our services of worship as experiences of deep hospitality – creating a worship environment and liturgy that embrace the whole person and creatively meet the God who enters in and brings life out of death.
We have been on this schedule since September 2009, and have found it to be incredibly enriching and challenging, forcing us to be intentional about worship and community, and to live into the concepts we’ve embraced both communally and individually.  We are on an incredible journey, and look forward to what God has in store for us in 2010!

Come to our Open House on February 10 to see some of the changes going on at LNPC!
 Friend us on Facebook - /LakeNokomis, or on our website at: www.lakenokomispc.org

(The image above has captured our imagination through this process and become a symbol for our deepening life in the areas of worship, hospitality and Sabbath.  It is called Mother Root, by Jan Richardson, and is used with permission.  See her work at www.janrichardsonimages.com)

Monday, January 25, 2010

Body Talk

Preached January 23, 2010 at Lake Nokomis Presbyterian Church





Which part of your body don’t you like? This was a real conversation I heard the other night between twenty year olds.  “My legs are too big,” one said, “I don’t like my stomach, it’s not flat enough.”  said the other. And while we probably have outgrown having these conversations outloud with others, we could each immediately answer the question in our heads: I’ve never liked my ears, they stick out too much, my nose is too big, that flabby part under the arms, or the neck area…I’ll give you a moment to answer the question inside for yourself.

 I once had a massage from a nun at a retreat center run by nuns. It was the chattiest massage I had ever had – the woman did not stop talking the entire hour.  But as she rubbed each limb she talked about how strong and healthy it was, my fingers, how nimble, how they move and lift and grip and point.  She rubbed my back and spoke blessings into me, raving about how every part fit together and the systems were all working as they were created to – the blood flowing and the muscles contracting and relaxing, and how my neck held my head on so well, and my face muscles helped me communicate emotion, and my knees carried me where I wanted to go, and I left there feeling unprecedented gratitude for my body.

I left there feeling so thankful for the life I had been given and I felt ashamed for ever not liking parts or wishing I could trade up for a cuter model that looked better in a swimsuit, or had enough coordination to master ice skating and rollerblading.  I had awe for my creator, how intricate and sturdy, how vulnerable but strong, moldable and enduring our bodies are.  And I thought of my friend whose cancer means her body is fighting inside, all of it against this invader, and her fatigue and her pain, and how this cancer, in this one place in her body, had changed how she lived in her body, all the parts affected.

Paul says the we are part of the body of Christ –we are, no getting around that. We are not out there on our own, an amputated limb with no life in it, we are connected, we only make sense alongside each other, part of the same whole, unified by belonging to each other.
But how easy is it to begin criticizing parts of our own Body, because certainly there are parts of this body that we like better than others, and parts we sort of think we could do without.  Pastor Debbie Blue says, “I like parts of the body of Christ. I like the brain and the ears and the eyes and the breasts. But do we really need the testosterone? The loudmouths? The aggressive superegos?”

I preached this text once at a presbytery meeting – where we gather together, the church, in different expressions, all around the region each little congregation living out its unique calling, purpose and mission, but all connected because Jesus Christ is the Lord of us all, because we are all baptized into one Body and the same Spirit works in all of us. 

But, often, instead of being able to look at some of these congregations, radically different than us and say, “Wow. I could never be a foot, look what a great job they are doing, all walking and jumping and kicking.  I am SO mouth.  I would be TERRIBLE at walking. I could never hold up an ankle.  Where would we be without that foot?  Thank God for the foot!” 
Instead we would make ourselves a big pile of disembodied,useless mouths, because it is often more important to us to be right – by our own definition of right- than to be faithful, or unified. 

Or we think unity means agreeing and if not being the same than looking the same, and sacrificing what we believe in or who we are for the good of the whole.  And our little presbytery is nothing, if I can’t make room for my Midwestern, Presbyterian, white, middle class fellow body parts, but what about those a little farther, a little more foreign, a little more misunderstood?  Or conversely what about the ones right up close, where you have to live next to them, chafing, day in and day out?

Paul’s wonderful imagery of the Body of Christ is saying two basic things:

First - We are different. And we are meant to be.  It would make no sense for us all to be the same, not people, not churches, not denominations, not cultures, not expressions of faith or practices of worship  – The image of a Trinune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, One God in three persons, is reflected in unity in diversity, and there is simply not enough diversity in this room to do it justice.

We need those radically different than we are.  We are our differences, and we only make sense if we are not the same.  The body would be a useless pile of parts if we were not all different. Being the Church is not about everyone looking, acting, or believing the same way.  In fact, that would make this NOT the Body of Christ, but something else altogether.

That means that we each need to be who we are.  How much time and energy is wasted in the Body of Christ by looking at someone else and wishing we were more like them, or better, wishing they were more like us, while all the time not fully living out who we were called to be? 
The way we play our role is to fully embody our own calling and identity, to live with joy and fullness who each one of us is distinctly called to be.  Individuals and congregations.  Parker Palmer has said, “The deepest vocational question is not ‘What ought I to do with my life?’ It is the more elemental and demanding, ‘Who am I? What is my nature?’ True vocation joins self and service in the deep joy of knowing that we are here on earth to be the gifts that God created.”
So who are you? What is your nature? 
Who is this congregation? What is our distinct purpose?
We are different, and we are supposed to be.

The second thing Paul is saying is that we are part of the whole. We are One Body.  This is not your body, or my body, it’s God’s body, and you and I are a part of it whether we like it or not.  You don’t gain entrance into the body by what you choose or don’t choose, or say or embrace or reject or who you agree with or who you disown.  You are part of the body of Christ because God has chosen you, because God had put this body together as God sees fit and God sees fit to include you and me, as we are, who we are, and has a way we are meant to participate, we were born to participate, we were made for this, and God should know.

So God has chosen to connect us to each other and we are connected, period. Even when we don’t act like it, even if we pretend we aren’t, even if we disown one another, we cannot truly detach parts of the body and decide they don’t belong or contribute, or that they don’t impact us and that we are not in some way dependent upon each other.  We are.
Whether we like it or not we are inseparably attached. Even when we feel desperately isolated, or treat others that way, we are not alone.  We are part of the same body, connected as tissue and blood, suffering when others suffer, carrying the shame of dehumanizing words or actions done to or by another, bearing each other’s sadness and grief, celebrating when there is joy in each other’s lives.  We are connected to one another. Because we are part of the One Body.

It’s no big secret that this body is pretty broken. The whole Church, not just congregations or presbyteries – but Southern Baptists and East Coast Presbyterians, Conservative Evangelicals and Mainline Liberals and African Episcopalians and Haitian Catholics and Korean Protestants Egyptian Coptic Orthodox Christians.  We seem fractured, dismembered, separated from one another, at odds with each other, or simply not in touch at all. 

And sometimes we have trouble lifting our gaze and our attention from our own narcissistic infighting, where the truly ridiculous happens – the eye tells the nose the face would be better off without it, and the hand suggests removing the speen.
And we indulge in plenty of self-absorbed naval gazing, wishing parts of the Body were just a little different than they are (or a lot), ignoring some and overworking others, idolizing some and despising others.
We are broken, like the rest of the world, we are selfish and self-righteous and broken. 

But Christ enters our brokenness: the places where we are torn apart, paralyzed by fear or failure, divided from each other and our own selves. Christ enters our brokenness, and becomes the body broken for us, so that we may be whole.
Jesus makes us One with God and each other, forgiven, reconciled, connected, so that we may be the Body of Christ for the world.  And we are – there is no getting out of it, we already are.
Even when we forget.

There is great joy in realizing, or remembering, how the body works, and what it is capable of. A child figuring out how to walk, how each leg moves in sync and the shoulders keep the body steady, or learning to talk, to form wither her mouth the words she is just beginning to understand and put them out into the world. An athlete discovering new levels of coordination, speed, possibility when all the systems are working together in unison, radically diverse, but directed towards the same purpose. 
And Paul is saying that the potential exists – and one day will be fully realized – for our differences to strengthen the body, for the image of God to be lived in fullness, fully embodied, and for the body to function at its peak: alive, healthy, vital, each part singing its own contribution, in the harmony of the Spirit of God. 
We were meant to live as the Body of Christ in a way that brings joy and fulfillment to each part, in a way that fully participates in the purposes of the whole – which are always directed outward, to creation and the cosmos and the world that God loves.  We are to live out our differences in Body made one in Christ.
May we grow ever more open to this.

I think the way we begin to remember this, the way become more open to one another in the body of Christ, is by sharing each other’s suffering and joy, connecting at a human level.  Letting the pain and the joy of others touch us.  So as we come to our prayer time we will take the puzzle pieces we picked up on the way in.  We’ve each put our own name on one, and had them to jot things throughout the service, and now we’ll take one more moment to write on them with the Sharpies in the pews, names, situations, prayers for others.  We can write the names of those we feel disconnected from, people with whom we disagree strongly who are nevertheless fellow members of the same Body (I have one piece that says, “Pat Robertson”), those we wish we could do more for that are so far away and suffering (I have another piece that says, “Haiti”), and we can also use these pieces to pray for those we love and feel connected to as well, whose lives impact our own in visible ways.  Whatever you would like to put on the pieces, we’ll do that now.  Then in a few minutes we will bring our pieces forward and place them in this shape of a body.  Then we will lift all of them up in prayer.



We are working on starting up a data base and compiling worship practices and liturgies that come out of our worship.  This is an example of an interactive element of liturgy we've incorporated into our worship. 


Sunday, January 17, 2010

What's with the wine?

Preached January 17, 2010

Lake Nokomis Presbyterian Church



When I was 16 years old, I went to a wedding, in Haiti.  The bride and groom from the tiny village couldn’t stop smiling. The small cinderblock church building was hung with flowers and greenery and packed to overflowing with people.  The bridesmaids wore flowers in their hair and had found somewhere buried in the collection of donated T-shirts we’d brought along, the ones the church ladies had hidden in horror after we arrived – six matching pink shirts with an image of a guy in a boat and expletives across the bottom about rather being fishing.  They had dug them out and, not knowing the English translation of the symbols and words they were wearing, proudly came down the aisle in matching pink.
Everyone waved palm branches like it was Palm Sunday, as the wedding party danced in.  There was singing, so much singing, and laughter, and joy.  And after the ceremony, we turned the pews towards tables and we feasted, a goat they had killed for that night, and the specialty that the Americans brought along that was served alongside it- popcorn.
If Jesus had been at that wedding, there would have been wine. But there didn’t need to be. Jesus was there, we had our wine. In the midst of that celebration we lacked for nothing, poverty was not a concern; it was a taste of rich and abundant joy.

In John’s gospel we have a story of a wedding, and this story is a sign - it is about a wedding, but it’s not about a wedding. Jesus came and did something entirely unexpected; the jars of water for cleansing are turned to wine.  Good wine, the best wine, and more of it than they could drink, abundance and vitality where there was lack and no expectation for anything different.  It points to joy, fulfillment, the promise of the arrival of God’s new age anticipated in the Old Testament, it has come in Jesus Christ.  It is symbolic of God’s eternal purpose and overflowing grace.
It calls us to trust, it beckons us to faith – that God can do more than we could ever ask or hope.

But it’s not a wedding right now in Haiti. It’s not a celebration. It is nothing short of hellish suffering and horror.  And it seems ridiculous, inhumane even, to talk about God giving wine when there is not even any water. 

I had the urge to yell back at this text all week long, what is this wine? We need water, plain water, nothing fancy, no abundance, no over the top moves, here, we’re not asking for parking spots and special perks, we are asking for life and death help, and water.  Just plain old water will do. 
What place is there for wine when there is no water?
How do we talk about God bringing things like abundance, joy, happiness in the face of such devastation?

There were reports, the first couple of nights, that all over the city of Port-au-Prince, when the sun went down and there was no electricity to aid the searching, and people tried to find somewhere to sleep on the streets, and those crying out from under the wreckage eventually went silent, a sound could be heard, rising above the rest, the sound of singing – all over the city, church groups singing.  In the darkness, in the fear, in the unknown, music of hope, rising above the rubble.
A song does not belong here.  It belongs with weddings and joy, with feasts and fun, happiness, hope. It has no place in terror. It can’t dig people out of collapsed buildings or bandage open wounds; and it seems counter to what anybody needs or feels to sing.
But in that moment, the song becomes what sustains them; a promise, heard in the dark, a benediction shared, hope coming from outside of what they are experiencing in the moment. It points to a reality beyond what they can see and know; it proclaims a truth that exists in a completely different context than where they find themselves at the moment.
The song is the wine.

They need water in Haiti. Yes.
But they need more than water. They need the wine.
They need the jars that hold the foot water to be filled not once again with foot water, the status quo, the ordinary maintenance of an impoverished and unjust existence. In a city that had no clean water before any of this even happened, they don’t need things to go back to the way they were.

They need wine, they need the eschaton, the great wedding feast, where all will be fed and made whole, and filled with joy, and there will be no more pain and suffering. 
Ultimately we need beyond what is ours to provide, more than what we’re capable of seeing as possible. 

And even when it presents such a stark contrast with what we see in front of us today, maybe especially now, this story of Jesus’ first miracle is a reminder of a promise – that the God of steadfast, abundant, overwhelming love can act.

So, then why doesn’t God?  Where is God in this?

“They have no wine!” Mary says to Jesus,
“What concern is that to you and me?” He answers.
“Whether it is of concern to you or not, I can’t say,” Mary, the one with faith says to God incarnate, “I am telling you, they have run out of wine and you can do something about it."

I don’t know what it means, Jesus, your time has not yet come…
Why not? I want to answer, this seems like a pretty good time to me.
I don’t understand.
So I will keep on asking.
Like Mary, I will keep on speaking to God about these things – the wine has run out, there is no water, things are really really bad.  God, do something. Do something

There is another story of wine, that I think of today.  It is when Jesus stands before his disciples and lifts the cup and says, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood, poured out for you for the forgiveness of sins.”  And he tells them to drink it, to share in his broken body and spilled blood as he shares in ours.
“This is my body, broken for you. This is my blood, shed for you.
Drink this wine and remember."

And then he dies, the God of our humanity takes on himself our suffering and death and fear and aloneness so fully that it extinguishes his life.
And on the 3rd day, when the dead are really dead and not coming back, he rises, and breaks the power of death to separate us from God.  He is the life of the world. He is the hope of the world.
On the 3rd day, there was a wedding.

Jesus is NOT at a wedding instead of in Haiti.
He is not only in abundance and joy, and ignoring the cries for help.
The God of the cross is there right now, he is under the buildings with those who are afraid and alone, and clawing at the cement with his bare hands to free them, and weeping with the orphans and widowers, and standing with every single person there or anywhere who suffers in any way. 

I don’t know why God doesn’t keep horrific things from happening.  But if God is found anywhere, it is with those who suffer.
And also, we do believe God is abundant in love and faithful, and generous. You and I have seen this in our lives, and like the disciples, we believe.
So like Mary, we will not let up - because we do trust God, even when we don’t understand. 

And that is our calling, actually. We will be the ones who ask, the ones who expect that God can do something different than anyone can imagine, that God can intervene to change the course of things and so we will keep on asking, and keep on asking, and maybe even wont take no for an answer. 

We will speak out the need, and we will live from the future reality – that poverty and injustice have no place, and we will not accept them.
We will sing in the darkness,
We will embody the hope: that the world our God intends and promises is one where nobody is thirsty, or alone, or afraid,
and so we will stand with those who are,
and we will give generously,
and love profusely,
and trust in the unexpected end,
and raise our glasses in anticipation,
and with every breath say, “Come Lord Jesus.”

Come Lord Jesus.
Amen.

Monday, January 11, 2010

Baptized Beloved

We are finding, in our new way of being church, that we want to get better at understanding and telling our story.  We have these wonderful experiences of worship - or awkward choppy ones - and wish we did a better job of recording and sharing what they were so we can learn and grow from them.  And there is no way to capture the spirit of the other night.  But for the sake of growing in our ability to tell our story, here is a picture of our worship on Saturday, Jan. 9.

Last night we held our Sabbath service around the theme of baptism.  We used Isaiah 43:1-7, God’s words to a hopeless and abandoned Israel, and Luke’s version of Jesus’ baptism. Before Jesus can begin his public ministry, just before he is sent into the wilderness and struggles against temptation, and in his first appearance since his childhood disappearing act in the temple while his frantic parents searched for him is this moment: this moment that defines him, that sets the trajectory, starts his vocation, affirms his calling, defines his ministry, this moment when God says, “This is my Son, the beloved, I am so pleased in him.”
Before we talk about what you will do, or not do, or what you will see or feel or fear or fail at or stand firm against, before we talk about your worthiness or your powerful message or your calling or your contribution – before all of it is this – you are my beloved. I love you, I choose you. I delight in you.

What would it be like to live from a place of being loved? we wondered together. Who are you? I am beloved, I am loved by someone. I belong to someone. That is first and foremost who I am, everything else comes from that place and returns to that place, that I am loved.  Love makes us brave, it makes us strong.  It makes us generous.  Being loved makes us about to love other people.
We pondered the power of the funeral ritual declaring that the person’s “baptism is now complete.”  Our beginning and our end is tied up in this – that we are chosen and loved by God.  We come from God and return to God.  And at death this one is now fully one with God, in Christ, where they belong, in the arms of the one who calls them beloved. 
We spent some time asking questions about baptism, grappling with the variety of traditions and approaches, the meaning behind such things as being baptized just once, the differences between adult and infant baptisms and the theological significance of baptism, what it truly means and does to us that we are baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and claimed by the One who spoke creation into being, the one who says, "I act, and who can reverse it?" (Is. 43)
Then we share the story of Fayette, written about this week in Jan Richardson’s blog, (and originally told by Janet Wolf in Upper Room Disciplines), a powerful story about baptism’s declaration that you are “Beloved, precious child of God, and beautiful to behold.”  And we pondered again, What would it mean to live as beloved?  To live from a place of being "named by God’s grace with such power that it wont come undone?"  What would it mean for us to see others as Beloved?

Our reflection ended with the words spoken over a child at baptism in our congregation (adapted from the Church of Scotland Book of Common Worship by the PCUSA Office of Theology and Worship)
“For you, little one, 
the Spirit of God moved over the waters at creation,

and the Lord God made covenants with his people.

It was for you that the Word of God became flesh 
and lived among us, full of grace and truth.

For you, Beloved child of God, Jesus Christ suffered death
crying out at the end, "It is finished!"

For you Christ triumphed over death,
 rose in newness of life,

and ascended to rule over all.

All of this was done for you, little one,

though you do not know any of this yet.

But we will continue to tell you this good news 
until it becomes your own.
 
And so the promise of the gospel is fulfilled:
"We love because God first loved us." 

Our prayer time, usually done with candles in sand, was this week done with stones, and a 3 foot tall, wide-mouthed vase, filled with water.  As we shared our prayer with the gathered community, we dropped a stone, heard it break the surface of the water and watched it plummet to the depths, sending up bubbles as it fell, finally landing with a tink on the bottom of the vessel like the ring of a chime.  Our own spoken prayers, fears, needs, wants, joys – taken into Christ’s death and resurrection just as we ourselves are. 
God, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

The rest of the service surrounded us with songs, harp music, silence and prayer, and we ended with a blessing ceremony.  Gathered in a circle in the center of the sanctuary, we watched as water was scooped up out of the vessel where it cradled our prayers, carried in the communion chalice, and poured into the baptismal font.  Then we took turns, dipping our fingers into the water and tracing the invisible mark made on another’s forehead at their own baptism, looking into their eyes and declaring, “You are beloved, precious child of God, and beautiful to behold.”  And the blessing was shared and passed, person to person, the truth spoken aloud over each one, until the whole gathered group embodied the blessing for and with one another.

From the sanctuary our worship didn’t end, but continued with our “Table Fellowship,” an evolving development of our Saturday services, where we sat, with table cloth, candlelight and good china, around a large single table, a Thanksgiving meal, at a warm feast of soup and salad and cookies, and enjoyed one another’s company before departing into what we’ve set aside as “sacred space and time” – our Day of Rest.

How to Repent (It's not how you think)

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