Walk tenderly with each other

There are times when the challenges of life seem to crowd in around upon us.  In recent weeks, our family, for instance has cared for one we love through her knee replacement surgery, then within days we have cared for each other in the death of a family member in a tragic auto accident.  As a pastor, I’ve come back home to be with a church family through a surgery, and then have cared for another in the tragic death of a dear pet.  Members of the congregation have shared concerns for their friends and family members who are ill or grieving.

At the same time, we hear the joys and delights of new parents, and grandparents.  We celebrate the voices of children in worship and the beauty of a child with autism running forward during worship; drawn to the vibrant colors she so loves.  We find peace and comfort in music.

We meet to share reflections from vibrant congregational small group meetings, and to set priorities for the church’s ministry in this time.

All to say that life is multi-dimensional.  We could never imagine all that is going on in the lives of those we encounter each day.  We feel anger at someone in traffic and we have no idea what that person is facing.  We snap at a telemarketer, forgetting that this is a person just like ourselves who may be worried about his or her child, or struggling with chronic pain.

I am reminded in these days that we need to approach each and every encounter in a spirit of prayerful care.  Let us be tender with each other.  Let us treat one another with love.

Amazing Grace – William Wilberforce

This past Friday night, a group of us watched the film “Amazing Grace” which is the story of William Wilberforce, his faith, and the fight he led for the abolition of slavery in England.  Wilberforce was pulled between the call to the religous life and the call to use his gifts and passion in the political process to abolish slavery.  Ultimately his choice was grounded in his deep faith.  God’s call on his life resulted in years of persistent, painful work in the face of the horrors of slavery.  Bill after bill failed in parliament.  Yet Wilberforce,  mentally and emotionally tortured by the horrors of slavery could do no other than to continue to fight.

Indeed, the the context of the story is the abolition of slavery; but the focus is the life of mature faith.

In discussion following the movie, we explored what sustained Wilberforce and what sustains us when the work is hard and the journey is long and we see defeat again and again.  Several sustaining influences were named:

the community that called him out, worked with him, and encouraged him along the way

Pitt, who needed Wilberforce (as Wilberforce needed Pitt)

the woman who became his spouse — who called him to talk about his deepest passion even when he said he could not because the pain was too great

the willingness of Wilberforce to pick up the witness begun by John Newton, to hear his confession, and to make it his own

the deep knowledge that God had found him — which as he stated “was terribly inconvenient.”

This is a film of passion, humor, and maturing faith.

I recommend going to the Amazing Grace website where pastors may order a copy of the film (free) for group use and teaching.  The Faith study guide is very helpful whether you are viewing and discussing the film in one sitting, or using clips for discussion.

The Soloist – Mental Illness

We saw the film The Soloist today.  As one who serves an inner city congregation and has contact with men and women who are mentally ill and who live on the streets, I found this portrayal to hold such deep truth.  So many men and women who are mentally ill live on the streets. They are first and foremost individuals, people with hearts, and histories, and the need for friends.  We are clear that our mental health system has abandoned so many.  Yet, the answers are not clear.  The issues and behaviors are complex, to say the least, and cannot be romanticized.  Those with extreme untreated schizophrenia live in a world that most of us cannot understand.  Very often we respond in fear, and in self protection.  I understand why:  not because they are violent (they seldom are) or are a threat to us, but because we are at a loss and do not know how to relate with care, while keeping appropriate boundaries for ourselves and for the one who is ill.   That requires a level of work and commitment that most of us are not ready to give.   The one who is mentally ill, very often does not function within expected and accepted  social boundaries.

In The Soloist, Nathanial and other homeless, mentally ill people in the community have needs and passions rooted in their life experiences – just as we all do.  Theirs are just muddled in a mind that is jumbled; that at least I don’t understand.  Nathanial’s ways of speech and expression are so familiar.  I confess that there have been times when I have heard this apparently nonsensical mixture of words, phrases and images and I have written that person off.  I have forgotten that she or he is someone trying to make sense of her/his world, trying to express a concern or a need.  Perhaps my care and respect for her as person is what I can give at that moment. All too often, it is not that those who are mentally ill and homeless do not have families; but that those who loved them have worn out, given up, reached the point of not knowing what to do.  Worn down by their behaviors, their families have backed away out of a need to care for themselves and others in the family.

The Soloist, though affirming the need to care for the individual as he is, leaves us with the difficult question of how we as communities best care for those living with mental illness.  Yes, we need to offer friendship without the need to “fix” the person.  On the other hand, how can we offer protection and care and, yes, helpful treatment when possible.  The need to respect the individuality and rights of the person cannot mean that we stop searching for ways to improve the life conditions of those who are ill.

Urban Way of the Cross Walk

The Maundy Thursday Tenebrae and Communion is over and now we sleep until Good Friday.  I always like our Good Friday Way of the Cross Walk.  We started the walk several years ago and it has grown, now including seven congregations of five denominations — Disciples of Christ, Episcopal, Mennonite, Presbyterian and United Church of Christ.

The walk will begin in the sanctuary of our DOC congregation and conclude at one of the Presbyterian congregations.  The walk usually includes people of all ages, including babies in strollers, and elders. One year a 15 year-old boy skateboarded most of the way.  Tomorrow it will likely be raining; even then a hardy smaller group will walk.

The Way is casual and involves everyone in leadership.  Each person has a copy of the 14 Stations we have created, with readings, reflections,  prayers, and songs.  As we walk between stations, the leader simply asks different people to read or lead prayer at the next station.

Ours is an inner-city neighborhood.  We create a different route through the streets and identify different stations each year.  Over time the stations have included such places as:  local markets, a fire station, a clinic serving Vietnamese immigrants, an alley where a young girl was murdered, nursing homes, boarded-up abandoned buildings,  mental health facilities, a coffee house welcoming those in the LGBT community, schools,  etc.   At each place, we make the connection between Jesus ministry and the path toward his crucifixion and our own ministry and the cost of discipleship.

Tomorrow our stops will include the telephone company, an area of small businesses, a nursing home, the Missouri School for the Blind, a residence for adults living with mental illness, a struggling residential area, a school that is being closed,   a building, now for sale, that housed a program for troubled youth, but had to move because the neighborhood residents did not want the program near them, a Center for Early Learning that supports both children and families, and a new neighborhood bakery and art center, a park, and an Ecumenical Food Pantry and Urban Ministry center.

As we create the route each year, and then walk it in prayer and reflection with others in our community, it is an opportunity unlike any other  to really see our neighborhood.  We see what is going well and we see the challenges.

Church Attendance

This was a very unusual Sunday morning for me.  I awoke to discover that I have ‘pink eye’ and, after a conversation with a nurse in the congregation, concluded that it was the contagious kind.  The good news was that I was not preaching today; our student associate was scheduled to preach.  So at the advice of the nurse in the congregation, I did not go share my germs with the good folks at church.

Seldom am I at away from the congregation on a Sunday morning, and when I am, it is usually because I am out of town or sick and not leaving the house.  On this particular morning, I went to the pharmacy to pick up drops for my eyes.  On the drive to the pharmacy, I was certainly aware that traffic was much lighter than on a weekday or a Saturday.  I very quickly jumped to the ‘everybody’s at home- so few people go to church’ train of thought.  Those thoughts are certainly based in some fact; however I noticed something else.  So many people in cars I passed were dressed as if they just might be going to church.  (I wonder at myself even as I make that statement,  because folks in our congregation do not particularly ‘dress up’ for worship — so why would I make an assumption about anyone based on what they are wearing?!)

Still as I went into the drug store, I had several encounters with people who were picking something up and did appear to be going to church.  At the checkout, when I started to walk away without my change, a couple behind me laughed and commented to me about my being particular generous. “After all,” the man said, “it is Sunday!”  When he said that I wondered if they assumed that I was one of those who does not participate in church, and they were very kindly reminding me of the significance of this day. I appreciated the fact that he said what he did.  It was a fun, non-threatening way to remind me of the day.

I realized that we make a number of assumptions.  I was making assumptions about church attendance this morning based on how people were dressed.  I make assumptions when I see the cars in store parking lots — that those folks are not going to church.  I make the assumption that if someone is not in church on a Sunday morning, that they are not in church at all.  It might be that they attend church on Saturday, or on Sunday afternoon.  It might be that they are sick and picking up something at the pharmacy.

Hmmm.  Nothing of great depth here – just hmmm.  We are an assumption making people!

Children in the Church

One of the gifts of being a pastor is to share in the joy of children.  In the life-cycle of our congregations we inevitably move through times with more children and times with fewer children.  Wherever we are in that cycle, the congregation may be vital in its life and ministry.  We need not fall into the trap of speaking of children as the future of the congregation; and thereby imply that a congregation with no children or few children at a particular time has no future. (It has been pointed out that in our mobile society, very few of those who grew up in a particular congregation are still in that congregation.)  Children are certainly the future of the Church (universal) in the sense that the children nurtured in faith today will be among those who become Christ’s Church in the world.

Primarily, however, children are the present of the congregation and the wider Church.  We are not waiting on them to grow up; to become something beyond who they are in this moment.  Rather, we learn what it means to be human and what it means to be people of faith as we live with every child at every age with every ability.

When I was first called to this inner city congregation, 13 years ago, there was a very active group of children.  Some were the children of families in the congregation, but most were children from the neighborhood whose parents did not attend church.  The congregation needed to take on the responsibility for the nurture and care of these children who had no parental supervision while in church.  I was awed by the willingness and the commitment of some very special adults who were deeply committed to being Church with all the kids — even when behavior was a challenge!

We developed a “Pew Partner” program in which we paired children with adults who would sit with them in worship, build relationships of trust and care over time.  Years later we would see some of these ‘children’ (now grown up) come back and seek out those special adults who been their pew partners. Some of these, though not still active here, have come back for us to meet their young children.

There were adults who made sure that every child who could possibly go to Church Camp was able to go — even when the child’s family could not pay the usual half of the camp registration.  Then there were those adults who made the commitment to go to Church Camp themselves; to be there because we knew that our kids from the inner city sometimes brought extra challenges to the camping environment.

In the midst of it all, I am convinced that we are the ones who were touched by love, transformed by God’s gift in each child.  Especially I — who like things fairly ordered and in control — grew as a result of the relationship with each child.  I’ll never forget the day that one little boy was serving as acolyte.  It was the end of the service and he came forward to take the light out.  Walking down the aisle with the lit candlelighter, he disappeared into the narthex.  Soon there was smoke.  Apparently — as described in a way that only he could put it — there was the fire and there was the stack of left over worship bulletins.  Fire — worship bulletins.  He just wanted to see if they would burn!  The deacons did have the fire out by the time I got down the aisle.

Then there was the day I had call from a neighbor down the street.  She wanted to know about our ‘collecting money in the neighborhood to pay the church bills!”  (This is never a good start to a call from a church neighbor.)  She proceeded to describe 3 boys who came to her door with offering boxes (a second really bad sign!) and told her that they were from our congregation and we needed help paying the bills.  I, of course, assured her that we never collect money in that way, and that I would be getting back to her.  I called a couple of church members who came and joined me in going door to door to do some damage control, and find out who all had been approached by our ‘creative little stewardship team.’

As the story unfolded we discovered that the kids had ‘borrowed’ a few offering boxes and decided to gather some spending money.  By that evening their mom was taking them door to door to make their apologies and their restitution.   Some interesting pastoral conversations were to follow in the days to come.

The children who remain fixed in my deepest memory are Jelissa (5), William (4), and Erica (4) who were killed in a tragic housefire.  It was the horrible, sickening case of a slum-lord who had no alarms and had the back door blocked off.  They could not escape.  The image of Jelissa sitting with me during a choir practice just prior to that dreadful day, and of William throwing his arms up in the air in Church School in Easter morning, saying “He rose up!”   And now these prescious children were just gone from our midst.  As I reached the last of the three little caskets for the commendation in their funeral service, I truly did not know if I could speak the words a third time.  I pray that I never again …

For a few years the congregation was in the place of having very few children.  Now we seem to be beginning again.  Just this past Sunday, 5 year old little girl came running up to show me her new shoes and the little hearts at the hem of her long pants.  Only a few weeks ago, another 5 year old little girl who is autistic and does not speak, slipped her hand in mine for the first time.  I was in awe of this gift of relationship.  There are 3 boys at this time who serve as acolytes and who walk down the aisle with such reverence that the congregation is in awe.  (And not one of them has set the bulletins on fire!)

In the past 5 months, we have welcomed the births of 4 babies.  What a joy it is to bless these newborn gifts of God, and to explore the wonder of it (and the challenge) of it all with these new parents.

I am blessed. We are blessed.  Thanks be to God.

Pastor’s Lectionary Study Group

Like many pastors, I meet weekly with an ecumenical group of colleagues for lectionary study.  This is not the first wonderful group of this kind in my years of ministry; I’ve been fortunate to participate in three of these.  This group meets on Tuesday mornings at 8:30, rotating our gatherings between our different church buildings.  In recent summers, when our schedules are less dependable, we have held our gatherings in a neighborhood coffee shop.

The group at this time includes 2 Disciples of Christ, 2 United Church of Christ, 2 Presbyterian, and 1 Episcopal Church pastors/priest.  We are 3 women and 4 men.  We are gay and straight. We are in our 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s.   We are high church and low church and somewhere in between. We are congregational pastors, hospice chaplain, and a director of an ecumenical urban ministry.  Our congregations/ministries are all located within about a 2 mile radius — in the inner city.

The added gift is that our congregations have grown to share in ministry together through outreach, worship, and special events. Just last week, one of the Presbyterian congregations hosted the Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper that was a fundraiser for our outreach ministry.  Then all of the congregations shared in our “Ashes to Go” on the street on Ash Wednesday.  And that evening, we shared in Ash Wednesday worship hosted at the Episcopal church.   On Maundy Thursday, we will be at one of the UCC churches.  And on Good Friday, we will all share in our annual “Way of the Cross Walk” through our neighborhood.  Almost 40 years ago three of our congregations, along with another that is no longer in existence, developed the ecumenical urban ministry that we now all support (along with the support of many other congregations in the metropolitan area).

This morning, as we sat together in the library of our Disciples congregation studying our preaching text for this coming Sunday, I could not help but think of the amazing gift of this community of pastors and congregations.  As pastors we support each other personally.  We listen to and challenge each other.  We laugh and we cry together.  We are able to share and help each other work through difficult times in our congregations.  As congregations, we grow and change and deepen in our ministry through relationship with each other.

I have been in lectionary groups that used a research approach, bringing a variety of resources from theological and biblical scholars to the text each week.  That was a good approach.  This group, however, approaches the text through Lectio Divina.  I have grown to cherish the experience of group lectio and the prayerful, always fresh connection to the text that emerges from our time together.

This type of group cannot always be created.  Some groups work and some do not.  There are times and situations that are more or less conducive.  Every group is different.  But I am convinced that, through these relationships, the ministry of the Church is strengthened in ways we would never have imagined.

Thanks be to God for my dear, dear friends in ministry!

Best Actor for “Milk”

The Academy Awards always serve to remind me of the amazing positive contribution films make in our world.  I am also reminded of the array of people with a creative passion who are behind these films.  Tonight was no different … except that the presentation was spectacular!

In the weeks leading up to this year’s awards, many have remarked on the films nominated and their social commentary.  By all accounts we knew that Slum Dog Millionaire would make the sweep that it did.   Still, I was moved that this film focused in the poverty of the old Bombay (present Mumbai), India with no cast of well known stars was truly seen and appreciated.  When you think about that and look back over the years, you realize the movement — however slow — that we are making.

My greatest moments of celebration, however, were when “Milk” won Best Original Screenplay and when Sean Penn was awarded Best Actor in a Leading Role for his portrayal of Harvey Milk.  It was sad, but not surprising to hear that there were protesters outside the site of the Awards.  However,  the prevailing voice is the witness of the ages in films that retell the stories of those gay and lesbian people who have gone before us in courage.

This morning as I looked out at the congregation, I saw the wonderful community of people worshiping together — those who are single, gay and straight; couples gay and straight;  families with children, gay and straight, African American, Asian, European American.  People of all ages.  Slowing, imperfectly, we seek to live into God’s kingdom. We celebrate and give thanks that God reconciles us to God and each other, healing our brokenness through the incarnation in Jesus Christ.

It breaks my heart that the gospel of God’s Christ has been so often distorted and misused to sustain hatred and violence against God’s people.  Whether that fear and hatred has been against women, or people of color, or people of other religions, or people who are gay, it is a sign of our sin and brokenness.  But we are assured that God is reconciling the world to Godself; therefore we may trust and know that the sins of racism, homophobia, and sexism are being and will be transformed into the right relationship of God’s realm.

Indeed, our world is still full of fear and prejudice, of deep seeded homophobia and racism, but I am reminded day by day that the hatred never wins.  For Love is always stronger than hate.  And Life is always stronger than death.  Thanks be to God.

“Sex Texts from the Bible”

Today was such a great Church day!  This was the beginning day of our adult Christian Education study of Dr. Teresa J. Hornsby’s book Sex Texts from the Bible.   We were delighted to have Teresa Hornsby join us to speak to the class in the morning and then speak again at lunch following worship.

Dr. Hornsby is Associate Professor of Religion and Director Women and Gender Studies at Drury University in Springfield, Missouri.

Her humor, insight, and way of approaching the texts with such honest openness was a delight for everyone.  We are really looking forward to our study of sexuality in the Bible using her book.

During both sessions today and the time following them, I realized and appreciated the atmosphere of joy, relaxation, delight as people in the congregation and visitors talked about sex and sexuality.   When we decided to do this study and to invite Teresa Hornsby to be with us, we realized that it would mean asking folks to pay for their books and to contribute toward expenses to have her join us.  (We’re a small, financially challenged congregation and do not have this in the budget.)

We had to laugh at the speed with which hands went up and wallets opened to purchase the book!  Then we saw this usual class of 10-12 expand to 25 this morning.  Worship attendance was up.  Energy high.  Laughter abundant.

In these challenging times, when people are anxious and tense, perhaps we need to remember to celebrate life!  As our financial secretary said, upon seeing the money coming in for copies of Sex Texts from the Bible, clearly “sex is recession proof!”

Let it be so!!

Autism and Church

Last night three other members of the congregation and I attended a workshop on Autism.  It was done by the Judevine Center on Autism and was a wonderfully helpful evening.  With two children in our congregation with Autism Spectrum Disorder, we are coming to realize the very special needs of children with autism and their parents.  One of our dreams is to develop ways to include and care for children with autism and to provide support and life-giving spiritual community and space for families with children with autism.  The challenge is huge, but I believe that if we take it step by step, we will be able to provide the hospitality of Christ’s community.  And most of all we will come to know God in deeper, more profound ways.

Last week, it took by breath away when a 5 year old little girl with autism who does not speak, slipped her hand into mine for the first time.  It was a holy moment — God’s relationship creating movement in a child’s life and in mine.

In these days as our lectionary readings are in Mark, we have been reading the texts in which Jesus casts out evil spirits, or demons.  I am so very aware that those “evil spirits” or “demons” were thought to be present in such conditions as epilepsy or autism.  In Mark, teaching and healing or casting out evil spirits was all bound up together — a teaching with authority.  Could it have been that as people truly understood the gospel, then healing took on a different meaning?   Those who were cast out, isolated because of their illness or difference could be seen as whole people and  welcomed into the  community.  Maybe then, maybe not  … but most certainly now!

Yes, the child who grows to be able to communicate and socialize more fully is being healed.  But surely it is also the case that we are being healed and made more whole day by day, relationship by relationship, as our community includes every child and every family.  God deepen our understanding and therefore our joy!