Choices

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Second Sunday after Pentecost

1 Kings 18:20-21, (22-29), 30-39, Psalm 96, Galatians 1:1-12, Luke 7:1-10

One of the stories my parents like to tell on me involves a trip to the local convenience store when I was about six years old. It seems that my parents wanted to give me a treat, so they took me to the aisle where the candy bars were on display and told me I could pick one out. Instead of making a beeline toward the M&M’s or the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, grabbing one, and calling it a day, I simply stood there, looking at the vast array of sugary snacks, unable to make anything even approaching a selection. In fact, the sheer number of options overwhelmed me, paralyzing my decision-making capabilities until finally, I broke down in tears and my dad had to pick out a candy bar and hand it to me.

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Don’t Be Afraid

 

 

The Sixth Sunday of Easter
Acts 16:9-15 (RCL); Acts 15:1-2, 22-29 (LM)
Psalm 67 (RCL); Psalm 67:2-8 (LM)
Revelation 21:10- 22:5 (RCL); Revelation 21:1014, 22-23 (LM)
John 14:23-29

“When love has entirely cast out fear, and fear has been transformed into love, then the unity brought us by our savior will be fully realized, for all [people] will be united with one another through their union with the one supreme Good.”

St. Gregory of Nyssa,
from a homily on The Song of Songs

In a wide-ranging conversation with Bill Moyers early last year, writer Marilynne Robinson spoke about fear in American life. With eloquence and insight (and no little exasperation), she noted how we have managed to convince ourselves—or, rather, how we have been persuaded by powerful interest groups—that fear is really courage.

We fashion, she said, “little narratives” that make each of us the hero of an imagined drama and anyone else a potential threat. And all the ways in which we prepare (expect? secretly hope?) for our fear-driven stories to unfold constitute something of an addiction, a cultural obsession, a collective pathology.

Robinson’s insights are as timely as ever these many months later. Why is America’s culture of fear taken as a matter of course? Read more

Tilling and Keeping: A Report on Gathering 2014

In July we gathered to explore our call to “till and keep” the very good creation of God. Over 140 participants gathered in Chicago, traveling from California to New York.  There were a record number of first timers at the gathering this year—new friends that we hope will continue to join us. 

Our three plenary speakers guided our conversations at the gathering.  First was Norman Wirzba, who renewed our understanding of the very good creation and called us away from the language of “nature” that obscures our view of a world to which God has already given value.  Second, was Ched Myers who called us to learn our watersheds and place our discipleship within our local ecosystems. Third, we heard from Philip Bess who led us through an exploration of how we might imagine a city such as Chicago or the space of a church campus as a more human scaled and ecological space.  In addition to our plenary speakers we had a number of excellent workshops exploring climate conversations in the church, green burials, poetry, local activism, and craft.

As always worship was at the core of our time together.  We were led skillfully in music by David Butzu and heard powerful preaching from Jesse Shuman Larkins, Sally Youngquist, and Jim McCoy.  Debra Dean Murphy and Sharon Huey created beautiful liturgies that facilitated our common prayer and worship.

There were several new elements at the gathering this year.  Key among them was a film festival.  The festival kicked off Thursday night with a showing of an episode of the Showtime documentary series “Years of Living Dangerously” followed by a Q&A with Anna Jane Joyner, a preacher’s daughter turned climate activist who was featured in the episode.  On Friday, after enjoying a meal featuring a variety of locally grown and organic foods, we watched ten films submitted from a variety of communities from Christian colleges to churches.  Members of each community were on hand to personally share about the practices shown in the films.

Once again our time together served as a renewal of subversive friendships new and old.  We hope that the practices and reflections shared this year will bear fruit in the individual communities of all those who gathered.  To that end the audio from the workshops and plenaries is posted online.  There will also soon be a page featuring selections from the film festival and a pamphlet reflecting on creation care practices in the coming months.

What Is There To Say?

 

Easter A
John 20:1-18 (RCL); John 20:1-9 (Lectionary for Mass)

You have to preach to those for whom the resurrection narrative is known inside and out, is loved and adored, is the sense-making story of their life in God, their life with others, their life in relation to all the world.  What is there to say?

You have to preach to those for whom the resurrection narrative is science fiction or harmful propaganda. They may be in church this day only to please a mother or grandmother. (There are worse things). They may smirk. They may sleep. They may pity your benighted ignorance. What is there to say?

You have to preach to those who are curious but who would never let on that the story of Jesus’ rising from the dead sometimes keeps them up at night. They have a healthy dose of the same skepticism as the group above, but unlike them, they have a hunch that truth can be revealed through means other than the scientific method. What is there to say?

You have to preach to those who long for subtlety and sublimity in an Easter sermon. They may share a good deal with group one but, like group three, they also live with a fair amount of uncertainty about things. They think that poetry and art might be the best media for conveying the story of Easter. What is there to say?

Much is welcome about the Church’s signature Feast: the glorious music, the sparkling Alleluias! after the soberness of Lent, the bursting forth of springtime (at least in the northern hemisphere). Yet how does the preacher communicate Easter’s strange, improbable story to this strange, improbable gathering? Read more