The Advent Of Practice

For about three decades now, those studying the Christian faith, and religions in general, have recovered a concept that had faded away in many religious communities. This is the concept of the practices of faith. It seems that since the invention of the printing press, and all the ways of creating and distributing texts since its invention, most spiritual formation has been fairly bookish. Before that, spiritual practices for most people were a balance of oral communication and practices that put that teaching—at the risk of saying the obvious—“into practice.” Studies in education and formation in general, and faith formation in particular, have demonstrated that the most effective way to foster one’s faith life is a regular rhythm of faith practices.

Conversations

I have been hearing about a number of conversations occurring in recent days in the Seattle area. An 11-year-old Jewish girl asked her mother why so many people hate her because she’s Jewish. Area colleges and universities have Jewish and Muslim students who are asking why their fellow students are considering them to blame for, or even supportive of, the violence in the Middle East. Both Jews and Muslims are being accused as being “unfaithful” for asking for a ceasefire and a return of the hostages. The Executive Director of Seattle’s Holocaust Center for Humanity has tried to frame the conversation about the current war in Gaza about people and not politics, saying, “You can be pro-Israel, and you can be pro-Palestinian, and you can be against (violence) all at the same time.”

The Day of the Dead, All Saints Day, and Daylight Savings

This week’s reflection begins with a Public Service Announcement: Daylight Savings Time ends on Saturday. Please remember that the hour you lost on April 2nd is given back to you this weekend. If you don’t set your clock back, you may well get to church an hour early. Please feel free to put the coffee on while you wait.

Thresholds

When architects design an interior space, they pay attention to boundaries. Boundaries are most often defined by walls as they separate indoors from outdoors, and one room from another. This also allows for spaces to be distinct from one another. Like a hall from a bedroom, or a living room from a dining room. Of course, you need to have some way to get through the wall to get to what lies behind. These are often doorways, cut out from the wall to allow for passage. However, some architects design spaces to create less distinction, creating more flow and less separation between rooms. In older homes, some people will remove some or all of a wall to create the sense of unity between a family room and a kitchen, for example. In either type of space, you may walk from the kitchen to the living room, but the experiences are different with one having a more distinct crossing point, or threshold, the other being more gradual, being less clear when you leave one and enter the other.

Hospitality

I think of our church as being a very hospitable community. The fact that people have literally walked in off the street and found this church to be their faith community speaks to that. Thank you all for being generous with your welcome.

That being said, there are a number of people who come into our worship services that leave without being greeted or welcomed in any way. Sitting where I sit when the postlude begins, I have seen a good number of people leave before I have gone down the aisle. Some of them have returned, though many of them have not. I wonder how many may have returned if they had been welcomed before they left? We may never know.

Love and Hate

I don’t remember the first time I ever heard the term “hate crime.” I know I didn’t hear it as child. My children, however, have grown up with the term. Certainly, what we call hate crimes existed when I was younger, we just didn’t call them that. But I was also somewhat blind to them. As I grew up, I became more aware of how much bias, prejudice, and hate there was in the world. These attitudes often vilify and dehumanize other people, sometimes blaming them for their problems. It was my volunteering in a Black church in the housing projects of Pittsburgh that I felt called to ministry. It was there that I saw a sharp contrast between the lives our sisters and brothers in Christ in their everyday lives and their lives within the church. In a world that told them they were “worth less” than others, limiting their human potential, the church gave them hope and love. I felt called to be an agent of God’s love and hope in the world

“Discovery” and Leif Erikson

October 9, since 1935, has been a holiday. The holiday’s name is Leif Erikson Day. It is the day that commemorates the arrival of the first “European” on North American soil. The idea that Leif Erikson was the first European to “discover” America was promoted by Scandinavians in Canada and the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and in 1935 President F. D. Roosevelt signed it into law. Each year the sitting U.S. president declares the holiday once again.

Of course, this year, October 9 is also Columbus Day. Since 1792 in New York, Columbus Day has been celebrated on October 12. In 1934 Congress made it a national holiday, and in 1971 it became a federal holiday, and it moved to the second Monday in October. This year the second Monday is October 9.

Praying and Living the Lord's Prayer

Each Sunday, after we invite the Holy Spirit to consecrate our offering of worship to make it worthy of our God, we pray the Lord’s Prayer. The Lord’s Prayer has been used in Christian worship for as long as we have records. A document contemporary with the New Testament gives us the earliest version of the Lord’s Prayer outside of the gospels. It also required the faithful to pray the “Our Father” three times a day. It is uncertain if this was part of daily corporate prayer or personal prayer, or both.

For as long as the Lord’s Prayer has been part of Christian practice, there are some questions that are still not settled, such as, “Where in worship should it be prayed?” Many Christians pray it as part of the prayers at Christ’s Table. Others place it with the intercessions or prayers of the people. Others, like us, use it early in our worship service as a model for our prayers and a reminder that God both invites and instructs us to pray.

Following Luther’s Advice

Martin Luther is known for many things, including being credited (or blamed) for the separation of the “protesting churches” (now known as Protestant churches) from the Roman Church. However, most people do not think him as first being a pastor. Even fewer know that prayer was one of the most important themes in his pastoral writings and preaching. In this season of our church’s life, one of Luther’s thoughts on prayer seems most appropriate for us to heed. Luther said simply but profoundly, “I have so much to do today that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer.

Luther was quick to point out that prayer was not a “work,” or something done to win God’s favor. Instead, prayer was our response to God’s command for us to pray, and insistence that God would guide our prayers, even giving us words to pray. For Luther, prayer helped conform us to God.

Leave-taking from IPS to Pastor Steve

I was hired for my first tenure track academic position by Loyola University Chicago for their Institute of Pastoral Studies. IPS was started in the early 1960s during the Second Vatican Council by Loyola’s School of Education, not its Theology Department. It was established to provide education for clergy and women and men religious for the church that was being imagined at Vatican II before its conclusion. By the time I arrived on the faculty over three decades later, it was one of the premier ministry schools in the United States, drawing students from all over the world, as well as a number of different denominations and traditions. What made it truly unique is that every class was capped at 12 students. If 13 people enrolled, they would split it into two classes. It was the most intimate formal learning context I have ever been a part of. And this intimacy created an intense sense of community because of it.

Labor Day and Calendars

This past Monday was Labor Day. Although summer technically ends about midnight, September 22nd this year, most people think of Labor Day as the last day of summer. For those in the Seattle Public Schools, Labor Day marks the end of summer vacation, but for First Covenant Church, Labor Day marks the beginning of the new year. That is, our new fiscal year, which to be specific, begins September 1st each year.

Defining worship, revisited

Last week I introduced you to the work of Lester Ruth who provided categories for describing Christian worship that are not biased or pejorative. As I mentioned last week, Dr. Ruth came up with three categories to define worship, one of which was “how does a congregation see itself in relation to other churches?” He provided a range from “Congregational” to “Connectional,” I put us solidly on the Connectional side of the scale. Some of you responded with your affirmation of that. It is not a simple category for all churches, however. I once drove by an “independent Bible church” in California which proudly advertised on a large sign outside their church “We play Hillsong Music”—much the same way the refectory at Fuller Seminary advertised “We serve Starbucks Coffee.” This is why these categories are on a range, not either/or questions. Churches are somewhere on the scale, but probably not at one end or the other, like this “independent” church which connected itself to another group of churches in its worship. For me this illustration raises another question: I wonder if the early Christians worried about how they branded their worship? 

Defining worship, defined by worship

In the latter decades of the last century and the early decade of this century, there was a lot of rhetoric around Protestant worship. In particular, the use and meanings of the terms “traditional” and “contemporary.” When we think of “contemporary worship,” for example, we often think of music and instrumentation; songs that are structured more like popular songs than hymns, and instruments that are more commonly found in popular music than classical music. Actually, contemporary worship began with the use of contemporary translations of the Bible (like the Living Bible, Good News for Modern Man [sic], or more recently, The Message). Once that threshold was crossed, other contemporary elements began showing up in worship, like what people sang, what instruments they played, how they dressed, what elements were used for communion, and how it was served. 

Our first lesson today…

Following last week’s reflection on the uniqueness of Matthew’s gospel which is being read throughout this liturgical year, I thought this week I would explore the season of Pentecost and how it is unique in the church year. In particular I wanted to identify how the readings other than the gospel lessons are chosen. To begin with, the church year is divided almost exactly in half, with the seasons of Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, and Easter (which ends Pentecost Sunday) comprising the “Christ cycle.” These seasons begin with the Father’s promise of a Messiah, leading to the birth and ministry of Jesus resulting in the dying, rising, and ascending of Christ, concluded with the giving of the Spirit which “christs” (or christens, anoints) us. The other half of the year is the “Church cycle” which focuses on the Church as the Body of Christ, It begins the first Sunday after Pentecost and ends with the Reign of Christ Sunday, or “Judgment Sunday” in the old Swedish tradition.

"… According to Matthew"

First Covenant Church practices the discipline of using the lectionary as a guide for the reading and proclamation of God’s Word. The Revised Common Lectionary that we follow is fairly new, only three decades old, though it is a revision of older lectionaries. Created for Protestant churches, it assigns a reading from the Old Testament, a Psalm, a reading from Acts or an epistle, and a gospel lesson to each Sunday and Holy Day. These assignments allow us to cover, for the most part, a majority of the Bible over the course of its three-year cycle.

Kairos and Metanoia

In Greek mythology, Kairos was the God of opportunity. He was depicted as having long hair near this forehead, and no hair on the back of his head. The reason is that as he approached, people were to grab on to his hair so as not to miss the opportunities he would afford them. If he went past, there was nothing to grab hold onto and the opportunity was lost. Following him was Metanoia, a woman of shadows who brought regret to those who missed the opportunity that had just passed them by.

When you read this, I will have been home for a few days. While I was gone, I visited family and friends, most of whom I have not seen recently—or some not even seen in the recent past. I met with people whose health has declined as their age has increased. I met many who had recently retired. I met with some who wished to retire but could not. Yet in all of those conversations, I found a common thread,

A Postcard from Brookville, Pennsylvania

Greetings from Brookville, Pennsylvania, population 3,795. It is a picturesque small town nestled in the Allegheny forest in western Pennsylvania. It is right off Interstate 80 which divides Pennsylvania north and south and serves as a financial artery for small towns like Brookville near its exits. Brookville has the added advantage of being the home of Brookville Equipment Corporation, one of the foremost builders of trolley cars, trains, and buses, having built the light rail cars for the Sound Transit system in Tacoma. When it comes to street cars, new or refurbished, Brookville is kind of a big deal for a small town.

Well sung, but little known?

It strikes me that we often sing hymns in our worship and have little knowledge of the people who wrote them and the context of their writing. This applies to those penning the lyrics and crafting the tunes, as well as the context out of which their hymns came, be it their personal story or the moment in world history that it was written in and for. I thought of this as I have recently had the opportunity to revisit the life and influence of one of the most beloved hymn writers in our tradition, Lina Sandell. Whether new or review, her story and her hymns, are worth considering, I believe.

Seasons

Every climate has seasons. Some places may have more distinct seasons than others, but the passing of time is marked by seasons around the world. I grew up in the northern Allegheny mountains, which had delightful and sometimes cool springs and falls, pleasant summers, and rather “robust” winters. Living in the Midwest for a quarter century, I became accustomed to less rigor in the winters, but more heat and humidity in the summer, and greater unpredictability in the fall and spring. Southern California was delightful most of the time, and though it had seasons, they were less distinct and felt unfamiliar. Now home is the Pacific Northwest, where the seasons are both temperate and distinct, and in days like these—glorious.

137

For the one hundred and thirty-seventh time, the Evangelical Covenant Church convened an annual meeting of its churches and the institutions it supports to do the business of our denomination. Over the more than a century and a third of its existence, the cultural context of the ministry of our denomination has changed drastically. Today the Christian denominations in North America are constricting. A political climate of division, mistrust, and intolerance has affected churches. Large denominations—Methodist, Presbyterian, and Baptist to name a few—have faced fissures and divisions within their communions. As a denomination that has throughout its history cast a net broadly, agreeing to disagree on matters not central to Christian doctrine, it has been a bit behind the curve of division, but not exempt from it. This was the context for our 137th meeting last week in Southern California.