3/31/25

Pastor’s Ponderings

As Easter approaches and our Bible study on the letters of John continues, I find myself pondering yet again what it means to abide in love, a phrase John uses often in his letter writing. 

Each Sunday you and I gather around the Lord’s Table to celebrate a great mystery:  the mystery of God becoming mortal like us in order that we might gain immortality like God.  It is an act for which we do not know all the answers to “how” but we certainly know the answer to “why”:  because of God’s great love.  

Gathered around the table we are lifted into a perspective that opens our eyes to our new connection with God and with each other.  We feast with all those who are in Christ:  those in our nation, those in other nations around the world; those who have been long dead, those yet to be born. These are the moments when great courage and hope enter our beings on a molecular level as we eat the bread and taste the cup that is a foretaste of the time we will all feast together in the flesh, served by Christ himself.  

Since the Great Awakening in the early 18th century, Christians in the west have emphasized a personal relationship with Jesus encompassed by individual conversion and spiritual growth. This is a great thing when it calls us to personal Christian accountability; this is a very negative thing when it reduces our understanding of “church” to merely a nice thing when convenient but not necessary - I can, after all, worship just fine on my deck. 

Except that we can’t. The Bible study on the sunny deck with coffee, the meditative walk in the woods, singing along with the contemporary music radio station - these are all significant parts of praise and worship, but never to be confused with taking the place of coming into the Body of Christ to abide in the meal of mystery that binds us to God and to each other across all time and space.

The writer of I John reminds us over and over again that to be of God is to love one another. “Whoever does not love, does not know God”.  This love is forged in the fires of staying connected to unlovable friends and family members, even while protecting ourselves against what is sometimes called “toxicity”; learning to love individuals in the church, even the crotchety or out of control ones; learning to welcome the stranger not because we are not afraid but because it is more important to be faithful than to be safe. We practice this love in our fellowship with one another, again as I John reminds, “whoever does not love does not know God.”  We know of this love not because we had it in us to give but because God first loved us and sent his son to atone for our lack of love. 

Sunday after Sunday the Lord’s Table calls us to the new life described by I John:  a life marked by loving one another as we have been loved. The vision set before us is our personal reconciliation as a child of God and our communal reconciliation as Christ’s own body.

I hope to see you there.

Grace and Peace, 

Beth

3/24/25

Pastor’s Ponderings

Christians hear the clarion call and in mountaintop moments of wonder and gratitude enter the baptistry to be reborn into new and transformed lives, determined to be part of a movement to do nothing less than change the world by bearing witness to our Christ.  We come out of the baptistry only to find ourselves tied forever to Euodia and Syntyche.

You remember them, right? The two women from Philippi who have the dubious distinction of being called out in front of the entire church for all time because they could not get along. “I urge Euodia and I urge Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord” Paul writes in Philippians 4. “Yes, and I ask you also, my loyal companion, help these women for they have struggled beside me in the work of the gospel…”

Help them?  Help them do what? We thought we were supposed to preach grace and justice to the whole world in the name of Christ, not get caught in the middle of an argument about whose turn it is to lock up the building! Is this really necessary?

Paul and the Elder John agree that yes, it is.  In the first letter of John, over and over the writer calls us to understand if we love God, we demonstrate that love in our love for each other. And that means not just showing up for the preaching but getting involved in the day to day lives of the believers with whom we are in fellowship: Reaching out to one another. Working out the details.  Forgiving one another.  Agreeing to disagree - agreeably.

It’s like the church is one great big laboratory for learning how to love. The longer we can stick together and maintain our love for one another the deeper that love and the stronger the church becomes.  But just as soon as the church divides and separates, the experiment is over and the pieces have to start back at level one in learning to love one another as a community of Christ. Same for individuals belonging to a church.  The longer you remain a part,  the deeper the love you gain for one another in the shared experience of service - but each time you leave a church and begin again, you start all over with new people in love level one. 

 “In whatever place you live, do not easily leave it” wrote St. Anthony of the Desert in the 3rd century.  The author of I John says it this way:  “Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.”

Grace and peace,

Beth

3/17/25

Pastor’s Ponderings

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! 

In honor of Ireland’s patron saint, I offer one of his best-known prayers, recorded in his Confessions:  

Christ be with me, Christ within me,

Christ behind me, Christ before me,

Christ beside me, Christ to win me,

Christ to comfort and restore me.

Christ beneath me, Christ above me,

Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,

Christ in the hearts of all that love me

Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

And also, a prayer from the ancient Celtic Christians (A Celtic Psaltery):

The virtues of the star lit heaven,

The glorious sun’s life giving ray

The whiteness of the moon at even,

The flashing of the lightning free,

The whirling wind’s tempestuous shocks,

The stable earth, the deep salt sea

Around the old eternal rocks.

Grace and peace,

Beth

3/10/25

Pastor’s Ponderings

We sat in the Adult Sunday School classroom, coffee cups and Bibles in hand, quietly thinking together.

We were in the midst of the second chapter of I John, the part where Elder John reminds his readers our new commandment is the commandment of Christ:  “Love one another as I have loved you.”  While the new commandment does not eradicate our responsibility to the law of Moses, it does change it. The old commandments of the law spell everything out for the believer:  what to eat, how to wash hands, what to wear, when to worship, how to worship, how much walking on the sabbath is OK, how much constitutes work… Now we live in the age of the new commandment, a time when the law is not cast aside, but reinterpreted in the light of how we have experienced the love of Jesus.  This age is a huge responsibility for the believer and full of grey area (what exactly would Jesus do?)

Matthew Sleeth, MD has a marvelous story in his book 24/6 that cuts right to the heart of the matter.  Working the ED call shift of a small rural hospital one night, a man comes in with severe pain. His prostate gland had swollen, rendering it impossible to empty his bladder. Sleeth writes that in the old days the night nurse would have just cathed the patient without even calling the doctor, but these are the days of endless paperwork and protocol.  The nurse called Dr. Sleeth to report she had a 57 year old man who needs his bladder catheterized but two blood pressure cuffs that were not working, therefore she was going to have to leave the ED to locate one before she could fill out the chart.

Something told Dr. Sleeth to get on over to the ED.  By the time he got there the patient was in agony, tears rolling down his face, considering anything to stop the pain including giving up. He writes “My eyes must have gone wide when I realized that Lois had left this suffering man without putting a catheter in him so she could wander around looking for a machine to record his blood pressure.”  He immediately inserted the catheter.

The average human bladder wishes to empty at 12 ounces of fluid or less.  Dr. Sleeth had drained 96 ounces and still going strong when Lois arrived triumphantly with a working blood pressure machine so that she could start the process.  Dr Sleeth continues:  “ ‘If you didn’t want to cath him without the vitals why didn’t you just call me to to do it?’ I asked.  ‘Because I knew you would want the vital signs!’  She was just doing her job - even if it killed Bill.”  (24/6 pp. 30-31.)

Sleeth tells this story to illustrate “concrete thinking” and draw our attention to how we can fall into concrete thinking when it comes to reading scripture.  He warns us against taking the letter of the law and losing sight of the intent behind it. This is Elder John’s point made clear:  The law of Moses exists to give us a general idea about what is best.  The ultimate decision of how to act in any given situation is the new law that overshadows all of the old, the law given to us by Jesus:  “A new commandment I give to you:  Love one another as I have loved you.“

One of the members of our group quietly looked at the others.  “So in a way it all boils down to why you do something, instead of what it is that you actually do.”

John the Elder would agree.

Grace and peace,

Beth

3/3/25

Pastor’s Ponderings

The calendar turns this week to Ash Wednesday, and we begin the “slow greening of our souls” in the season of Lent.

I find myself wondering what the season of “greening” can look like. 

I get up from the computer and take a walk to the mailbox.  All the way across the yard and down to the pond, daffodils are shooting up and beginning to open in little yellow explosions. At the pond the Louisiana iris have turned dark living green, in contrast to the brown and dead foliage that surrounds them.  It is a sunny day so one little turtle breaks hibernation to come up from the cold mud and steal a few precious moments in the sun.  All are responding to some deep signal to begin changing, to begin transforming their winter bodies of death into bodies of life. 

A pastor friend reports that he tells his congregation regularly “I love you, and there is nothing you can do about it”- hoping they will look past him to the God who inspires the words.  I wonder, what would it mean if we could fully embrace that we are loved by God, and there isn’t anything we can do about it? Would we be able to release our defensiveness, our tendencies to measure ourselves against others?  Would we be able to fully forgive those who have hurt us, releasing our pain into the healing love of God?  Would we finally feel the temptations of our greatest sins lose their grip on us against the great power of the love of God?

Would the “greening of our souls” finally become the beauty of transformed, resurrected lives?

And so again the ancient clarion call of the cross beckons to us.  We turn our faces toward it, and begin to surge back to life.

Grace and peace,

Beth

2/17/25

Pastor’s Ponderings

The tracks in the snow told the story:   a rabbit is still hopping.

At least it was early Wednesday morning back during the week in January when it snowed. But there are so many things that like to eat rabbit, and those things are very hungry right now as they wait out winter’s barren days.  

In the summer I see rabbits in abundance at the top of the hill where the path is marked by heavy brush on both sides.  I especially see them in close proximity to a pile of old branches and hedge clippings pulled to the woods by Marty on his tractor.  They come out to eat grass and scratch their ears with their hind legs and sun, but at the first sign of me -  and more importantly my dogs - they disappear in a flash into the pile of debris.

In the spring when the babies first emerge there are little bunnies everywhere, spilling out into the path, climbing and hopping over each other. Then as the days of summer pass by, because there are also owls, hawks, fox, coyote, and black snakes, I see fewer and fewer.  Finally as the woods glow in their autumn finery I only see one or two - fully grown now, and fast as lightning.

I wondered if any had made it through the winter, and sure enough there in the snow was a set of bunny hops.  All around the path just beyond the brush pile it had hopped, but never so far that a lightening bolt of speed could not get it quickly burrowed back into safety. There it stays hidden, waiting for the sun and the spring, and hopefully the little ones that will be born to start nature’s cycle over again.

The rabbit survives by being fast on its feet.  Watchful at all times, even when resting, it is always ready to lunge those powerful back legs into action.

Sunday after Sunday, year after year,  the pastor says to her flock in her closing blessing “Be watchful.” In the tracks of the rabbit recorded by the snow, I am reminded the times are hard and the testings are real. The enemy is hungry, on the prowl, therefore we must stay watchful, always on alert;  even as we rest we must be ready to use the spiritual gifts God has provided us in order to survive.  And always the hope:  resurrection will come.  The Lamb will take the throne, death will be defeated, and winter will end.

Grace and peace,

Beth

2/10/25

Pastor’s Ponderings

Recently I noticed on my brand new 2025 Disciples of Christ liturgical calendar that “Week of the Laity” has been removed from our yearly progression of ancient holidays (i.e. Christmas, All Saints) and more modern observances (i.e. Mother’s Day, Scout Sunday).  

I can’t say I am really surprised - the observation of “Layman Sunday” that started in the Christian Church DoC almost 100 years ago - the Sunday that became  “Laity Sunday” for most of my life - actually shifted to “Week of the Laity” about 5 years ago.  This week was a time set apart for special training of laity leadership and maybe a potluck supper honoring committee chairs, but not necessarily a time including a personal testimony of faith by a lay leader. Now even Week of the Laity has disappeared.  A quick glimpse at the Division of Homeland Ministries website reveals Week of the Laity is now part of a wider emphasis on congregational transformation, youth empowerment, and laity involvement, and resources for these initiatives are available year round and are not tied to a particular date.

So why in the last 5 years have I stubbornly clung to the idea we need to have a designated Sunday to highlight the work of laity by inviting laity to give their testimonies of faith?

Well, partly it is because I love to hear your stories of faith as you testify before our congregation - yes, on a Sunday that I do not have to preach! - but mostly it is because I appreciate the reason Laity Sunday was called into being in the first place: a time to recognize we are all in the work of proclaiming the gospel not by virtue of our ordination into professional ministry, like me, but by virtue of our baptism, like all of us. 

The baptized believer enters the waters of baptism in response to the call to a transformed life in Christ, and emerges from the water a member of the body of Christ entrusted with the responsibility of offering our spiritual gifts in support of that body.  For many members of Christ’s body, not just “preachers”, the spiritual gifts of teaching and communication are a part of those gifts and that responsibility.   Speaking of your faith before your church is a metaphor for claiming those gifts and sharing your faith with the whole world.

On Laity Sunday of 1996, my first January at FCC, I stood before you and declared that this would hopefully be the last Laity Sunday I would speak, and instead henceforth we would devote the last Sunday in January to hearing your stories:  highlighting all the many ways you as laity came to your baptisms, how you live your faith through your secular jobs, and what being a Christian has meant to you. For 29 years, many of you have risen to take the pulpit and tell your story, as our sister Fran did so beautifully a few Sundays ago. To each of you I want you to know we have all been empowered and blessed by your witness. Many others of you have said to me “I would do anything for my church but I just can’t do this!” and I totally get that - public speaking is not everyone’s spiritual gift and that is OK. And then there are a few of you who have said “I think I may feel called to this, but not yet”.  To you, my “not yetters”, and anyone else whom I have not directly spoken with but who may be open to speaking, I would simply say:  keep praying about the call to give your testimony and if the Spirit moves you, let’s talk.  We may not have an “official” Week of the Laity anymore, but I continue to be deeply committed to laity who feel called to do so being given the opportunity to testify to their faith in the context of communal worship.  Let’s set our own date.

Grace and peace,

Beth

1/27/25

1/27/25Pastor’s Ponderings

The Ronald Johnson trial is over and what a trial it was.  As witnesses took the stand down in the Johnston County Courthouse it was all there:  a police officer engaged in blackmail, shady politicians, secret recordings, illicit affairs, vengeful lovers, once-loyal friends who refused to align themselves with criminal activity, judges overhearing conversations behind food bars, and a small town where everyone knew everyone involved and talked about it extensively behind closed doors. When I write my great American novel, this one will be the story I tell.

Former school board member Ronald Johnson was found guilty in a trial before 12 of his peers on all counts of which he had been charged including felony extortion, felony obstruction of justice, and two counts of willful failure to discharge duties of his office. As school board chair Lyn Andrews exited the courthouse her remark was “justice has been served”.

Ronald Johnson was elected to the Johnston County Board of Eduction on the platform that he had uncovered financial fraud in the school board budget and could be trusted to further uncover and disclose the truth. And even now, after five days of trial testimony, if you read the comments beneath the news article covering the verdict on the JoCo Report you will find many Johnstonians who continue to believe Johnson’s trial was all a set up by “rino’s” (republicans in name only), a conspiracy intent to cover up financial mismanagement by the school board and make a victim of an innocent man whose only crime was telling the truth. 

It’s a microcosm of the problem we face all over our country: the belief that there is a massive network of deadly conspiracies and corruption being covered up from our small town courtrooms all the way up to the White House. 

Only the facts of the matter are clear. While the school board has had significant budget shortfalls in recent years necessitating the transfer of funds from budget line to budget line, they have consistently had clean independent audits made publicly available for review. On the other hand Ronald Johnson himself was found guilty by a trial of his peers - people chosen at random by a judicial system based on the premise that a man is innocent until proven guilty.  Not one of his 12 randomly selected peers, after hearing a week’s worth of evidence and testimony, held out for the possibility of his innocence.

The judicial arm of our democracy is the branch of government charged with preserving an individual’s rights under the law and holding in check the power of the executive and legislative branches. The beauty of the system is that it is based on citizens hearing and deciding the innocence or criminality of each other. I do not doubt there are corrupt judges and that a jury can be swayed by factors other than the truth.  However to entrench oneself in the belief that some kind of massive conspiracy network exists everywhere right down to the level of the local school board is only to indict ourselves of injustice.

A democracy is only as strong as its citizens.  Organizations like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers and any other paramilitary conspiracy-flaming groups are not defending democracy - they are tearing it apart. The more of us that fall in behind them championing unproven conspiracy theories, even ones that seem as nationally insignificant as accusations against local school boards, the greater the damage that will be done to the very fabric of this nation. 

But on January 17 in the Johnston County courthouse amid the sordid details of sex, lies and politics, the “conspiracy theory” evaporated in a thin wisp of smoke. The people spoke, and justice prevailed.

Grace and peace,

Beth

1/20/25

Pastor’s Ponderings

My pond is covered with a thin sheet of ice and I am thinking about the turtles. 

Last winter on a warmer brighter day, Marty and I snuck off to Yates Mill Park where we walked the trail around the mill pond and saw turtles sunning on every available inch of any log, large or small, poking out of the water.  I have some great pictures of lines of turtles sticking their legs out to catch the rays like a chorus line of can-can dancers.

My pond is also typically covered in turtles, but no sign of a single one these bitter cold days.  I knew they were buried down in the mud but one day it struck me:  how do they breathe?

Turns out they don’t. When temperatures plunge below freezing these reptiles with no warm blood to sustain them sink to the bottom of the pond where they pull themselves into their shells and drop into a deep stillness - heart rates slow just short of stopping, body temperatures drop just short of freezing. Buried in the mud, they go so still they don’t need to breathe. There,  beyond the reach of predators, they survive the cold that would otherwise kill them.

Many winter days are warm enough for turtles to rise, breathe and bask; however the longer the frozen periods rage on, the harder it gets to sustain their hibernation. Without oxygen circulating their blood, acids form and pool and muscles burn. Their bodies pull calcium out of their bones and even their shells to neutralize these acids. The waiting gets harder on their bodies with every passing day, yet surfacing too early would bring certain death. 

Do turtles feel the same burn we feel when our muscles do not have enough oxygen? When our brain tells us to keep running but our muscles scream for us to stop?  This question was not nearly as easy to research an answer. Maybe yes to some degree, probably mostly no - but suffice it to say, if they do and if they could speak to us, I suspect this is what they would say: be patient.  Wait out the hard, frozen times; don’t try to surface too fast.  Let yourself stay alive in the stillness and keep trusting that spring will come.

Grace and peace,

Beth

1/13/25

Pastor’s Ponderings

“The modern world will have to fit in with Christmas or die. Those who will not rejoice in the end of the year must be condemned to lament it.” G.K Chesterton, “The Illustrated London News” 1909

I must admit, this one I had to think about.

Granted, it is probably very good advice for someone like me who finds themselves every year in a January funk - the tears typically begin when the taillights of my children’s vehicles disappear down the driveway after the bright and joyful Christmas holiday. Still, isn’t it good to remember how wonderful things were, even if endings make us a little sad?

Closer examination of Chesterton reveals he is not talking about the melancholy we feel after long-awaited events have passed, but is instead pointing towards how the years of our lives are swiftly hastening on into the inevitable time of death -  and rebirth. Looking backwards and grieving for the old contains the danger of preventing us from looking forward in joy toward the new life that is coming. Just as night gives way to day, sleep gives way to wakefulness, winter gives way to spring,  so our lives are giving way to new life in Christ the newborn King. 

“The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year” Chesterton muses, “but that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes.” The world now faces a choice - rejoice with us in the birth of the babe that makes this new life possible, or forever lament the ending of things as earthly life slowly winds down to a close.

Perhaps our January resolutions this year should contain the resolve to take Chesterton’s advice and instead of grieving the slow march of time, embrace it with patience and joy as getting older means we are one step closer to being born again.

Grace and peace,

Beth

1/6/25

Pastor’s Ponderings

Today is January 6, the feast of the Epiphany, which means you can finally move those wise men up to the manger in your home nativity scene.

What, you took it down already? Why?

I probably know the answer to that.  Because Protestant America’s traditional focus on Christmas as the month before December 25 has left us bereft of the 12 days of Christmas and the Festival of the Epiphany.  For centuries Christians around the world have celebrated Christmas for the 12 days after December 25, and then celebrated the arrival of the three kings on January 6:  the day set aside to honor the star which rose as a sign of God’s intent to reveal the newborn son of God to the entire world, and the wise ones who responded to that star, representing all of us in the gentile world who would follow them into the covenant between God and God’s people.

To try to make up the difference between our cultural expectation and our liturgical practice, many Protestant churches, including us Disciples, move the celebration of Epiphany to the second Sunday of Christmas, calling it “Epiphany Sunday”, and launch the season of Epiphany thereafter. So at least we focus on the themes of Epiphany that Sunday, even if we don’t get the king’s bread, gifts from the wise men, three kings parades with kings and camels, and other traditions that mark the celebration of Three Kings Day among Christians of many other backgrounds. 

Yet even still, the season of Epiphany is the church season we tend to know the least about.  Advent we eagerly greet, Lent we know to be the season of the cross, even Pentecost we recognize as our celebration of the gift of the Holy Spirit and the growing of the church, but what exactly is Epiphany? 

The clue is in the stories.  Epiphany begins with the celebration of the star that appeared over Bethlehem, visible to all the world, and weeks later ends with the transfiguration of Jesus, the time on the mountain when before a few chosen disciples Jesus took on his full resurrection form in all its light and splendor.  So for all the Sundays in between the star and the transfiguration, Epiphany is the season of glory - the season of light, when we rejoice in the manifestation of the Son of God growing more and more visible until the whole world sees and knows who he is.

Now I love a good party so I am disappointed we miss out on the Three Kings Day fun other Christians from traditions around the world participate in.  At least over here at my house the three kings are up to the manger now.  But I am very much looking forward to spending the season of Epiphany with you, as we walk together in the growing light of God.

Grace and peace,

Beth

12/30/24

Pastor’s Ponderings

Should old acquaintance be forgot

And never brought to mind?

Should old acquaintance be forgot

In the days of auld lang syne?

For auld lang syne, my dear

For auld lang syne

We'll drink a cup of kindness yet

For the sake of auld lang syne

Soon the midnight bells will ring as balls drop and lovers kiss and we sing “for auld lang syne” or “for times long past”, “for long, long ago”. The tune is an ancient Scottish tune set to new words in the 17th century by Scottish poet Robert Burns.  Burns wraps his words around us like a mist of melancholy, reminding that time is quickly passing by and old times should not be forgotten but allowed to become precious memories that evoke the presence of loved ones departed and mark occasions that will take place no more. It is like the bagpiper’s drone, a single note sounded that calls forth longing, acknowledging all that time takes from us.

It is the phrase “we’ll drink a cup of kindness yet” that rings in my heart- a phrase that gets to the very bottom of this song about the river of time that bears all its sons away.  For when it is all said and done, what do we really have but each other?  And what remains in this world after our footsteps have ceased? Naught but the acts of kindness that touched the lives of others as we passed this way in times long past.

Evangelist Tony Campolo once said “We make so much noise on New Year’s Eve because we are trying to drown out the macabre sound of grass growing over our own graves.”  Many a stumbling footstep on New Year’s Eve will witness to how drunk we have to get to drown out that sound!  A better cup to raise is the cup of kindness - the cup containing the realization that in the passing of the days, the acts of kindness that make this world a better place are the only worthy legacy of our brief time together.

Happy New Year my dear friends! We’ll drink a cup of kindness yet.

Grace and Peace,

Beth

12/23/24

Pastor’s Ponderings 

And so my friends, Christmas, like a great boomerang, comes around again.

G.K Chesterton is the origin of the metaphor of Christmas as a boomerang; in 1913 as a part of his column in “The Illustrated London News” he wrote: 

“And all the healthiest things we know are boomerangs - that is, they are things that return.  Sleep is a boomerang.  We fling it from us at morning, and it knocks us down again at night. Daylight is a boomerang.  We see it at the end of the day disappearing in the distance; and at the beginning of the next day we see it come back and break the sky.  I mean, we see it if we get up early enough - which I have done once or twice.”

Me too, Mr. Chesterton, in regards to the sunrise - and truthfully, only once or twice.  But I do understand your point - why it is so important to appreciate the things that come around to us over and over again.  These are the things that create stability and routine in a chaotic and unpredictable world.  Things like Sunday morning worship.  Observance of the Passover which the Lord God commanded and for Christians is celebrated as the Lord’s Supper.

As time goes by and fewer and fewer things remain dependable and constant in our lives - families grow and change, bodies age and memories can no longer be trusted - we grow to appreciate the stability and dependability of the Advent wreath, the Christmas tree, and “Joy to the World” even more.  For even as our lives are brief and the family we cherish so dear this year may not be with us next, Christmas is the ancient promise that with God, all things that come around go around again:  life, death, and life again.  The light shines in the dark, and the darkness does not overcome it.

Light the trees, set the tables, place the gifts under the tree:  Merry Olde Christmas with its boomerang promise of a God who is Emmanuel, with us through all of our days, has come around again.

And may it be a very merry one indeed, my dear friends,

Beth

12/16/24

Pastor’s Ponderings 

I wish for you this Christmas that you be a little silly.

Yes, you read that right.  A little silly.

C.K Chesterton, one of the great writers and teachers of our faith, once wrote in his column in The Illustrated London News (1913):

“Most sensible people say that adults cannot be expected to appreciate Christmas as much as children appreciate it.  But I am not sure that even sensible people are always right; and this has been my principle reason for deciding to be silly - a decision that is now irrevocable.  It may be because I am silly, but I rather think that, relative to the rest of the year, I enjoy Christmas more than I did when I was a child.”

How can this be?  Does this great Christian teacher truly expect us to enjoy Christmas more as adults than we did as children? Is this even possible? 

Well, first of all we must not confuse appreciation of Christmas with greed.  Much of what we associate with children at Christmas is their over-the-top gimme gimme gimme - which we love to watch because they are so stinkin’ cute, even if they are greedy little monsters.  What Chesterton is talking about is very different.  He is talking about their ability to revel in mystery and surprise.

The key to it is to challenge ourselves to let the child’s excitement of unexplainable things happening right beneath our own roof while we sleep deepen as we age into the adult’s understanding that Christmas Eve is indeed a night of unexplainable mystery and power - and then let ourselves fill with wonder.  The more mature our understanding of grace, the lighter our step, the deeper our laughter, the more delightful our celebrations.

The problem is most of us are so weighted down with the burdens of this life we begin to lose the ability to imagine life without these burdens.  We lose our capacity for wonder.  We crowd out mystery with realism.  We are are too busy with the “to do” list to make space for  dancing in sheer joy under the Christmas sky.

Perhaps this is what our Lord means when he tells us in order to enter the kingdom of heaven we must be like a child. Able to imagine the unimaginable.  Able to embrace the unexplainable.  Able to accept that the scene playing out before us in Bethlehem is familiar and simple yet filled with so much we don’t understand.

And so my wish for you in the days ahead is that you laugh hard, love even harder, and be a little silly.

Grace and peace,

Beth

12/9/24

Pastor’s Ponderings 

I know it seems to make sense that kids can make up their own minds about what they believe when they get old enough to do so, but in reality faith is formed in us more so than chosen. We come to discipleship through watching the example of others, by learning the story of the Bible, and by worshipping through the church year while squirming in the pew beside someone who loves us.  Several years ago someone who was not raised in a faith tradition but who converted to Christianity as a young adult wrote these words in an interview with “The Christian Century”:  “If you didn’t get those little cards they hand out in Sunday School with the stories they tell, faith is not impossible but it is much harder.”  I have long since lost the issue of the magazine in which he was quoted and have even forgotten the young man’s name, but his words and his face in the picture that appeared beside his words are etched into my memory as if with a laser beam. What we do to form faith in our children and our young adults is important.

Last Saturday we opened our doors to give our biggest children’s sermon of the year:  that you are wanted here, you are welcome here, Christmas is a time to receive and in the spirit of love, to give. To the committee who began planning this event months ago - we thank you.  To the volunteers who handled every detail from washing and repairing the lost and found coats collected from area schools at the end of last school year to the 55 dozen eggs broken in advance to the perfect white makeup on Santa’s beard - we thank you. To the many volunteers who showed up on Saturday to see if and where they were needed and to show hospitality to our visitors - we thank you. And for the very simple reason that not one person has asked me “why do we do all this, it’s really more than our little church can handle and at the busiest time of year to boot”  - I gratefully thank you for the great privilege of being your pastor. 

And now we keep listening for a new word from God to see where we are needed to serve, in the name of the child of Bethlehem who grew to a man and said… drum roll please, I know this scripture by heart because I had to recite it in our Christmas play as a 2nd grader (see what I mean? But I had to memorize it in the KJV because my Sunday School teacher was hard core) “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have also done it unto me.”

Grateful to be serving, watching and waiting with you,

Beth

12/2/24

Pastor’s Ponderings 

As the early Christians tried to find words to describe the miracle and the mystery that is Jesus, one beautiful description used is found in the first chapter of Colossians: “in him the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things”.

This is a picture of a God who loves the creation which he has made, and deeply desires to be at one with that creation, reconciled to it despite its sin which has caused the separation between creature and Creator.

So often we think of Jesus as an exit strategy:  a way out of this world and into another whole place somewhere out there which we think of as “heaven”.  But Dr. Norman Wirzba of Duke Divinity School encourages us to think about what God accomplishes in Christ as “transformation not transportation” - meaning transformation of this world, not transportation out of it.

Dr. Wirzba anchors his writing in Revelation 21:  the closing vision of a new heaven and a new earth in which the new Jerusalem descends and this world is transformed, rather than a vision of a spaceship arriving to load us all up and take us all out of here. This promise of a renewed and restored creation is breathtakingly beautiful in its reminder of how much God loves this creation - so much that God will go to any length to redeem it, and promises in the end times it will be renewed and restored in all its beauty and splendor.

And of course we are only one small part of it.  Through Christ God was pleased to reconcile himself to ALL things, Colossians tells us.  Things like birds and snails and fish and trees.  Things like soil and rivers and mountains and sunsets.  All signs of the indwelling presence of a Creator who loves his creation and desires to be one with it - so much so that the fullness of God was pleased to enter into the person of Jesus in order heal and reconcile creation from the inside.

The baby whose birth we celebrate this season is coming for you.  This baby is coming for me.  This baby is coming for the people we love and the people we don’t like.  This baby is coming for all the creatures of earth and for the very life of the soil itself.  This baby will stop at nothing to find his lost sheep - even the meanest, most ornery ram out here - and call all of his creatures to himself because this baby is the fullness of God, coming to reclaim his own.

Deep inside the darkness a baby was laid in a manger - a feeding box for animals, located in a barn that contains birth and life and death. From this place the babe will grow with the fullness of God, and through him all of creation will have the opportunity to bow before the recognizable face of its Creator.

Grateful to be watching and waiting with you,

Beth