Because it’s fun and true, that’s why…
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGK84Poeynk%5DCategory: Uncategorized
Thoughts on New Year’s Eve
About to turn over another page in the calendar. Feeling stuck? Like life and everything else is just going around in circles without ever getting anywhere?
Not technically true.
Consider this: as each day passes, our planet rotates on its axis and moves forward in its orbit around the sun. Our sun is revolving around the center of our galaxy. Our galaxy, along with hundreds and millions of others, is being thrust further and further out into space by the momentum left over from the Big Bang.
Technically speaking: it’s a spiral, not a circle. You’ve never actually been to the same place twice. Your life is going somewhere.
Taken metaphorically, this gives me food for reflection.
For the past few years, I’ve felt increasingly drawn to elements of Process Theology, expressed by the likes of John Cobb and Monica Coleman, and what is coming to be known as the Evolutionary perspective on Christianity, which I have discovered through the writings of Michael Dowd and Diarmuid O’Murchu. As a result of this exposure, I find it difficult to espouse with much sincere conviction platitudes like, “God has a plan.”
It might sound especially strange to hear this from a Presbyterian, one of the theological descendants of John Calvin and the Westminster divines, all of whom were famous for their devotion to the doctrine of predestination. But then again, our Reformed tradition is constantly and consciously reforma, semper reformanda (“reformed, and always reforming/being reformed/to be reformed”).
Absolute labels like Omnipotence and Sovereignty create insurmountable theological and philosophical problems for many people when applied to a theistic deity. They can be barriers to authentic growth in faith.
Rather than believing in God as an all-powerful outside entity who controls everything according to a preordained plan, I have come to trust in the God who influences all things from the inside according to an evolving vision (or dream as I heard one friend put it), which is Love. For me, the almighty-ness of God lies in Her infinite adaptability. The victory of God is in the faithfulness of God. In other words: God wins because She keeps adapting and never gives up.
Creativity in pursuit of Love is the hand of God at work in the world.
Reflecting on these theological thoughts in light of my opening remarks about the earth, sun, and galaxy, I get the sense that we’re all going somewhere, even though none of us (maybe not even God) is entirely sure where…
Not Just Pretty Clothes
This is my column for my church’s newsletter this month. Superfriends and Blogofans from liturgical churches will probably find this information old news, but those of you from “low church” Protestant backgrounds (e.g. Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist, etc.) might find this interesting. Having come to the Presbyterian Church from an Anglican denomination, I see “high church” liturgy as one gifts that I can bring. For a more detailed description of liturgical vestments (with pictures), visit: www.kencollins.com
When people think of a Presbyterian pastor leading worship, they tend to think of someone wearing a long, black robe that looks like the kind of academic gown worn at graduations. In fact, that’s exactly what it is. This practice goes back to John Calvin himself, who was an educator by profession. The academic robe (also called a Geneva gown, after the city Calvin lived in) was the socially acceptable thing for a teacher to wear in the 1500s, much like white coats for doctors and uniforms for police officers are today. John Calvin wore his academic robe in the pulpit because he was opposed to the practice of wearing liturgical vestments like they did in the Roman Catholic Church.
Since Calvin’s time, relations between Presbyterians and Catholics have softened considerably. Starting in the 1960s, we even began adopting each other’s worship practices. For example, Catholics now lead mass in English and celebrate Communion while facing the congregation. Presbyterians (and other Protestants) have been rediscovering the value of ancient and medieval forms of worship, including the weekly celebration of Communion and the wearing of liturgical vestments.
Liturgical vestments are special clothes worn by the clergy when they lead worship. While they got their start as everyday street clothes in Roman times, they have taken on symbolic meaning over time.
First, there is the Alb. This is a long, white robe that is a symbol of baptism. The color white signifies the purity of a soul that has been cleansed from sin. The sacrament of baptism is the sign of this cleansing. Anyone who has been baptized can wear this vestment. In Revelation 7:9, the Bible describes a heavenly scene: “I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands.”
Second, there is the Cincture. This is a rope belt that symbolizes the teachings of Christ. Like the alb, anyone, ordained or lay, can wear the cincture. After all, every Christian is supposed to follow Jesus’ teachings, right? The cincture is a belt because we bind Christ’s teachings to our lives at all times. It is just as Moses told the Israelites in Deuteronomy 6:6-9: “Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” The cincture is a visual reminder to us that we should do the same.
Third, there is the Stole. This is the long scarf worn by pastors and priests. It is a sign that the person wearing it has been ordained. In Roman times, men would wear stoles on formal occasions in the same way that men wear neckties today. Symbolically, it stands for the yoke of ordained ministry. For those who are unfamiliar with cattle and oxen, a yoke is a special kind of harness that goes over an ox’s neck when it pulls a cart, just like the stole goes over the pastor’s neck. This is a reminder of the pastor’s job: to pull the cart (the church) and take it wherever the driver (Christ) directs. The pastor is not the driver. The church does not belong to the pastor. The church belongs to Christ. Christ decides where the church goes. The pastor’s job is simply to help the church get there. If you catch me in my office immediately before or after worship, you might see me kiss the stole as I put it on and take it off. This traditional gesture is a way for me to remind myself to embrace my calling as the pastor of this church.
Finally, there is the Chasuble. This poncho-like vestment is only worn when the Eucharist (Communion) is celebrated. It symbolizes the grace (unconditional love) of God, which covers everything like a big, warm blanket. It is worn during Communion as a reminder of Christ’s unconditional love that led him to lay down his life for others. This is the event we remember as we share the broken body and shed blood of Christ in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. The word Eucharist means Thanksgiving, which is our primary response to God’s grace which has been made known to us in Christ.
More and more Presbyterians are starting to make use of these traditional liturgical vestments in worship. I am sharing their symbolic meaning with you so that you can fully appreciate and enter into the spiritual truths they convey. Our worship is not simply a matter of thoughts and words. We bring our whole selves, body and soul, into church. Sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell all play a part in our service.
I pray that your knowledge of these visual symbols in the special clothes I wear on Sunday will enrich your worship experience and make the presence of God more real to you as we render our reverence to God.
Be blessed and be a blessing!
Barrett
A New Convergence
This is a reblog of an article by Bryan Berghoef.
It reminded me of a conversation I had during a surprise visit from a childhood friend this year. He and I both grew up to become pastors who also married pastors.
We grew up at opposite ends of the Protestant theological spectrum: my family was conservative evangelical, his was liberal mainline. Both of our spouses, interestingly enough, grew up as part of the charismatic renewal movement in mainline denominations.
What we discovered is that our respective spiritual journeys, while starting in very different places, had led each of us to embrace very similar values, practices, and dreams for what we think the church c/should be.
This article reminded me of that conversation. Enjoy!
A New Convergence
A Good Word
Last week, Bruce Reyes-Chow, Moderator of my denomination’s 218th General Assembly, announced that his friend, Landon Whitsitt, would be publishing a free eBook of compiled prayers and sermons based on the recent school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.
I’m honored to be able to say that my sermon from last Sunday, The Dark Side of Joy, was submitted and accepted.
The book, A Good Word, edited by Landon Whitsitt, is now available for free download at Landon’s website: landonwhitsitt.com
Calling All Angels (III)
Greetings all!
Many thanks to all who are continuing to send their thoughts and prayers toward Newtown, Connecticut, where the calling hours for Principal Dawn Hochsprung are taking place as I write this.
We have a small contingent of volunteers from upstate New York consisting of myself, an elder from my church, a ministerial colleague, and a family friend of Dawn’s. We are connected with a much larger network of volunteers from all over the northeastern US organized through Facebook.
Dawn’s family have thanked us for our care and asked that we not show up outside the funeral home for her wake. Our group leaders in Newtown have requested that all out-of-town volunteers stay where they are until there is a visually confirmed presence of picketers from Westboro Baptist Church. The town itself is already over-crowded, making it difficult for families and neighbors to effectively mourn their loved ones.
I am happy to announce that, in spite of their repeated threats to picket Dawn Hochsprung’s calling hours, representatives of Westboro Baptist Church have not been seen anywhere in the state of Connecticut.
The organizers of our action are calling this a win, since our goal is (and always has been) to protect the dignity of the deceased and their families.
We continue to remain watchful for picketers, as there are still several other funerals that have yet to take place. They could still show up at any time.
Members of our local group have decided to heed the advice of the leaders in Newtown and wait until there is a visually confirmed presence of picketers before we drive down. We are ready to spring into action at any time. It’s only a four-hour drive for us, which is plenty of time for us to fit in a rousing round of “99 Bottles of Beer” on the highway…
If all continues to go well and our presence is not required, the money given by church members to support our trip will be donated to the Sandy Hook School Support Fund set up by the United Way of Western Connecticut.
Visit this website if you would like to donate as well:
https://newtown.uwwesternct.org/
I’ll say this again:
The best-case scenario is for no one from Westboro Baptist to show up in Newtown. So far, that seems to be exactly what is happening. I am grateful.
Quick Humanity Break
Been posting about a lot of heavy but important stuff this week.
I’ll keep it up and keep vigilant with WBC and Newton.
However, I want to take a quick second to post something that made me laugh and cry at the same time… part of what it means to be human.
Click the link, thank me later:
http://www.pantsareoverrated.com/archive/2011/05/10/hobbes-and-bacon/
There are only four of these in existence… perhaps there might be more one day?
Calling All Angels (II)
Happy to say that I have nothing but good news to report regarding Westboro Baptist Church picketing funerals in Newtown, CT. There have been absolutely NO confirmed sightings, despite their multiple threats to picket the funerals of children and the president’s prayer vigil in the town last night.
I’m connected with a group of people who have organized themselves via Facebook and are ready to pounce as soon as there is any sign of a Westboro presence.
Connecticut state law forbids protesting at any funeral for an hour before or after the service. I’m keeping my eyes and ears peeled for any call to action.
I must also declare how proud I am of Boonville Presbyterian Church after yesterday’s service. During the announcements, I told everyone about the planned picket and explained to them what an Angel Action is, saying that I was planning to go down and participate, if necessary. Before church was even over, one of our members on active duty was already texting the Patriot Guard with my contact information. One elder asked if he could join me and several other members handed me a total of $140 (unsolicited) for gas and supplies. Proud pastor here!
If the Westboro Baptist folks never show up, I plan to give that cash as a donation in our church’s name to the Sandy Hook School Support Fund, which has been set up through the United Way of Western Connecticut. You can donate as well by going to this website:
https://newtown.uwwesternct.org/
The first funerals are taking place at 1pm today. Please spare some prayers and good thoughts for the victims and their families. I’ll keep you posted as best as I can.
The Dark Side of Joy
You can listen to a recording of this sermon by clicking here.
Last week, I told you that we would be looking at the life and message of St. John the Baptist today. I assure you that I had planned a brilliant and eloquent sermon that would have surely expanded your minds and lifted your hearts to heaven. However, last Friday’s news headlines of a school massacre in Connecticut led me to set aside that work-in-progress.
By the end of the day, I knew that I would not be able to read the words of this week’s Epistle Lesson with any integrity and not comment on them. This brief passage comes to us from St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians. It’s short, so I’ll read it again here in its entirety for the sake of those who are listening to this sermon online or on the radio:
Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:4-7)
“Rejoice in the Lord always…”
“How in the world,” I thought to myself, “can I (or any minister) have the audacity to stand in a pulpit 48 hours after the mass murder of children (two weeks before Christmas, no less) and utter the word ‘Rejoice’?” It almost seems vulgar.
Joy is a big theme for Paul in his little letter to the Christians at Philippi. The book is only four chapters long. Reading out loud, you could get through the entire letter in about fifteen minutes. However, in those few minutes, you would hear the words “joy” and “rejoice” sixteen times altogether. Philippians is sometimes referred to as “the Letter of Joy” because of this persistent theme. Paul can’t seem to say enough about it.
The fact that Paul emphasizes the theme of joy so strongly becomes especially curious when you realize that Paul wrote this letter from a Roman prison, which would have looked and felt more like a medieval dungeon than a modern penitentiary. So, joy seems like an odd topic for him to focus on at that particular time and place.
“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.”
We Americans are used to associating joy with happiness, an emotional condition brought about by favorable circumstances, but real joy, in the sense that Paul means it, must be something else entirely. I think joy has to be deeper and wider than mere happiness if it can survive in a Roman dungeon.
I think joy, in the sense that Paul meant it, is something that arises from our experience of harmony in the universe. Joy can, and often does, bring a smile to your face. You can feel it surging up inside when you get lost in a sunset or a clear night sky, when you hold your newborn child for the first time and your heart feels like it’s about to leap outside your chest, or when some piece of art or literature touches something deep within your soul. In such moments, we experience joy. We marvel at the wonderful and beautiful way in which the universe is put together. Joy.
Joy is easy to recognize in such moments. It really does feel like happiness. We feel the touch of beauty and harmony in the universe and that touch makes us want to smile, laugh, jump, or even weep for joy.
However, there is another side to joy. This side is not so easily recognized. I believe the shock, sadness, and anger we have all been experiencing since Friday are also, in their essence, expressions of joy. These unhappy feelings come from the same places in our hearts that gave rise to our experience of wonder. Something within our hearts instinctively embraces harmony when it is present and yearns for it when it is absent. Last Friday, the harmony of the universe was violently shattered and our hearts have been screaming inside ever since. That scream is the scream of joy, the dark side of joy to be sure, but joy nevertheless.
I call this pain “the dark side of joy” because it would mean that our hearts were dead if we didn’t feel a stinging outrage at what happened. If we anesthetize ourselves to joy’s dark side, we will also be numb to joy’s light side: the happiness and wonder at the world I mentioned before. The truly cynical people in this world are not those who are mad at the world, but those who have ceased to care altogether. They are the ones who heard the news on Friday, shrugged their shoulders apathetically, and went on with their lives as if nothing had happened. Such people have been so wounded by life that, in order to protect themselves from experiencing more pain, they’ve had to close themselves off to all emotions whatsoever. If you are angry about this, it means that you care. So long as you are still able to feel the anger, you are still able to experience joy.
Joy then, in this sense, in the sense that Paul meant it, is an act of defiance. “Rejoice in the Lord always,” is a call to action. We, the angry joyful ones, declare ourselves to be in open rebellion against the powers of chaos, hatred, and violence. In the spirit of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, we will resist you nonviolently. In the Spirit of Jesus, we will kill you with kindness. We walk in the shadows of joy’s dark side. Victory is ours: for we know that, so long as there remains even a single soul that still feels outrage at the murder of children, then joy is still alive. Therefore, even in our anger and pain, today we celebrate the Sunday of Joy.
We who worship in the Christian tradition have come to identify the harmony we observe in the universe with the hand of God. We believe that all joy has its origin in the presence of infinite love at the heart of reality. We further believe that the person Jesus of Nazareth is, for us, the paradigmatic embodiment of that selfsame love in a human life.
We, as Christians, seek to follow him by honoring harmony and embodying love in our lives in whatever way we are able. The late Rev. Fred Rogers, a Presbyterian minister who was better known as the host of the children’s TV show Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, once said:
When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ To this day, especially in times of ‘disaster,’ I remember my mother’s words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world.
In order to help us be better “helpers,” as Mr. Rogers said, I would like to share with you some good advice I came across this week in an article in the Huffington Post by the Rev. Emily C. Heath, a pastor in the United Church of Christ. The title of her article is:
Dealing With Grief: Five Things NOT to Say and Five Things to Say In a Trauma Involving Children.
Click here to read Rev. Emily’s article at Huffington Post.
I hope you will keep these suggestions in the back of your mind and find them helpful in this crisis and whenever you are called upon to care for someone who has lost a child under any circumstances.
As Christians, our first duty is to love like Jesus and thereby testify to the truth that love is the heart of reality. As Christmas approaches, we prepare to celebrate the presence of love, not enthroned in some far-away heaven, but embodied in our midst. This infinite love, the harmony we observe in the universe, is here: within us and among us. The Light of the World, the little Christ Child, reigns from a feeding trough in a stable, from whence his little light is passed from candle to candle, soul to soul, person to person, in all the little ways that we are able to embody that same love in our own lives.
This morning, I’m calling for a temporary suspension of the liturgical calendar. Christmas is coming early this year, because we need it more than ever. I proclaim to you the good news that Christ is here: in you and in me. His love, the wonderful harmony at the heart of the universe, is embodied in our acts of love and compassion.
This morning, on this Christmas before Christmas, I call out to you from the dark side of joy. I call upon you to rise up and rejoice as an act of defiance and resistance against the carnage we witnessed on Friday. Proclaim with me the truth, as it says in John’s gospel, that “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” The very pain we feel this morning is the sure sign that joy is not dead, that Christ is alive, and that God is love.
So, sing with me now. Sing, “Joy to the world!” Proclaim with me, in this hymn of radical, revolutionary defiance: “No more let sins and sorrows grow, nor thorns infest the ground,” for Christ “comes to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found.” Sing out loudly, confident in the knowledge that God loves you and there is nothing you can do about it. Let us sing…
[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1EE2ySVArc%5D
Calling All Angels
Dear Superfriends and Blogofans:
An “Angel Action” is where people dress as angels with large, white “wings” and line the streets between funerals and Westboro Baptist picketers, effectively blocking them from view.
I want in on this counter-protest. Who do I call / where do I go to sign up? More importantly, who is with me?
Willing to travel from central NY. It’s not far for us. Please help. Contact me.
Hopping Hadrian's Wall 