Once in a while, our culture needs to be surprised by how much we love people–all people. Once in a while, our culture needs to be overwhelmed with joy that we are involved in the greater story. Once in a while, our culture needs to see us being a part of the solution and not the problem. But yesterday? There were no surprises. And no surprises only builds more distrust, not peace, not grace, not hope, and not love.
Rachel Held Evans says it well:
Yesterday was one of those days…
Is this what following Jesus is supposed to be about? Eating a chicken sandwich to prove a point?
Is this what mobilizes the people of God?
I found it very interesting when Thomas Merton, the famous Benedictine monk, applied to become a hermit and it was met with resistance for years. Merton felt the Abbot was resisting Merton’s request for personal reasons. That battle is quite a read!
The resistance to Merton’s request wasn’t without merit. Even Merton knew the dangers of living out one’s spirituality in isolation. That’s what I’m up against. I no longer am a part of a local church community. Neither are many of you! In a way, we are like Merton who are living as kind of hermits out in the world, many of us in isolation from other Christians and church communities…
Leadership in the New Parish is one of the new certificate programs one may do through the graduate school I attend. The program is intended to equip leaders in reimagining missional innovation and church revitalization in their neighborhood. The program will be led by our own Dwight Friesen (featured in above video), Paul Sparks, and Tim Soerens. Application deadline is July 15. I really love this.
The following post was originally posted on our school blog:
Reconciliation is the dream of hope. We are to dream redemption until the day we die.
During this current season of eastertide, the church my husband and I attend in Seattle has been collecting stories of resurrection. This is one of such stories. Like the rhythm of the triduum (Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday), redemption is only possible because one has experienced death and the grave. This is a story of the relationship between death and resurrection, suffering and beauty, conflict and reconciliation; a rhythm that is so often unavoidable it can only be embraced. However, the beauty found in such a rhythm as Friday, Saturday, Sunday, is largely unknown until given an opportunity to experience it, and not just once, but over and again.
On such Fridays, we experience what could be described as the death of hope. In March of 2011, a death occurred in mine and my husband’s relationship with our former Pastor and his family. Several at our school describes themselves as having been ‘hurt by the church’. While my husband and I wouldn’t necessarily describe ourselves as such, in many ways, we do find ourselves located there. That is, as ones having been hurt and also having inflicted hurt on those whom we have disagreed, by our words, assumptions, distance, and silence.
Our Saturday of silence lasted for over a year, which is longer than my heart wants to admit. Saturday is characterized by silence, abandonment, disbelief, death, agony, grief, and tears. If you do not allow yourself to mourn during this time, the day has not served you well. There is something beautiful about the process from death to life that is unnoticed when rushed.
Last week, we began our journey toward Sunday; and reconciliation, the dream of hope, became feasible. Hope is often found in unexpected places. The span of silence was broken, and we began the long, hard work of moving from death to resurrection. Our words were carefully crafted so as not to inflict any more pain on one another than our already present wounds could bear. These words reminded one another of the love we once shared, and the goodness of the other that we had long forgotten. We realized that our need of one another was more than our need to agree.
In his book, The Wisdom of Stability, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove writes on the necessity of cultivating stability by rooting ourselves more intentionally in the place and people of our community; while acknowledging that conflict among those who do life together is inevitable. In the foreword, Kathleen Norris writes: “Sometimes the conviction that it is God who has brought two people—or a community—together is all we need to keep us in the struggle to nurture and maintain relationships of trust, respect, and love. Committing to such stability is never easy, but it is always worth a try.” Stability demands that when tempted to leave, we stay, and allow God to find us there. Likewise, with such stability is a commitment to seek reconciliation.
In retrospect, I wonder: “what would have happened if we had stayed?” If we had it to do over, given what we have learned, we wouldn’t have so easily left. Yet our journey through the pain of Friday, the silence of Saturday, and the resurrection of Sunday that has got us to this place was necessary for a deeper relationship of love and grace that we now have with this Pastor and his family.
If you have never given yourself to this rhythm, the fullness of my heart bears witness that reconciliation, whether with a church, friend or foe, is indeed sweet.
Reference: Wilson-Hartgrove, Jonathan. The Wisdom of Stability: Rooting Faith in a Mobile Culture. Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2010.
Warehouse 242 posted a video worship set and downloadable christmas resource guide: Immanuel/God Came Down — since there is no church service this morning, you can have church at home with your family.
In all sorts of unnoticed places, it is the church that raises the human questions.
—Walter Brueggeman
We must conceive of the sermon as an “environment” for wondering, rumination, and imagination:
Those who find their way into the post-Christendom church—believers and unbelievers alike—need a hospitable environment in which to ask questions. Those questions, which often spring from deep, existential concerns, must be taken seriously is God’s saving word is to be heard in a convincing and compelling way. An environment that treats questions hospitably, as the starting point of conversation, becomes a place for wondering, rumination, and imagination. In such an environment, a variety of answers can be weighed and considered; the meaning that thus unfolds carries authenticity for having been personally integrated rather than adopted by rote.
Indeed, the sermon may itself be conceived as a hospitable environment for those who find their way into the pews. Understood as environment, the sermon is released from the flattened realm of explanation, explication, moral directive, or, indeed, any “thing” to be communicated. Rather, understood as environment, the sermon achieves a kind of spatial quality, becomes a safe space in which hearers can contemplate something foreign and desire its becoming familiar, can approach something threatening and welcome its challenge, can chance upon something unexpected and delight in its turning of the mind. The sermon as hospitable environment for wondering, rumination, and imagination encourages growth and change out of desire and delight.
—Christine McSpadden, ”Preaching Scripture Faithfully in a Post-Christendom Church” in The Art of Reading Scripture
But philosophy can still help us chew on things. It can be a second stomach that helps digest the kinds of ideas we’re growing, the kinds of machines we’re building, the kinds of societies we’re composing, the kinds of poetry we’re writing, the kinds of love we’re making.
The question then is how we can form collectives that seek to invite, affirm, recall, and relay this deep truth, not to provide a space where we try to understand it.
— Peter Rollins, The Fidelity of Betrayal: Towards a Church Beyond Belief
