Tell your friends!

        Depending on where you are on your journey in life, this is the time of year when you either sigh as the summer is dwindling away or flat-out panic that fall is about to crash into you.  It is also when most of us begin to turn our thoughts back to our usual school, work, and church schedule and activities.  Shortly, the calendar section of the Sunday bulletin and Highlights will re-expand, and we will return to our usual levels of busyness.

       Part of that beginning-of-the-school-year ramping up is returning to church; for quite a few of our neighbors and family, it may be finding a new worshipping community here, either because their journeys have brought them to Ithaca or because where they are on their life journey has changed (children reaching an age when they want them to learn about faith, etc.).  So, whether you call it “church shopping,” visiting, or “auditioning” churches, in late August and early September we can expect more first time attenders.
So, welcome them!
 
       Sure, we should be welcoming to everyone anyhow, and folks here are really good at that, but sometimes long-time members get shy.  Often it’s not a question of social graciousness, since most here can be warm and welcoming.  Often it seems we are terrified we will welcome long-time members we think we should know and embarrass ourselves.  Get over it.  Some of the material for generous welcoming suggests opening lines like, “Hi!  I’m David Ashby, and I don’t recognize you.  It’s good to see you today.”  If someone answers, “Oh, I’ve been a member here for fifty years,” you can talk about that.  If someone says, “Oh, I’m visiting,” you can then offer a big welcome and offer help with getting settled.  If visitors have children, tell them about Sunday School and offer to show them the classroom.  If you aren’t familiar with such things, hook them up with someone who is.  Help them get oriented to the building and the worship service.  Offer to sit with them.  Actually the most important piece of hospitality sometimes is telling visitors where the restrooms are.

        For all our sanctuary with the remarkable quilts and the powerful music program and the spiritual formation we offer children and youth, what matters to new attenders most is the warmth and agreeableness of the people who inhabit our church.  Show ’em we’re nice.  Simple as that.

        One of the leading Presbyterian bloggers I follow, Todd Bollinger, posted a couple of weeks ago that their church was “no longer a welcoming church.”  After that rather provocative lede, he wrote that they had decided to become an inviting church!  I kinda liked that.  Welcoming, Bollinger said, is a somewhat passive posture, whereas inviting hints at actively encouraging people to worship and other church activities.
       
         So that idea pushes the conversation from the narthex out into the rest of the week.  You know people.  You know a lot of people.  You know people seeking a spiritual community.  Don’t be shy about asking them if they would like to attend here some Sunday with you.  With you.  It turns out in all the church growth literature, the personal invitation to attend worship with you is the greatest key.  A familiar face and someone to sit with make a huge difference.  You know people.  You know this church… you know what to do to bring them together.

            So do it.  OK?

        Another of my crazy colleagues was a new church development pastor in a suburb of Rochester some years ago, and he loved to end meetings with a cheery, “Hey!  Invite your friends to church… and maybe even invite people you know you don’t like very much!”
Invite someone to join us this Sunday (and the Sunday after that and the Sunday after that and…) to meet this interesting lot of people on the journey of faith at First Congregational.

                                                                                 In Christ,
                                                                                  
                                                                                          David

        This week we welcome to FCCI the Rev. Dr. Wayne Gustafson, well-known to the congregation. Rev. Wayne Gustafson, is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, a Certified Fellow in the American Association of Pastoral Counselors, and a Licensed Mental Health Counselor in New York.  Presently, he is an adjunct instructor, teaching Psychology at Tompkins Cortland Community College and a contract pastoral counselor and psychotherapist with Susquehanna Family Counseling Ministry.

Texts for Sunday

From the Epistles       Hebrews 11:29-12:2
From the Gospel         Luke 12:49-56

Waiting in Faith

            This week’s lectionary gets us thinking about faith, one of the key concepts of our faith, yet one we don’t spend much time describing.  Hebrews picks up on Abram’s faithfulness to God and trust in God’s promises.  Abram steps out in faith, pretty literally, as he leaves home to head for the promised land and a promise of many descendents.  But, despite the delay of results from God, Abram keeps plodding along, trusting God.  In fact, from the New Testament’s perspective, it was his diligent plodding along which defines his faithfulness.  He acts as if it is true, even without actual confirmation, even without tangible results.  As Hebrews puts it famously: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen… by faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going.”  Hanging in there for God to come through on God’s agenda is a solid working definition of a solid working faith.  That’s why the Bible keeps bringing Sara and Abram up as examples for us.

            We’re generally pretty good with that concept, and generally keep putting one foot in front of the other as we keep walking behind Jesus’ example.  Sometimes it’s hard to keep going, and sometimes we get really, really discouraged trudging along waiting for God’s something to happen.  Honestly, that’s why it’s called faith!  If we actually had it all coming together in front of our eyes, it would be easy reality; it takes faith to stick with the unseen program.

            Most of us keep the faith, personally, as we move through our days and years.  But one place I find churchgoers particularly prone to falling apart is in the arena of a pastoral transition.  Sure, we can have faith our grandmother will get well after surgery, but we go completely blank on trusting God to bring us a pastor in due time.  Actually, I think it is the “in due time” part we mess up on.  We and God seem to part ways on what “due time” is.  We think a couple of months is plenty of time to give God for the project, forgetting that God has a cosmic time frame not bound by human impatience.  In fact, sometimes I think God likes to take longer for things just to force me to slow down, think, pray, and wait…. wait in faith.  But like Abram, churches learn from the time they spend waiting in faith, so take a deep breath as we move into the planning for our next interim steps and remember that sometimes the lesson God is teaching is trust and patience!  And sometimes God is reminding us that Abram didn’t see the big picture all at once but in little bits at a time.  I like the quote from Martin Luther King, Jr., that “Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.”  

            Let’s go exploring the staircases in front of us and in front of First Congregational.  Join your sisters and brothers this Sunday as we tiptoe ahead with faith in things not yet seen.  (And invite someone along with you!)

                                                   

                                                         In Christ,
                                                          
                                                                   David

Texts for Sunday

From the Hebrew Bible          Genesis 15:1-6
From the Epistles                  Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16
From the Gospel                   Luke 12:32-40

Feed My Children

        One of my kids when making a peanut butter & jelly sandwich carefully spreads the peanut butter out evenly to the very edge of the bread, right up to a millimeter from the crust with equal attention to the depth being the same over the whole surface.  And the jelly is spread out as evenly, too.

         It is a sad, sad fact of the world that food, in general, is not spread out evenly across the globe, or even across Tompkins County.  Over the last few years the lines at food giveaways around here have lengthened.  Yet Ithaca has quite a few shops, grocery chains, and many restaurants purveying high-end food.  Even in Ithaca, which is far, far better than many communities about sustainability and food justice, there’s lots of peanut butter in the middle of the bread and real gaps and thin places around the edges.

         In August the Outreach Committee is again reminding us of desperation and hunger across the globe with a focus on Feed My Starving Children and the Ithaca Mobile Pack on September 6-8 and on ending food insecurity in our own towns through the Food Bank of the Southern Tier.  Not only is this a time to educate ourselves about the disparities and needs, but it is a time to act to ameliorate hunger here and starvation in other places.

          We are beginning to sign up groups and individuals for the Mobile Pack, so you really can get your hands involved in tangible help for children dying of malnutrition and those whose development and education are damaged by lack of food.  We are also encouraging those who pack and the groups they come from to bring non-perishable food items for the Kitchen Cupboard, the Food Bank, and many satellite programs.

          And, to really push the image of the peanut butter & jelly sandwich, I encourage you to put your money where your mouth is, too!  Consider making a contribution or an additional contribution to FMSC or the Food Bank so they can provide more foodstuffs to the hungering.  Even more than non-perishable items and toiletries, money can make a difference in getting nutrition to people the world over.  Money given here can purchase food there, where it is needed, helping those local economies.  The Food Bank and FMSC can leverage your donations with their buying power, literally multiplying it with God’s grace.  We are well on our way to underwriting the 300,000 meals for the Ithaca Mobile Pack, but it would be wonderful to have all of the money in hand before the pack.  So drop hints with the people that you know encouraging them to donate… and drop some money in the offering plates this month!

           On the first Sunday of the month we share communion at the Lord’s Table.  It is fitting that we begin an emphasis on the Food Bank and Feed My Starving Children.  As we are fed, let us remember to feed the least of Christ’s children.  Generously and graciously and joyously.  And let us share like their lives depend on it.  In too many places, it does.

            Join your sister and brothers this Sunday as we break bread together in Jesus’ love and all month as we share bread with the world.

                                                                                                        
                                                            In Christ,
                                                                  
                                                                           David

Texts for Sunday

From the Hebrew Bible        Ecclesiastes 2:18-26
From the Epistles               Colossians 3:1-11
From the Gospel                 Luke 12:13-21

Teach Us to Pray

            It’s a request from pretty much every band of religious followers asked of their spiritual leader, “Teach us to pray…”  It rarely means that the followers are totally clueless about the quick, instinctive pleas or relief or happiness directed to the holy presence.  The question is more asking “teach us to pray the way you think we should.”  Some is form, but much is acknowledging that the leader seems to be tuned in and we think we should follow that.  Sometimes it is almost like the followers want to get the secret formula, the hidden secret to connect with the divine.  Certainly many ancient religions around the Mediterranean believed that the right words— almost incantations, even— would bring fast results.  

            So it makes all kind of sense that the disciple wanted to get it right, to hook up with God the way Jesus seemed to be hooked up.  And it makes all kind of sense that Jesus’ prayer for the apostles was ’way simpler and more heartfelt.  He just touched upon the basics: we are related to God as children to parents, make things on earth like in heaven, take care of us, forgive us and help us forgive others, keep us out of trouble.  Nice, simple.  Not highfalutin’.  Rather in character for the informal rabbi with divine intensity.  Of course, the church in its early years touched it up and made it more formal and more suitable for liturgy and named it “the Lord’s Prayer,” and we still use it as a straightforward everyday model for prayer.  Even children can handle that!  Which is why we teach it to our children and include it in worship before they leave for their program.  It’s a children’s prayer that even adults can pray.
 

Anne Lamott called her recent book “Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers,” which I think kind of recaptures the heartfelt simplicity of Jesus’ prayer and reminds us that the essence of prayer is not the heaped up theological words but the honesty of the emotions as we lean toward God.  Sometimes I’ve talked to people that think they need a professional like me to do the “right” prayer and that they are merely amateurs.  Jesus pretty effectively reminds us that the real pray-ers are the amateurs!  “Uh, I could use some help here, God” is every bit as good as the old Anglican “Prosper thou the work of our hands.”  Get it? Jesus is telling the disciples and us that simple and sincere is what he’s listening for, so relax and ask.  And then listen and watch.  There will be an answer sooner or later!

            Join your sisters… and brothers… this Sunday as we pray together in Jesus’ presence.

                                                                                                            In Christ,

                                                                                                          

David

Texts for Sunday

From the Epistles       Colossians 2:6-15
From the Gospel         Luke 11:1-13

M & M

          It’s not that their brother was Lazarus which makes Martha and Mary in this week’s lessons two of our favorite characters in the Bible.  Nope, it’s that they bicker just like other sisters (and brothers, of course) we know.  If there was a patron saint for sibling rivalry, I’d nominate Mary and Martha!

          Every church has the practical folks like Martha who show their devotion to God in pretty tangible ways.  And every church has the more spiritually-minded, mystical folks like Mary who devote themselves to Jesus’ teachings.  In our society, like Jesus’ day, we tend to prize the pragmatists, the workers, the doers, and sometimes smile sort of indulgently at the spiritual, studious sorts of disciples who merely like to bask in the presence of God.  That may be a little less brutal in an academic community, where the life of the mind is valued more, but in general, more of us are with Martha, kvetching that Mary isn’t “doing” anything.  So we, too, sometimes need to chill and simply “be” in the moment and “be” in the presence of God.  It is enough to just “enjoy” God.  Jesus likes to “hang out” with his friends.  With us.  Even if we are not bustling around in the kitchen.

          Somewhere in this parable we have to cut each other some slack, understanding that has put different wiring in us, and that Jesus likes both sorts of friends around him.  And, sometimes, we have to cut ourselves some slack that we Marthas are not like Mary and we Marys have a hard time being Marthas, but that’s fine with God.  Jesus loves the whole world, Marys and Marthas!

          Just remember that the bag full of the candy “M&Ms” have not just two colors, but a whole bunch of them, just like a church. We have a whole spectrum of variations and variegations to enjoy.  Sure, sometimes it can be a bit crazy or crazy-making to have so many siblings in the family of faith, but that rich and wild assortment is actually part of the fun, too.  And that’s when we have to remember that even with all the colors of our outsides, on the inside we are the same: we are all beloved children of God, even when we squabble like children.

          I think that is why Jesus has such affection for his two friends, the sisters he loves like they were also his sisters.  And, if we are all children of God, then we are, in fact, related to each other.  Sometimes we bicker with each other, but just like the to women with different ways of relating to Jesus, but in the end we are bound by those family ties of love.   We can love each other because our big brother Jesus loves us first.

          Join your sisters… and brothers… this Sunday as we worship together in Jesus’ presence!

                                                            In Christ,
                                                                  
                                                                           David

Texts for Sunday

From the Hebrew Bible       Amos 8:1-12
From the Gospel                Luke 10:38-42

The Good Ithacan

            For all our familiarity and affection and belief concerning the story about the man who fell among robbers who was ignored by passersby until a Samaritan came by and took care of him, it turns out to be one of the hardest parable of all to live!

            The first two people who don’t want to get involved are not really hard to understand, even if we know we should be like the guy from out of town.  We all suspect that if we were in such a situation, we could go either way with our reaction.

            There is something subtle going on in the conversation around the familiar parable.  The lawyer correctly quoted, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself,” then asks Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”  That’s when Jesus tells the story.  But at the end, Jesus asks the lawyer, “Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?”  Not, “Might he be my neighbor,” but “Do I act like his neighbor?”  That’s a very different question.  It turns the relationship from passive to active; it turns the question from who exists as a disconnected person who lives in proximity to how do followers of Christ act as neighbors to people in need.  Not only is the first twist that it is a Samaritan— by definition a disliked stranger to Jews— the one who cares for the victim of violence, but Jesus’ big twist is that it comes down to acting like a neighbor, not just “being a neighbor.”  The address on your driver’s license has nothing to do with it.  “Did you help?” is everything.  Do you act the way the Bible asks?

            This week, like most weeks, there have been horrible things that happen, including the airplane crash in San Francisco and the last procession bringing home the 19 firefighters who died in the Colorado wildfire.  But the closest to Luke 10:30-36 were the Maine fire and rescue responders who went to the aid of the Canadian town where a train derailed and exploded.  Borders mean nothing to such souls.  And there are people coming from all over to help after the storms and floods in Binghamton and Herkimer.  That’s acting like neighbors; that’s putting mercy into action.  That’s what we all should do.

            The guy who stopped to help, bind up the wounds, get the hurt man to shelter and aid, who not only provided monetary resources but physically lifted him and got him the help he needed answers the question, “Who was the neighbor to the man?”  It is how we help the least of our sisters and brothers, no matter the proximity.  That’s how the lesson ends: Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” 37He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

But this Sunday I’m not going to preach about that.

You will just have to go out and do it.

                                                            In Christ,
                                                                  
                                                                           David

Texts for Sunday

From the Hebrew Bible          Amos 7:7-17
From the Epistles                 Colossians 1:1-14
From the Gospel                   Luke 10:25-37

Weekly Word from the Interim Pastor

    More and more in this country we have ambivalence about July 4, “Independence Day.”  What began simply as a celebration to mark the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 sometimes has morphed into a somewhat self-congratulatory patriotism, too often with a dismaying thread or two of dividing “real Americans” from others, especially those of other skin tones and languages than the once-upon-a-time white Anglo-Saxon majority.  Ironically, that perspective often overlooks or denigrates the original populations displaced by European colonists.  At least around here there is more appreciation for the other heritages which participate in and enrich our society.

    And, as we move from the 20th into the 21st century, we are also appreciating how we are all part of a global whole.  Not only are there fundamental similarities across all peoples around the world, but we are financially and economically linked to other nations.  Notice how credit concerns in China affect our stock market.  And, for several decades, the environmental connections have been clearer and clearer, so it is not merely the human population of the whole wide world we are connected with, but every creature and every micro-environment and climate change.  Where once a person may have traveled only ten or twenty miles from home, we now realize we are interwoven with everything.  We are one internet click from everywhere.

    So, I like to remember that while we may be politically independent from Great Britain now (and, yes, that is worth a party and picnics and pyrotechnics!), we know we are interdependent with the whole world, figuratively and actually.

    That is also the perspective of the Church, that we are all connected with each other because of our relationship to Jesus Christ.  We are all related through, as Paul writes often, our “big brother” Jesus.  Another way: we are all enlivened and inspired by the same Holy Spirit, no matter our politics or citizenship.  Remember how “catholic” means “universal?”  If you are not into theology, remember the old song, “We are one in the Spirit.”  We are all connected, religiously and practically.

    Take a moment this holiday also to celebrate that we are all interdependent on God and each other and the world.  Remember that other great motto of the early United States, “E pluribus Unum,” out of many, one.  It’s a good way to forge a nation.  It’s really good theology, too!

    Happy interdependence day!

                                                            In Christ,
                                                                  
                                                                           David

Texts for Sunday

From the Epistles         Galatians 6:7-16
From the Gospels         Luke 10:1-10, 16-20