Thin Places, Thin Time

      As a Diana Butler Bass tweet reminded me, “Tomorrow begins a great cycle of thin space between this world and those worlds unseen: All Hallows Eve, All Saints Day, All Souls. It is a time to remember, to experience the power of liminality, to be grateful for our connection to the earth and to those who have gone before.”

      “Thin Places” are an ancient notion of places (and, I believe, times and experiences) where the barriers between this seen, tangible, touchable, understandable world and the unseen, spirit-filled, intangible, ineffable world seem weaker than elsewhere.  In Celtic spirituality, certain locations felt like gateways to the other worlds; certain groves seemed to be where the other realities were just on the other side of the trees, like if you went through you would find yourself in another dimension.  C.S. Lewis’ wardrobe is a thin place between England and Narnia.  Butler Bass grew up in Arizona, where the expanse of desert and expanse of sky touched, earth and heaven kissing lightly, a place where the barrier between expected and normal and the unexpected was razor thin.

      Certain times have the threshold between realities get really thin, too.  Traditionally, All Saints Day is one of them.  I have no idea whether there is something about this time midway between seasons where things are thinner and closer or whether we just notice the closeness that is always here because we’ve grown accustomed to allowing ourselves to feel it on the first of November.  It probably doesn’t matter.

      Non-scientific cultures don’t have as much problem with realities of matter and spirit intruding on each other or interconnecting or overlapping or interacting than we of European Enlightment descent.  I wonder if the current over-doing of Halloween is an unformed effort to reaquaint ourselves with those suppressed aspects of mystery and non-rational energy out there.  Of course, it gets overlaid with silliness and too much sugar and too much mock-gore and too much commercialism, but those are also ways of exerting control over the very uncontrollable features of death and life interwoven!

      The important part of All Saints Sunday is the recognition of the generations of Christian souls who have made us who we are, individually and congregationally, and to mark the passing of people precious to us.  Our foundations as Christians are deep in the past with the work and witness of imaginative and famous spirits and the work witness of “just plain” Christian folks, and it is all sorts whom we celebrate.  Some have passed over that threshold in the last year, and we remember them specifically in worship.  Yet we also can use this observance as a reminder of individuals dear to us and thank God for their presence in our lives.

      November also brings us Veterans Day or Remembrance Day or Armistice Day, depending on your country, marking the end of the Great War (World War I) on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918.  If you go to a national cemetery or a battlefield park, you can also sense the thinness of those places, places where death and life touch, places of memory and loss and gratitude, places where the best and the worst, the past and the future coexist.  We will have the traditional poppy flowers next week on the communion table to commemorate Remembrance Day just as we commemorate All Saints this week with reading names.

      Even in our Protestant tradition, we understand that there are times and places that feel liminal, feel like the boundaries are more permeable there and then, whether we consider those experiences spooky or deeply spiritual. Faith gives us a way to hold realities together, to let the secular and sacred touch, to kiss.  Communion is one moment, a sanctuary is one place.  May we place our hands and hearts on the thin places of God’s universe, and learn from them.

                                                                                                       In Christ,       
                                                                                                   
                                                                                                          David

Speaking of time: remember to set your clocks back for the end of Daylight Saving Time at 2 am Sunday!


Texts For Sunday Worship:
      From the Hebrew Bible      Joshua 3:7-17
      From the Epistle                 1 Thessalonians 2:9-13
      From the Gospels               Matthew 23:1-12

Bumpy

      Driving to the church through the strange obstacle courses that are Kline and Renwick jostled some of the wires in my brain enough to spark a thought about fixing and constructing things.  As you will tell by the end of my weekly wanderings, sometimes it is less about divine inspiration and more about weird mental short circuits!

      In this part of the country, there are plenty of jokes about road construction. Partly it is a consequence of the compressed working season.  Partly it is fatalism we will be stuck in long lines of closures, detours, single lane detours, and thousands of festive orange signs, barrels, and traffic cones.  Road work is both a fact of life and fertile source of sermon illustrations to commuting ministers parked in construction zones.

      There are a couple of very different approaches to fixing a rough patch of road.  There is dumping a few shovels of asphalt patch in a pothole, tamping it down, and letting us drive over it to the cheerful rattle of gravel in our fenderwells.  But sometimes it’s a lot more than a few holes, and a stretch of rough and ragged road needs to be repaired.  There is paving over damaged pavement with a couple of inches of asphalt which covers the problems and smooths things out…. for a while.  But the unevenness and damage and water seepage appears again after a few years.  And, although we kinda hate it, sometimes it required more drastic work like grinding the roadway down half a foot or more and repaving it with a new base and a new finish layer.  After all the damage suffered by Kline Road, that’s what they’ve done, gnawed it down to resurface.

      And, when things are really, really major, you get massive rebuilding.  While I worked for the Presbyterian Church in Watkins Glen, New York State undertook a half-year project to redo Franklin Street.  Over the years, the 19th century infrastructure began to collapse due to heavy modern truck traffic, requiring they excavate down below the drainpipes and sewer lines, the water and gas lines above them, and the electrical and phone lines near the surface.  In places, where the grade had changed markedly, they were stripping back six to eight feet deep.  They then redid the utilities, laid down layers of coarse to regular crushed stone, gravel, and then an eight-inch base layer of asphalt and a double-thick surface layer withstand the truck traffic.  It was a village-long project going all the way down like the Commons or parts of Hanshaw Road or the old section of Elmira Road.

      Twenty years later the rebuilt Franklin Street is still rock solid even as Watkins’ traffic has risen even more.

      You see my point?  First Congregational of Ithaca has been doing some major spirit work in the last months, and yes, it seems like it’s taking forever and why can’t we just pave over things and get on with it?  But doing too little is far worse than doing it right.  Although some churches during transitional times have to dig down to fix the utilities, FCCI hasn’t needed to.  The fundamentals are strong and in good shape (honestly!).  But it has needed to do more than quickly pave over the bumps and spongy parts.  We’ve had to grind off some of the patches and problems and fix some gullies and drainage and curbing and get back to solid footing before we repave and get on with our communal travel.  Sorta like Hanshaw Road, huh?  (If there was a part two to this blog I would riff on redoing the intersections on the main road and fixing the driveways by which families join traffic as being like how churches provide on-ramps for new participants to join the church family…)

      It is resource-intensive and time-consuming to do the deep work aright.  And, like road work that seems to last forever, properly doing the “infrastructure” part of the pastoral search takes time and effort.  And, like road work, we know that doing it right is worth it (although, honestly, we do like to complain about it while we are waiting for the machinery to rumble along or while jouncing along the torn up surface; just keep your muttering under your breath and be truly supportive of the Search Committee as they scrape away to the solid stuff and do the job properly, ok?).

      Notice that this image is about a road, not a parking lot.  We don’t do all of this to park and stay still.  Either roadways or congregations.  Roadwork and search work presuppose going someplace, not staying put.  We do it to get people moving in and out of our community of faith and family.  I believe doing the fundamentals correctly will be very, very interesting to people not currently part of FCCI.  And I believe there are folks out there waiting to drive on new lanes to the grace of God lived out from this place.  Folks are ready to move.  So let’s be ready for lots of new traffic!

                                                                    In Christ,                                                                                                                                             
                                                                      David

A quick reminder: our own Elizabeth Thonney will be leading worship this Sunday while I am off moderating the Presbyterian Synod of the Northeast.  My great appreciation to her!

Watering Faith

       I will admit that I really like baptisms.

      The are a lovely celebration of the church, a delightful day when (usually) an adorable baby or cute child is enfolded into the embrace of the church community, when the family of origin and the family of faith merge.  And did I mention that the guests of honor are adorable?

      So this Sunday we celebrate a baptism of a child of a child of the church, which reminds us (if I may crib from my Presbyterian liturgy) that the promises of the gospel belong also to our children.  In both UCC and Presbyterian tradition, the congregation functions collectively as what some traditions call “godparents.”  In answering the question of the congregation, we are all, all of us together, assenting to take care of and watch over and encourage and love the baptized child in a special relationship.  Often enough parents will ask some family friends or relatives to stand up with them in that familiar “god parent” role, and I like that supportive presence and encourage it.  But I never want parents to feel they are all by themselves in rearing their little ones if they don’t have someone standing there.  That’s because we are all standing there with parents and child as a really huge crowd of godparents; we are all in it with them!  I even like to have the other children in the congregation right up close and have some of them help pour the water in the font; they are the child’s sisters and brothers, too!

      And those promises to love and help the child grow in faith are why most congregations have children’s spiritual education programs to provide practical support for our children as they grow up.  We have Sunday School classes and then youth activities and a confirmation time as they mature.  All because we take being the god parents (and aunts and uncles and sisters and brothers and grandparents and….) seriously.  But that’s also why we encourage and enjoy them running around during fellowship time and why we vacuum up cookie crumbs after them.  This is the house of the family of faith.  We want them to feel loved and to grow to help others (that’s why we have mission trips!) in ways appropriate to them.  And in due time we hope the promises their parents make at baptism will become theirs, too, and they will confirm them in worship years hence to become part of the church themselves.  And to become “god family” for other children of the church!

      We say each Sunday at the beginning of our time together that “No matter who you are or where you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here.”  For Heidi McGowan, daughter of Ross McGowan and Carrie Richards, Sunday is the “official” beginning of her life journey in faith.  I’d love it if you could be there to get her off to a good, godly start!

                                                                    In Christ,                                                               
                                                           
                                                                    David


Texts For Sunday Worship:
      From the Hebrew Bible      Exodus 33:12-23
      From the Epistle                 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10
      From the Gospels               Matthew 22:15-22

If you read this Sunday’s Gospel lesson, you will probably go, “Huh? What is that all about?”  You probably will think the king in the parable is rather unreasonable. But this is one of Jesus’ parables that is not really about what we think it is about, but is about the interactions between the early church and mainstream Judaism.

      On the surface, it seems a moral teaching only.  And the idea that one should respond joyfully to the invitation of God (the king) and be prepared to celebrate the wedding feast is clear.  But looking at the context adds an interesting layer (this is, of course, why we value the historical/literary critical method of Biblical interpretation).  Last week we had the equally weird and brutal parable of the landowner who leased out a vineyard to ungrateful tenants who ignored and beat up and killed the servants sent to collect the harvest rent.  The landowner then sent his son, who was also killed by the tenants.  On the surface, it’s a warning not to mess with God and to return the first fruits to God.  But the addition of the “son” to that tale shifts it to a whole ’nother place.  Remember that this gospel was written in the historical context of the Roman crackdown on Israel including the sack of the temple and the siege of Masada.  So Matthew is suggesting obliquely that the destruction visited upon the nation was the result of not listening to the prophets (the servants sent ahead of time) and then killing “the son,” whom readers would recognize as “Jesus the Son of God.”  Matthew is pretty harsh about this, because the early church was experiencing quite a bit of hostility from the mainstream religious authorities at the time of his writing after the fall of Jerusalem.  Bluntly put, failure to recognize Jesus as the Messiah is why Jerusalem was flattened.  That diatribe is faintly echoed by other New Testament books, but no where as vindictively as Matthew, whose community appears to have suffered from a crackdown.

       So this Sunday’s passage continues the polemic, only going eschatological as well.  The king is rejoicing in the son’s wedding, a common gospel image of the realm to come.  The servants are again, allegorically, the prophets, some of whom Israel mistreated over the centuries and some of whom were killed, and the people blew off the invitation.  Allegorically again, the king sends troops (read: Romans).  Then the invitation goes out to the riff-raff and unaffiliated, in other words, non-Jews.  Here is Matthew’s allegorical explanation of how Gentiles and “not nice” people (like the tax collectors, prostitutes, un-religious, Greeks and Romans and whoever) get in to the heavenly banquet instead of the first round of invited guests.  If Israel blows off the invitation to the joyful feast of the realm of God, then anyone and everyone else gets to attend.  And that is how the rest of the world is invited after Israel ignores God.

      But what about that guest who got caught not wearing a wedding garment?  You’d think that if you suddenly got swept up in the bonus invitation you would be ok “dressed as you are.”  No, even then, you are expected to meet God’s minimum standards of deportment and behavior and holiness.  If you do not prepare yourself to be a follower of the Son, you won’t get in.  Following the commandments and doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with your God, and loving neighbors are all still required on the individual basis.  You still have to live up to the extra grace shown you.  You, too, have to understand and celebrate that Jesus is your Messiah once you respond to the extra-wide invitation.  The invitation is wide open, but you’ve got to respond in faith for yourself!

      I hope you can dress your soul up and attend God’s wide-open invitation this Sunday.  Remember?  No matter who you are or where you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here!

                                                                                               In Christ,                                                                                                                                                                
                                                                                                David


Texts For Sunday Worship:
        From the Hebrew Bible      Exodus 32:1-14
       From the Epistle                  Philippians 4:1-9
      From the Gospels                Matthew 22:1-14

There’s a Wideness

      As you know, I’m from the Presbyterian, Reformed, tradition, and we just adore the whole ecumenical cooperation thing and, especially, World Communion Sunday, the first Sunday in October when many congregations around the world all witness to our unity around the Holy Table.

      But the United Church of Christ simply blows me away with its commitment to witnessing to the unity of all Christ’s people.  Time and again I find references in UCC documents, liturgy, and writings a deep, abiding commitment to Jesus’ prayers in the Gospels that all his disciples be one.  That desire actually to demonstrate to the world Christ’s desire that we be one church is all the way through its life and structure.  In fact, it was the gathering of four very diverse traditions— the Congregational (mostly in New England) and Christian Churches (largely in the upper Midwest) which united in 1926, and the Evangelical and Reformed (primarily German Reformed) Churches which united in 1934.  Each pair was driven by the conviction that the many splintered denominations around the globe were an affront to God and that humans should try to bring ourselves back together, although they realized that even bringing near-neighbors like the E&Rs together was plenty difficult.  Still they persisted, and, having united in those partnerships, responded to the post-World War II ecumenical impulse by entering negotiations to unite yet further. On June 25, 1954 in Cleveland, the Congregational Christian Church and the Evangelical and Reformed Churches became the United Church of Christ.  The simple name reflects the witness, a united church worshiping and serving Christ.  It has been a passionate, progressive voice for social justice, spiritual renewal, openness, grace, hope, and the proclamation of God’s love in the world.  We can be proud to stand in that heritage.

      Which makes the celebration of World Communion Sunday right down our alley!  If there is any opportunity to demonstrate that all Christ’s followers are joined together, a world-wide exhibition of our unity is a great way to not only talk about it but act it out.  Even if it is one congregation at a time and a bit imperfect (in that we still can’t quite manage to get even all the congregations in a single town to set up a couple of block-long table down the main street and sit down together), it’s a way of at least pushing our boundaries and trying to symbolize that “we are one in the Spirit, one in the Lord.”

      A little history: In 1936 the first Sunday in October was celebrated in Presbyterian churches in the United States and overseas as “World Wide Communion Sunday.”  From the beginning, it was planned so that other denominations could make use of it and, after a few years, the idea had spread.  The Department of Evangelism of the Federal Council of Churches (a predecessor body of the National Council of Churches) was first associated with World Wide Communion Sunday in 1940 when the department’s executive secretary, Jesse Bader, led in its extension to a number of churches.  It is celebrated in quite a few traditions, although most commonly among mainline protestant denominations.  Still it’s one of the best ways we have of visibly showing we believe in a deep spiritual unity as Christ’s disciples.

      A key part of our UCC celebration on any communion Sunday is the open invitation to the table.  Unlike some other denominations, we don’t have “requirements” or restrictions on who may or may not commune.  We take Jesus’ own invitation to those who believe in him seriously and welcome all to the table Jesus has prepared.  Who are we to stand between someone and our Savior?  That’s a truly “wide” invitation!  It’s one of the ways we live out the UCC national slogan, “No matter where you are on life’s journey, you’re welcome here.”  Everyone is welcome around the big white and gold draped wooden table in front of the large wooden cross at the front of our quilt-rich sanctuary at 309 Highland Road.

      Last Sunday I proposed a little challenge:  invite someone to World Communion Sunday on October 5th.  Seriously!  Ask some family, friends, coworkers, neighbors who haven’t been to a church in a while, or maybe even ever, or maybe who had a bad experience with church or who has felt left out or excluded, and offer to pick them up or meet them and walk in with them and show them the way.  (Studies show that people who have not been in a particular worship service are very afraid of making a mistake or of not knowing anyone there, so accompanying them and helping them find their way around the service and the building is a huge help.)  If that first person isn’t interested, ask someone else.  Seriously!  Try up to three invitations, even if they don’t accept, but at least try, OK?!?   Seriously!

      To round out worship this week, we will have the Cornell a cappela group, The Hangovers, and handbells, in addition to recognizing those of our congregation going to the Heifer Farm next week on a mission trip.  It will be a wonderful service to attend!
Jesus invites everyone to share in the meal which he has prepared… everyone. No matter where one is on life’s journey, all are welcome here.  All.

      Let’s make Jesus happy by displaying our unity around the world and our welcoming communion table.

                                                                                          In Christ,
                                                                                     
                                                                                         David


Texts For Sunday Worship:
      From the Hebrew Bible      Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20
      From the Gospels               Matthew 21:23-32

Climate Change

      My eye was caught at the fitness center by the TV tuned to that cable news channel I never turn on myself, describing over scenes of the NYC march against climate change, the guest referring to the people there as “wackadoodles.”  The people assembling for the UN climate conference were an incredible cross-section of global concern, and to dismiss them was insulting.  Since the week before I was at a meeting where one of my colleagues needed to leave early to moderate one of the panels of experts, I have first hand familiarity with some of the people involved.  She is the Presbyterian Disaster Assistance coordinator after Superstorm Sandy, helping the presbyteries of northern New Jersey, Long Island, and downstate New York.  PDA, like a lot of agencies, is shifting from recovery mode to “resilience” efforts.  That’s a shift to rebuilding to improved standards, using wetlands to absorb storm surges, providing barriers to flooding, providing evacuation and shelters.  It is also a shift to planning for “when” storms will cause havoc, not whether.  Interestingly to me, much of it is driven by insurance and economics.  At that level, the debate over climate change is irrelevant; those who look at the costs are assuming significant losses will occur based on rising sea levels.  There is no ideology in their calculations, just data.  I personally do not find the alliance of religious organizations, insurance companies, climate scientists, and persons who live in at-risk areas to be “wackadoodles.”

      It seems a prod in the ribs for the Exodus lesson this Sunday to be the tale of water from the rock at Massah and Meribah.  That was an age when people and societies were much closer to nature and felt a greater connection between nature and the divine.  We, in our time, are more insulated from the processes of nature… until something big happens.

      The root text is from Genesis 1:26, what has long been translated as humans having “dominion” over nature.  More recent translators prefer “stewardship” or “management” as being closer to the Hebrew than the haughty superiority suggested by “dominion.”  And, really, until the industrial revolution, it wasn’t that big a deal, predominately because humans really couldn’t do all that much to the planet.  Yes, poor agricultural practices caused problems, but with industrialization came large-scale landscape changes, lots more carbon emissions and pollution, and our hand upon the earth became heavier.

      Actually, from a faith perspective, we kind of are at fault.  By “we” I mean the northern European renaissance and the Reformation which are predominate theoretical drivers of the developed world.  Yep, the oldline mainlines like the Presbyterians and Congregationals.  Individualism, scientific process, the development of technologies, the shift from agrarian to industrial society, the glorification of profit, and the corporation, came along rapidly, literally changing the planet.  The Reformation added a sense of Godly approval to the domination of earth.  Extracting minerals and energy sources replaced the stewardship of the earth so crops could flourish.  Further, Protestantism encouraged “getting ahead” and personal wealth, especially in the circles inhabited by leaders of industry.  Being successful became a moral and theological good, unbridled by a sense of community welfare.  So the variant of Christianity among the successful classes in England, northern Europe, and the United States read that old word, “dominion,” and ran with it.

     So there are days when I believe, in addition to the social and scientific reorientation so clearly discussed, that we of the “successful” Protestant Church have some atonement to do, as well.  Our theology was too willingly co-opted to support poor (to downright dangerous) environmental practices, and it is necessary for us to repent and refocus and return to a right and sustainable stewardship or management of the planet God has placed us upon.  It’s not just a matter of marching, not just a matter of engineering, but a matter of spirituality.

      May God continue to teach us a wiser way!

                                                                        
                                                                            David


Texts For Sunday Worship:
       From the Hebrew Bible      Exodus 17:1-7
       From the Epistle                 Philippians 2:1-13
       From the Gospels               Matthew 21:23-32

Updating

      Some of you have realized that more of my brains live in my phone and computer than in my skull.  Without the files, contacts, reminders, and above all, calendars, I would be barely functional.

      So this week I updated my iPhone to IOS 8, the new version. The update server was, of course, quickly clogged.  I tend to be near the front of the line when it comes to updating software.  Some people just jump on updates like they are the best thing since sliced bread.  Then they get upset when they are not seamlessly perfect or have differences in what they expected.  Others, of course, never upgrade, sticking with what they know and are used to (my mother still has her trusty ol’ flip phone).  I fit in the middle, interested in seeing how new things work, but also realistic that there will be glitches and maybe even failures.  I fully expect that upgrades will mess with things I like or even drop features I use, but in general I find that the tradeoffs are improvements.  Once in a while I find a revision really bad and roll back, chalking it up to learning something through the experience.

      But I’m probably not going to get the new iPhone 6 when it comes out.  I’m pretty satisfied with the 5 I have, and I’m much slower at upgrading hardware.  What matters to me is the improvement in function and process, the new software for getting things done.  I like to try new ways of doing things more than having a new object.  (But if one of you jumps on a 6 or 6 plus, I’d love you to show it to me after church some day!)

      While waiting for the download, I got to thinking about churches sort of the same way.  I’m really pretty happy with the hardware of the church, but I am always looking for new and better ways of doing the churches functions.  It occurred to me that the bylaws and constitution and the decision-making processes like the Council are like the operating system, and the ways different groups do particular things are like the applications running within the church.  We have the worship app, the children’s apps, the music-playing app, the expense tracking app, the arty quilt app, the crowd-funding app, and so on.  Sometimes a church may swap out an app or redesign it, but it’s just a piece of the whole system.  Sometimes a new idea is a disaster (#fail), but it might turn out to be wonderful.  Just like I sometimes delete an app from my phone because it didn’t work for me, sometimes churches have to delete or roll back something that seemed like a good idea at the time.  Some of you may now understand why I am an interim: I’m willing to try new things but also willing to admit when the results are not worth the change and try something different or something old again.  Bugs can crop up in any changes, too, and have to be fixed.  But I stick with the hardware because it fundamentally is good.  We just may need different ways of doing things.  New things are not automatically good because they are new but because they work better with the needs and hardware of the congregation.  You have to be sensible and sensitive in going forward to get the best out of a church, just like a phone.

      So, let’s keep working on First Congregational Church of Ithaca, version 2015, wisely but confidently, OK?  Go with what works better, even if some of the things that are so familiar get done a slightly different way.  Above all, remember we are in God’s hands.

      (Bread 2.0 was upgraded by Otto Rohwedder’s invention of the loaf-at-a-time slicing machine in 1928.  The first nationally marketed pre-sliced bread was Wonder Bread.  Remember that when we have communion next month!)

                                                                                        In Christ,
                                                                                     
                                                                                         David


Texts For Sunday Worship:
      From the Hebrew Bible      Exodus 16:2-15
      From the Gospels               Matthew 20:1-16