This week, we'll celebrate our regular first Sunday of the month children's Sunday. This year, we're going to try something a little different for children's Sundays. We're scaling back the every month children's Sunday just a little--we'll still do the children's sermon instead of the "regular" one, but I won't have all the kids up at the altar. At the same time, we'll ramp up and have two larger scale kids' Sundays a year, where kids will be at the altar helping to bless the bread and the wine, as well as doing the oblations, the readings, etc. The first big kids' Sunday will be on October 3, when we'll also celebrate "Creation Sunday," and encourage everyone to walk, bike, or carpool to church. After all, part of the reason we conserve is to have a healthy earth for future generations. It's also St Francis Day weekend, so stay tuned for some possible animal-blessing announcements.
Whether you have kids or not, the children who are part of our community have a connection to you--even if you don't know it. We all form part of the community they will carry with them for all their lives. Having our kids in church every month is a blessing to all of us. It reminds us that you never have to wait to receive the blessings of God. I'd also like to pass on a few thoughts about kids in church from children's educator Rhonda Waters, a friend of mine who'll soon be ordained in Montreal. She offers some suggestions for families, and for the wider congregation:
+Small children like to wander. Rejoice if you have a wanderer in your midst -- it's a sign that she/he feels safe in your community. And remember -- a wandering child is almost always quieter than an uncomfortable and restless child. Parents, do know where your kids are, but don't be too mortified if they climb the chancel steps.
+Sunday School is important but so is incorporating kids into the worshipping community. In fact, Sunday School can become a problem if it serves only to separate kids from the rest of the Body of Christ -- de-corporating the worshipping community, if you will. We are one body in Christ--each one of us.
+Kids should be seated where they can see what's going on. The front of a church actually has quite a lot to look at and quite a few people move around over the course of a service. Children who can see are more apt to pay attention because there is something to pay attention to. Families, sit near the front!
I am so grateful for the ways Christ Church is a welcoming community to everyone. Single adults, older adults, families, couples--thanks to each of you for making this community a place with holy--and whole--worship for all.
Blessings,
Sara+
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Thursday, September 2, 2010
From 8/26: No one's excluded
This week, I've continued to watch with sadness the unfolding of dramatic Islamophobia in our country. Just this morning, the newspaper included stories about the church in Florida that's planning "Burn a Koran" day on September 11, and a New York cab driver who was stabbed by his passenger after answering affirmatively to the question "are you a Muslim." And, of course, the debate over "the mosque at ground zero" (which is neither a mosque nor at ground zero (it's a community center; there's already a mosque) rages on. On Sunday in my sermon, I said that it felt like our whole country was bent over by fear; we are in need of a collective "Daughter, you are healed" as Jesus spoke to the woman bent over for 18 years. We're collectively bent over by fear, unable to see or hear.
In the daily office this morning, another Scripture passage hit me over the head in speaking to fear of Islam (or fear of gay marriage, or fear of immigrants, or fear of any group). The early church was, we know, in a very diverse context. There were constant questions about who could be part of the church and who couldn't--and what was required for them to do to join. As a movement solidly in the Jewish community, what do to with those who wanted to follow Jesus but weren't Jews? Jews and Gentiles weren't even supposed to eat together, much less pray or be part of the same community.
That all changed with the conversion of Cornelius, the centurion--an officer in the Roman army. He and Simon Peter had simulataneous visions concerning the inclusion of Gentiles in the church. Cornelius was told in his vision to send people to get Peter, while Peter's message was a little less clear. He saw a large sheet coming down with all kinds of animals that were forbidden for Jews to eat.
"A voice spoke: Get up, Peter; kill and eat.' But Peter said, 'By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is profane or unclean.' The voice said to him again, a second time, 'What God has made clean, you must not call profane." (Acts 10:13-15).
Totally confused, Peter tries to figure out what's going on when Cornelius' people appear and ask Peter to go with them. He goes, and tells Cornelius and his companions: 'You yourselves know that it is unlawful for a Jew to associate with or to visit a Gentile; but God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean. So when I was sent for, I came without objection." (Acts 10:28-29)
There's an important shift here, which is why it kind of hit me over the head. Peter's vision was of animals--he could easily have interpreted his vision as being about the Jewish dietary laws (the text even tells us that he was hungry). Kill and eat--it doesn't say anything about people. But in the course of wrestling with it and praying, Peter discerns that God isn't just talking about some narrow ban on certain foods, he's being told that being a Christian is about extending grace and love to everyone--even those who are not Jews or Christians! "God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean." Cornelius was an agent of the state that had oppressed and separated the Jewish people for years. If he wasn't worthy of recrimination, then nobody is.
And if the Roman military wasn't "out" in Jesus' day, I can't think of anyone now who could be, either. At that critical period in the formation of this movement around Jesus, the invitation of the risen Lord was toward wider embrace and wider inclusion. We have to listen to Peter, now, and reconnect with that heritage of our Christian faith. Whether it's gender, race, religion, or sexuality, Christian voices need to be heard--no one is excluded from God's love, and everyone should be free to live and pray as they are called.
Blessings,
Sara+
In the daily office this morning, another Scripture passage hit me over the head in speaking to fear of Islam (or fear of gay marriage, or fear of immigrants, or fear of any group). The early church was, we know, in a very diverse context. There were constant questions about who could be part of the church and who couldn't--and what was required for them to do to join. As a movement solidly in the Jewish community, what do to with those who wanted to follow Jesus but weren't Jews? Jews and Gentiles weren't even supposed to eat together, much less pray or be part of the same community.
That all changed with the conversion of Cornelius, the centurion--an officer in the Roman army. He and Simon Peter had simulataneous visions concerning the inclusion of Gentiles in the church. Cornelius was told in his vision to send people to get Peter, while Peter's message was a little less clear. He saw a large sheet coming down with all kinds of animals that were forbidden for Jews to eat.
"A voice spoke: Get up, Peter; kill and eat.' But Peter said, 'By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is profane or unclean.' The voice said to him again, a second time, 'What God has made clean, you must not call profane." (Acts 10:13-15).
Totally confused, Peter tries to figure out what's going on when Cornelius' people appear and ask Peter to go with them. He goes, and tells Cornelius and his companions: 'You yourselves know that it is unlawful for a Jew to associate with or to visit a Gentile; but God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean. So when I was sent for, I came without objection." (Acts 10:28-29)
There's an important shift here, which is why it kind of hit me over the head. Peter's vision was of animals--he could easily have interpreted his vision as being about the Jewish dietary laws (the text even tells us that he was hungry). Kill and eat--it doesn't say anything about people. But in the course of wrestling with it and praying, Peter discerns that God isn't just talking about some narrow ban on certain foods, he's being told that being a Christian is about extending grace and love to everyone--even those who are not Jews or Christians! "God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean." Cornelius was an agent of the state that had oppressed and separated the Jewish people for years. If he wasn't worthy of recrimination, then nobody is.
And if the Roman military wasn't "out" in Jesus' day, I can't think of anyone now who could be, either. At that critical period in the formation of this movement around Jesus, the invitation of the risen Lord was toward wider embrace and wider inclusion. We have to listen to Peter, now, and reconnect with that heritage of our Christian faith. Whether it's gender, race, religion, or sexuality, Christian voices need to be heard--no one is excluded from God's love, and everyone should be free to live and pray as they are called.
Blessings,
Sara+
From 8/19: What do we value?
I had a wonderful vacation, but after settling in a little it's nice to be back. We spent the first week camping in North Conway and visiting friends in Montreal, and then went with them to Isle La Motte, Vermont, where we rented a house for 2 weeks. Being away, I was very aware of my relationship to technology. You could get wireless internet from across the street if you sat on the front porch of the house, and our iphones kept us connected (though very, very slowly) to the newspaper and our home email. So I was, comparatively, untethered. It took a while, though-the first week of vacation I was constantly posting on Facebook-Adah eats sand! Isaiah manages not to break an arm on the swing set! The sunset is beautiful! (somehow everything on Facebook seems to need exclamation points). By the end, I'd cut back-but couldn't resist putting up a picture of the Lake Chaplain duct tape boat races (it's what it sounds like-boats, made of duct tape, piloted mostly by teenagers).
I thought about it a lot--in one way, how nice to be able to share; my mother, visiting her sister in Sweden, could see what we were doing in New Hampshire. At the same time, when someone responds, you're back to the device; looking at what clever thing someone else has posted in response to your cleverness. Kind of narcissistic. My pile of books reflected my uneasiness.
My first read was Hamlet's Blackberry. Unfortunately, the title turned out to be more clever then the book, which was pretty superficial. I liked the historical perspective, though-it's about how innovation has challenged, and helped, human flourishing over the years. And every time, the next big thing is touted as the means to a good life, and every time, people get panicked about how technology is changing them. The early Greeks were stressed out about writing the same way many of us get stressed out over email. Same for the printing press, same for the erasable "tables" people used to jot down notes (Hamlet's device, of the title). Another book, along the same theme of discontent with contemporary frenzy, was lent to me by Gene Burkart: Helena Norberg-Hodge's Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh. Applying 16 years of living in Ladakh, she writes about what happened to the "Little Tibet" region of northern India when international development set in. A formerly placid, contented society became infected with acquisitiveness, insecurity, etc. It was published almost 20 years ago so I would be interested in a second edition!
Though I turned to both books out of the same impulse--a kind of questioning of contemporary technological society--their underlying approaches couldn't be more different. In the one, technology comes out the victor--we just have to learn to manage it rather than being managed by it. In the other, technology was the problem, pretty much from start to finish ("human scaled" projects, however, like solar ovens were cool). Both, though, offered a vision of an alternative--the Ladakh book, certainly more so-that another way is possible.
It all comes back to the essential question: what do we value? How do we create, to totally contort a phrase from Dorothy Day, a life in which it is easier to do what we really want? What disciplines can we adopt and what choices can we make to encourage us to remember what it was that we really wanted?
I need church for that--and I'm glad to be back.
Blessings,
Sara+
I thought about it a lot--in one way, how nice to be able to share; my mother, visiting her sister in Sweden, could see what we were doing in New Hampshire. At the same time, when someone responds, you're back to the device; looking at what clever thing someone else has posted in response to your cleverness. Kind of narcissistic. My pile of books reflected my uneasiness.
My first read was Hamlet's Blackberry. Unfortunately, the title turned out to be more clever then the book, which was pretty superficial. I liked the historical perspective, though-it's about how innovation has challenged, and helped, human flourishing over the years. And every time, the next big thing is touted as the means to a good life, and every time, people get panicked about how technology is changing them. The early Greeks were stressed out about writing the same way many of us get stressed out over email. Same for the printing press, same for the erasable "tables" people used to jot down notes (Hamlet's device, of the title). Another book, along the same theme of discontent with contemporary frenzy, was lent to me by Gene Burkart: Helena Norberg-Hodge's Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh. Applying 16 years of living in Ladakh, she writes about what happened to the "Little Tibet" region of northern India when international development set in. A formerly placid, contented society became infected with acquisitiveness, insecurity, etc. It was published almost 20 years ago so I would be interested in a second edition!
Though I turned to both books out of the same impulse--a kind of questioning of contemporary technological society--their underlying approaches couldn't be more different. In the one, technology comes out the victor--we just have to learn to manage it rather than being managed by it. In the other, technology was the problem, pretty much from start to finish ("human scaled" projects, however, like solar ovens were cool). Both, though, offered a vision of an alternative--the Ladakh book, certainly more so-that another way is possible.
It all comes back to the essential question: what do we value? How do we create, to totally contort a phrase from Dorothy Day, a life in which it is easier to do what we really want? What disciplines can we adopt and what choices can we make to encourage us to remember what it was that we really wanted?
I need church for that--and I'm glad to be back.
Blessings,
Sara+
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