Thursday Thoughts

The tiny wooden chalice you see above is one I used in a communion service at the Garden Tomb in Jerusalem in 2005. There, gathered with my classmates from various Christian denominations and surrounded by Christians from around the world, we crossed denominational lines and remembered together the night that Christ sat at table with his disciples, broke the bread, and drank the wine. That was a holy moment. 

In real life, when not touring the Holy Land with one’s seminary professors, it is harder to remember the powerful, unifying force that communion should be. Here at PMBC, when we eat the bread and drink the wine (ok, juice), we take it all together, serving one another and closing by singing “Blessed be the Tie that Binds.”

Blessed be the tie that binds,

Our hearts in Christian love.

The fellowship of kindred minds,

Is like to that above.

What a powerful recognition that Christian unity, remembered and practiced around this table, reflects the very essence of God’s being. 

In 1527, just a few years after the beginnings of the Anabaptists in Switzerland and Europe (these cousin ancestors of ours were called “radical reformers,” which never fails to make me giggle), a minister by the name of Balthasar Hübmaier, wrote a new liturgy for communion that included what he called The Pledge of Love. The Pledge included promises to love God, to love neighbor, and to practice “fraternal admonition.” Hübmaier wanted those who participated in the Lord’s Supper to become “one bread, one body.” So before taking communion he had them commit to loving each other and encouraging one another in their faith.

In the Apostle Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians we discover that the Corinthian church was practicing communion in a way that reinforced social stratification. Some folks were eating everything while other folks quite literally went hungry. The wealthy were being seated at the table and weren’t thinking about the others when they ate all the bread and drank all the wine - which left the poorer folks who were already hungry even hungrier.  “So then, my brothers and sisters,” Paul wrote, “when you come together to eat, wait for one another” (11:33).

Today is Maundy Thursday, the day of the Christian year when we remember together Christ sitting at that table with his disciples. A day when we break the bread and drink the wine and remember not only Christ’s death, but also the life of unity and love to which he has called us. 

Today and throughout this year, may we remember together that we are called to love Christ through service to one another, through kindness, compassion, and forbearance. While we do not take a pledge of love before communion, perhaps we might remember as we hand the tray to our neighbor, that we are indeed committed to loving and encouraging one another. For this is part of what it means to remember Christ.

Blessings,

Pastor Amy

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Not to name names, but someone with my same initials who lives at my house decided that having three yards of compost delivered yesterday was a good idea. Undoubtedly, my veggies, herbs, and flowers will appreciate this black gold. Unfortunately, it still has to be moved from my driveway to the raised garden beds with my own two arms. Right now this pile feels a bit overwhelming, especially when I look at it in relation to my shovel and wheelbarrow. Having spent my entire adult life in academia or ministry, probably my strongest muscles are my typing muscles. Friends, this is a bit much. 

But, when I turn around and look at my garden beds, and realize there are just eight of them, the work doesn’t seem as interminable. Bed by bed, that’s all I have to do. First the blackberry bed, then the soon-to-be strawberry bed, then the pea and onion bed. Then a break to plant spring peas. Then a rest. I can manage thinking about moving this load to where it needs to be when I think about the beds themselves rather than the pile that seems to never end. And, I can always call in help if I need to.

Sometimes Christ’s command to love this world feels like moving this pile - impossible and never ending. We are called to love our sisters and brothers (1 John 4:20-21), neighbors (Mark 12:31), and enemies (Matthew 5:43-48).  But when we consider how much energy we have compared to how great is the world’s need, it seems impossible - almost like throwing one starfish back into the sea while the beach remains covered with thousands more. Or like having one out-of-shape pastor-theologian move wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of compost.

This week there was another school shooting, this one at a private school in Nashville where six beloved lives were lost. Three of them were nine-year old children. We know this isn’t the first horror of this kind - in fact, it is only one of about 130 mass shootings in the United States in this year alone. We are not yet three months into this year.

We all know children around that age - in fact, a few of them are a regular part of the Phillips family.  They come in each Sunday morning bright eyed and happy to greet me (or, as in the case of one of our preschoolers to try to jump out and scare me!). The year of the Sandy Hook shooting, when 20 first graders were murdered, my own daughter was the same age. I remember picking her up from school that day, with a crowd of parents pushed up against the school fence, holding back tears. It was too close. And we were across the continent in SoCal. 

Sandy Hook was 11 years ago and each school shooting since is shocking and overwhelming.  Each one leaves so many of us overwhelmed at fighting the gun industry and power-hungry politicians so we can send our country’s children to school rather than to war zones. 

This pile is big. 

We can’t move it alone. 

Step by step. Bit by bit. 

What we can do is commit to standing up against violence in all its forms, wherever we encounter it. We can push for better gun legislation. We can actively learn how to live at peace with neighbors. We can mend wounds we have inflicted so they don’t fester and rupture. We can teach our children the same. 

When I think of it this way, election by election, neighbor by neighbor, reconciliation by reconciliation, or child by child, I feel more able and willing to set my feet down each morning and commit to the active love I see in Jesus. I feel more able to weep as Jesus wept when Lazarus died – and then to stand up again and start to roll away stones so that life can invade the places of death in this world.

Church, as we face this week’s fresh horror, please commit with me to choose to step into each day with love so that we might be Christ’s hands and feet and bring light where there is death. 

Step by step. Day by day. This is what we are called to.

Patience and kindness,

not envious, boastful, or arrogant,

not irritable or resentful,

rejoicing in truth,

bearing all things,

believing and hoping all things,

Never ending.

Enduring all things.

This is love.

Love is a choice.

A choice we make every day

when we set our feet on the floor in the morning,

when we pick them up off the floor at night,

and all the moments in between.

This is love.

Love is a choice.

In its best moments it makes our hearts soar

and in its hardest moments shatters them,

Love those you have chosen,

so their and your hearts can soar

and will not shatter.

Love.

It endures all things.

It does not end.

Love is a choice.

Blessings,

Pastor Amy

PS - Lifespan hospital has put out a guide for talking to children about school shootings and community violence. Perhaps you might find this helpful with the children in your life.

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As we are nearing Holy Week, I am struck by the vulnerability of Jesus in a season we generally celebrate as triumphant. Certainly Easter is triumphant! Up from the grave he arose! The first Easter showed us that God can even overcome that which awaits each of us: sure and certain death. One of my favorite church historians, Justo González, describes the days between Good Friday and Easter as the time Jesus handed the devil a gift-wrapped box. When the box was opened, it was a bomb that blew the gates off of hell, freeing everyone trapped within. That is powerful!

But we aren’t at Easter yet. We are still on this side of Palm Sunday, yet another story of power. Jesus is still walking around that Judean dusty desert in a fragile human body, subject to the same nutrition, social, water, and shelter needs we all have. He was still encountering the hard parts of life - such as when his friend Lazarus died and Jesus wept (John 11:35). Jesus was powerful, yes, and Jesus was also vulnerable. Jesus blew the gates off of hell, but Jesus also died in a publicly shameful manner. Jesus is the power of God, but the power of God was also born as a human infant, became thirsty, and wept when his friends died.

This seems like a paradox, doesn’t it? But, if we examine our lives can’t we also say that we live in this same tension between vulnerability and power?  We walk through dark valleys, but we also sit with courage feasting in front of those who would ruin us (Psalm 23). We will die, but we will also live forever. We are human. We are vulnerable. We are created in God’s image.

“Vulnerability is not a weakness, a passing indisposition, or something we can arrange to do without. Vulnerability is not a choice. Vulnerability is the underlying, ever-present and abiding undercurrent of our natural state. To run from vulnerability is to run from the essence of our nature; the attempt to be invulnerable is the vain attempt to become something we are not.” (David Whyte, Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words, 261).

We are created to be vulnerable, and we cut off part of who we were created to be when we pretend otherwise.

Remember this – Christ was vulnerable. Vulnerable to the point of death. But, vulnerability doesn’t mean weakness. It means that when we live into the power of vulnerability we hold on tight to the promise that one day these bones will rise again. Jesus kept that promise for us.

Let me encourage you to find a way to be vulnerable to the world this week - to weep with it, to laugh with it, and to share your life with it. 

Blessings,

Pastor Amy

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(Baby Pastor Amy)

Two weeks ago I preached on John 3:1-21, where we read the story of Nicodemus coming to Jesus in the dark of night and exclaiming amazement at the thought that an old man such as himself could be born again. During the children’s story I wondered aloud with the kids about whether Nicodemus actually thought to himself, “hmm, I wonder if I could fit back inside?” 

Nicodemus’s question reminds me of some of the “discussions” (aka, arguments) my siblings and I would have when we were younger about whether our mom was pregnant with more than one of us at once. Ouch. None of the nine of us are twins. But, I had to find a way to usurp my one older sibling, and this seemed the obvious way to my young mind!

These children’s stories I get the honor of leading during worship give me lots of helpful insights into how our kids think. Back on All Saints Day when we were lighting candles at the altar, one little guy whispered out, “I LIKE fire.” (Note to self: don’t keep matches at kid level.) Another time the same little guy let out some body noises while sitting on the chancel facing a full sanctuary, which then led to the inevitable giggles from the rest of them. (Note to self: always check the lapel mic before asking if the bathroom is needed.) Kids’ lack of filters can lead to some funny situations. 

This past Sunday I invited them into the pulpit to proclaim to the congregation that God loves them. I’m so proud of each of them for so willingly participating in proclaiming the Gospel in a way that most certainly made some of them nervous. 

Children have an interesting place in the Gospels. They aren’t present all that often, but when they are, Jesus is right there with them, treating them as full and worthy people. In Matthew 19:14 he chastises the disciples who tried to shoo the kids away from him, proclaiming “Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.” According to Matthew’s timeline, the disciples did this after Jesus warned his listeners in chapter 18 not to cause a child to stumble, telling them it would be better if they were to be thrown into the sea with an anchor tied to them. Now, we have no evidence that Jesus actually did throw folks into the sea, but I would think this might be an effective way to teach folks about the value of children….

Jesus surely loved the little children - both those who clamored around his knees and all who were born before and who have been born since. I asked the kids two weeks ago to remember this whenever they look at their own baby pictures: that when God looks down on them, God thinks, “wow, I really love this one.” Perhaps this might be a good practice for us grown ups too - to both think this of the children around us and to look at our own baby pictures in the same way. Each of us, no matter how the adults around us loved or harmed us, is looked upon by God as a beloved part of God’s creation. 

Perhaps this week you might think about how you can love the children in your lives like Jesus loves them. Perhaps you might think of a way to fix the harm you have done in the life of a child. And perhaps, before all of this, you might find a baby picture of yourself, look at it, and remind yourself that when you were born and each day since, God has looked upon you and thought, “I surely do love this one.”

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Lent, like Advent, is a season of waiting. Unlike Advent, Lent feels heavy. We know that Easter Sunday is coming - but the only way to get there is through Good Friday. Through death. Through weeping. Through grief. Through fear and disillusionment.

I bet Mary, Jesus’ mother, wanted to skip Friday. Even after Sunday, what had happened on Friday was still imprinted in her mind. She had been there when her son was cruelly and publicly murdered. She had seen his feet pierced - the very same feet she had kissed at his birth. I wonder how Easter morning felt for her. Was she relieved? Did she feel joy? Or was she incredulous that God had let Friday even happen? I imagine her feelings were mixed - joy and grief wrapped up together.

Lent feels heavy because its path goes through grief. Grief that we have to pass through in preparation for Easter morning. Grief of a mother’s loss of her first son. Even Jesus’ own grief that we hear in his cry of abandonment on that cross. 

Lent feels heavy because it touches on our own grief.

I know grief. The kind of deep, black, heavy grief that shrouds life and from which you wonder if you will ever rise. The kind of grief that pulls you down into an isolated tomb where the rock hasn’t been rolled away. The kind of grief that causes you to pour out tears so long and so hard that you wonder how you haven’t drowned in them. The kind of grief you look back on and wonder how you are even still alive. The kind of grief that never really goes away - even when the life days come. 

When Jesus was on the verge of death, he cried out using words from Psalm 22:1, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). Once we get to Easter we talk about how even in his forsakenness Jesus was close enough to God to cry out like this, close enough to God to pray. But right now we are still in Lent, still facing Friday’s events to come. Let us sit with Jesus as he cries out these words, feeling deep in our bones that Jesus knows the depths of grief. That we are not alone in ours. 

The morning after

the Son rose and supposedly

vanquished death for always

feels suspiciously like the previous morning

and what I imagine all the mornings

to come will feel like.

Will the next morning after and the

one after that still feel like the grave

where no one has remembered to roll

back the stone?

Will the grave cloths wrap too tightly

around our faces,

pressing shame, and loss, and fear

over us,

extinguishing us,

holding us down?

Will we dig our way out,

dirt and grit under our fingernails

reminding us of the lies and hurts and losses,

the little death stings

that buried us in the first place?

I wonder what resurrection feels like to those

already in the graves,

to those who are already dirt?

What is their morning after?

Who will roll back their stones?

Will the children dancing on the grass outside

call them forth from their fears

and into a morning after they can't imagine?

What does it mean to live again when the

grave cloths won't let go,

when the mornings after seem unimaginable,

when our fingertips can't reach the light?

The Son has risen

and we can only trust that the rays of a new morning,

the morning after our next morning,

will roll back our stones.

That this resurrected love vanquishes even death,

and grave cloths,

and all that put us behind those stones.

Blessings,

Pastor Amy

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