Thursday Thoughts

The LORD spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to the people of Israel, saying: In the seventh month, on the first day of the month, you shall observe a day of complete rest, a holy convocation commemorated with trumpet blasts. You shall not work at your occupations; and you shall present the LORD’s offering by fire.

This blessing is used by Reformed Jews on Rosh Hashanah evening (you can hear it sung here):

Source of blessing, Eternal our God,

Your majestic power creates the fruit of the vine.

Source of blessing, Eternal oru God, in Your majestic power

You chose us to make known Your aspirations among all the many peoples,

Making our lives holy through Your commandments.

In Your love, Eternal our God,

You have given us this Day of Remembrance:

A day for the shofar’s joyful sound

A day of sacred assembly;

A day to be mindful of our people’s going-out from Egypt.

A unique place among the nations You have chosen for us –

And Your word is true; it endures forever.

Blessed are You, Eternal Sovereign over all the earth,

Who sanctifies Israel and the Day of Remembrance.

As we seek to live in peace with those around us, may we lift up our Jewish sisters and brothers as they rest, celebrate, and prepare themselves for Yom Kippur. They remind us that God never abandons those God loves, that God has brought God’s loved ones out of slavery and continues to be present with them through the darkest of valleys.

Perhaps take a moment this week to rest and eat something sweet (always my plan!) and consider deeply the love of God that remains with us through the mountains and valleys, the seas and deserts, and pray, too, that this next year will be sweet!

L’shanah Tova!

Rev. Dr. Amy Chilton

You will never believe what I found this week in the church building! First, two long black wool capes in the cloak room off the Narthex. No doubt one of you will tell me what they are for, I hope. Second, another Spencer Crooks painting that you can now see hanging just outside Donna’s office. Third, the movable letters to the small reader sign in the entry near the elevator. I discovered last week that it still had our pre-covid schedule on it, but we couldn’t find the key. Having located both the letters and the key, I was able to update the type to reflect our current schedule and media platforms. Look closely at this picture–what do you see? BOTH SCHEDULES. The last schedule was up so long that it is permanently etched into that felt.

The past is like that, isn’t it? We make changes because we want to or need to, and yet what formerly was is still present. Time simultaneously pulls us ahead and backwards. Think about the cycle that baby names have gone through in the last century. My daughter’s first name was the 9th most popular baby name the year I gave it to her, although it had been both her great grandmother’s and her great great great grandmother’s names. But, would it have been popular in my generation? No more than Noah, Amelia, or Charlotte would have been in the 70s, although all were on the top 10 list in 2021 (1970s Jennifers, Amys, and Brians - step to the side!) We cycle through names because our love for those who had them keeps them in existence even while they sometimes sound outdated. I loved my grandmother and am happy she shares a name with my daughter. But the past can also hang on in uncomfortable ways. “Generational trauma” is one way of naming how the brokenness of our predecessors can still negatively shape how we live in the world now.

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever,” wrote the author of the letter to the Hebrews (13:8). God was with us in the past, is with us in the present, and will be with us in the future, this has never and will never change. God in Christ is unchanging: always loving, always full of grace, always kind, and always responsive to us. When the past shines through into the present, be that as a blessing or a curse, God shines through as well, because God holds all of our times in God’s hands.

As we sort through what it means to be Phillips Memorial Baptist Church today, let us remember that God was with us in the past. The past that peeks through when we miss folks or programs is a past where God also was. But, do not be afraid of what is to come - we have been promised God is also present in the future!

“Do not fear, for I am with you, do not be afraid, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my victorious right hand” (Isaiah 41:10). Even when the way forward feels less comfortable than the past that keeps showing up, remember, God was with us then, is with u now, and always will be with us.

Amen

Rev. Dr. Amy Chilton?

Every fall I ask the same question as many of you: how is summer already over?  I’ve decided this year that I’m going to go with the official last day of summer, September 21st, as the end of this season. In part, this is because I owe my publisher another chapter and a half before the end of summer, so the official date of September 21st benefits me the most! This reminds me of something I jokingly said last week: “I don’t approve of sexism unless it benefits me!” 

Now, don’t get me wrong, I know the kids have started school so it must be fall and that sexism really isn’t good - even if it does sometimes benefit me. I find it fascinating how often the things we feel passionate about are the things that most impact ourselves. Passion and self-investment are good, of course, but what about when the things that need passionate individuals don’t touch the hearts of those who can most help?

Let’s go back in time a few years to 1927, the year that PMBC voted against allowing the local theaters to play movies on Sundays. In a statement adopted after its unanimous approval, we read that,

“The Phillips Memorial Baptist Church, Eden Park, wishes to reaffirm its longtime belief in a sane and suitable observance of one day in seven as a period of rest, worship, and service. We believe that anything that tends to secularize the day is certain to have an injurious effect on the moral life of the nation, and while we, as a church, have no desire to compel the observance of the Sabbath by those who do not recognize the claims of Christ, yet as citizens concerned for the best and truest welfare of the country, we believe that all citizens should do whatever is in their power to see that everyone has a proper opportunity of sharing its inestimable privileges.”

I wonder how heated those conversations were when the church decided to take a stance against Sunday movies and what they meant by giving everyone the “proper opportunity of sharing its inestimable privileges”? I can’t imagine us making this same statement against movies today, but I do hope we might have the similar courage to make public stances against the forms of injustices we see now. 

Jesus himself made a few public stances, the most notable being the time he strolled into his home synagogue and told those folks that he, the boy they had taught in Scripture class, was the one the LORD had appointed to “bring good news to the poor…to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free” (Luke 3:18-19). Then he kept making public statements by doing things like dining with the outcast tax collectors, healing ceremonially unclean women, talking to socially outcast women and Samaritans, prioritizing children, and rethinking Sabbath observance to include healing. 

I suspect that talking about public stances might have you a bit worried, as it certainly does me! After all, some branches of Christianity have gone VERY public on issues that seem to contradict the good news or using methods that do not reflect Jesus as the Prince of Peace. Perhaps this has soured the thought of public stances for many of us - after all, we don’t want to be crazy like them. 

But, the good news was meant to be shouted out from the rooftops! Proclaimed from the heavens with a host of angels! Sung out from a prison cell! If we reclaim the public proclamation of God’s salvific grace for the injustices of today, what might we say? I suspect it won’t be about watching movies on Sunday. It might be about all persons being created in God’s image and made equal by the cross. There are so many dehumanizing injustices that need our public proclamation: gross economic inequalities; for example, social, religious, political, and familial exclusion based on race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, and expression, etc., etc., etc.

In Matthew 25 we read the story of Jesus separating the sheep and the goats (poor goats, they always get the short end of the stick), telling folks that when they stood up for the needs of others by serving them that they had served him. “But,” they asked, “when did we even do this?” “Just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:31-46). Even when our heart is not passionate about standing up for an injustice, let us remember that Jesus’ heart is.

Our foremothers and fathers stood up for the Sabbath by rejecting Sunday movies. Lord, grant us each apart and together the courage and passion to stand up against today’s injustices and to help create a world where you are all in all.

Blessings,

Rev. Dr. Amy Chilton

In a lot of ways Christianity is about new things and fresh starts. Some people talk about the church as being outdated and out of touch - and often it is. But at the core of its identity, the church is about what is and will be new, not what is old. At the beginning of the book of Genesis, the very first book in the Hebrew Scriptures, we read that at the beginning of all things God created order out of disorder. God made a new earth and a new history. At the end of Christian Scripture we find that odd book of Revelation, which ends with the beautiful promise in 21:1-5b; all that is old, all that is painful and broken, will be made new and made whole:

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,

‘See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them;

They will be his peoples,

And God himself will be with them;

He will wipe every tear from their eyes.

Death will be no more;

Mourning and crying and pain will be no more,

For the first things have passed away. 

And the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am making all things new.”

We are people of a faith rooted in the past but centered on the future - or more accurately, centered on the “eschaton.” As an eschatological religion, Christianity isn’t focused on what is going to grow logically or naturally out of the past (i.e., the future), but instead is focused on the new thing that is going to break into our reality (i.e., the eschaton). The future is rooted in the past, which can never be new, but the eschaton is rooted in God and is something new and whole. We focus on the eschaton when we celebrate Easter and Christ rising from death. The future would have determined that he be buried and remain in his grave, but the eschaton broke into that course of history and did a new thing!

Despite our faith being centered on the new, I personally sometimes find it very difficult to do new things. Take, for example, the beginning of the school year. I cried the day I took my daughter to kindergarten. It felt too scary and too new. This week I took her to the first day of 11th grade, the whole while telling her I was going to send her back to kindergarten because I wasn’t ready for this. But Kinder? I had made it through once, I know I could make it through again! I’m sure many of you can resonate with the hesitancy, fear, or even panic that arises when something new and unfamiliar comes your way. The Israelites did when they fled slavery in Egypt, they even complained to Moses about missing the food.

The Covid-19 pandemic took a lot of things from us. As I get to know you all, I hear quite often something along the lines of “well, before Covid we….” Both programs and people have been lost and you miss them. But Covid didn’t give us much of a choice, it took the old world from us and has left us facing a new future that we still can’t clearly see.

But, we are the people of the promise that one day the new will come and all will be well, we do not need to live in fear of newness. As we run the race set before us, both in our individual Christian faith and in our community faith, let us breathe deeply of Christ’s own faith, who faced the new for us and broke open the future so that the eschaton could come. What will happen in the future? All we can do is make educated guesses based on the past. What will happen in the eschaton? According to Scripture, God will be all in all and we will be made new.

God grant us courage to be open to whatever new things you have for our lives and our community.

?Blessings,

Rev. Dr. Amy L. Chilton