Thursday Thoughts

“The Gifts of the Body”

By the time you read this, I should be headed to the West Coast for a bit of R & R & R (rest, relaxation, and reading!). I am thankful to everyone stepping into my place while I am gone to help ensure that things keep chugging along back here at home. We are headed into a full fall season with Launch Sunday, resuming ringing our steeple bell, a new intergenerational Sunday morning Bible Study, the leadership retreat, and my installation. Some of you have asked how I am able to keep up with it all. Here is my secret: I’m not! This is way too much for one person, even one person who devotes all her working hours to it!

The work of the church is always more than the work of the pastor alone - else all y'all would be stuck with what just one person can imagine and produce! Scripture tells us that we are each uniquely and divinely gifted to be co-creators with God and to serve one another and the world as Christ’s body. Paul wrote in the letter of 1 Corinthians:

there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit, and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestations of the Spirit for the common good (12:4-7).

Lest anyone think of their gifts as more important than others’ gifts, Paul points us right back to God who gifted them. All gifts are important, because their value comes from God and not from us. Above you see a picture of some fans one of our dear sisters gifted to us after suffering through those really hot Sundays in the sanctuary. Other folks have been getting ready for our Launch Sunday by researching curriculum and making plans for the spaces we will use. Some folks are planning ahead for our Advent season and others for our fall leadership retreat. Some are helping sort through old books and files and others are knitting items for the Christmas bazaar. Some are leading worship and others are pulling weeds. It takes all of us serving together as the full body of Christ to fuel this ministry.

Paul continued his encouragement to the Corinthians by reminding them that no matter their work, they are all needed and all important:

Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many.…God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many members, yet one body….Now, you are the body of Christ and individually members of it (1 Cor. 12: 1, 18-19, 27).

Phillips is called to be the presence of God to one another and in this community - and it takes the whole body to do this, each one of us with each of our individual gifts and callings, coming together as Christ’s body to do Christ’s work.

What are your gifts and callings? What makes your heart sing and your soul come alive? What skills do you have that you can share? As we head into fall, I encourage each of us to think through these questions so that we might better discern together what it means to be this body of Christ in this place, sharing the work and carrying the load together. Perhaps you feel called to visitation or worship leadership. Perhaps your calling and skills are more aligned with hands on work, such as making coffee or organizing the pew racks. Each of these are divine callings. I pray for us all that we might hear God’s call to service, might value the service of others, and might be the body of Christ for one another and for this world.

Blessings,

Rev. Dr. Amy L. Chilton

Blessed are We

Blessed are you, friend, sitting among the shards of what could have been. It is broken now, that dream you loved, and it has spilled out all over the ground. Blessed are you, dear one, letting your eyes look around and remember all the hope your dream once contained. All the love. All the beauty. Blessed are you, telling your tears they can flow. Telling your anger it can speak. Blessed are you when mourning is the holy work of the moment, for it speaks of what is real. Blessed are you, letting this loss speak all its terrible truth to your soul.

Blessed are we who mourn, saying let us remain in grief’s cold winter for as long as it takes, that mourning might be to our hearts the gentlest springtime. Let the thaw come slowly, so we can bear the pain of it and find comfort at each release. Amen.

~ Kate Bowler and Jessica Richie, Good Enough: 40ish  Devotionals for a Life of Imperfection

Jesus, in his “Sermon on the Mount,” proclaimed blessings for “those who mourn,” declaring that “they will be comforted” (Matthew 5:4). Elisabeth Kübler-Ross is well known for her “Five Stages of Grief”: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. For those of us who have been through profound grief we know that these five stages are not consecutive. Grief is more like a cycle in which you circle through the stages at different speeds, depending on where you are in the grieving process. Perhaps you are experiencing the acceptance stage when you see a facebook memory or open a box in your basement to discover a picture and you are reminded of what you have lost - those “triggers” can send you into one of the other stages immediately. Notice I didn’t say it can send you “back” into one of the other stages. Grief isn’t a neat line, it is something we circle around and through, sometimes for a very long time as we heal and build new ways of connecting to this world. 

I’m sure if I asked you could give me a list of people, events, and losses you still mourn: death, messy break-ups and divorces, loss of relationships, significant health changes, etc. But not all losses are easy to name. Pauline Boss names some losses as “ambiguous grief”; grief we have for losses we struggle to name. This can be the loss of a future hope for our kids when they chose different paths from us, or the loss of the world we knew pre-Covid; including the loss of graduations, weddings, in-person funerals, and other rights of passage. Navigating ambiguous losses is harder because finding support is more challenging.

In many cases of grief it is tempting to power on, to try to ignore the grief, or to put on a happy face and act as if it isn’t there. When we ignore or cover up grief we can’t heal from it - we have to accept that it is there and find support from others in that grief. With acknowledgement and loving support we can share the mourning and start to put ourselves back together. 

The writers of the Psalms made space for Israel to express their grief and hold it close to God - the Psalms are prayers and worship songs and some of them are full of anger and grief.

·     “Give ear to my words, O Lord; give heed to my sighing. Listen to the sound of my cry, my King and my God, for to you I pray” (Psalm 5:1-2)

·     “Why oh Lord do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?” (Psalm 10:1)

·     “I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax; it is melted within my breast; my mouth is dried up like a potshard, and my tongue sticks to my jaws; you lay me in the dust of the death” (Psalm 22:14-15).

We have all lost a lot in the past few years - both individually and as a church. We might cycle through the grief for what, and who, we lost for a while. But grieving is holy. The Psalmists knew this, that is why they drew grief into the heart of worship. Jesus knew this. That is why in his list of blessings he promised comfort to those who mourn. 

In times of grief, be they clear or ambiguous, may we open our hearts to the holy work of grieving. May we be present as the beloved community, upholding one another and being upheld and as we draw close to the heart of the God of love.

Blessed are we who mourn.

We will be comforted.

Blessings,

Rev. Dr. Amy L. Chilton

Later that day another church member asked, “I wonder why they did that?” My response: probably because they think we don’t care about and we judge trans-people. Prior to this graffiti discovery, during the church cook-in, I was asked whether someone’s married gay friends and child would be welcomed here at Phillips. I assured them that while I’m sure there are a variety of views on human sexuality here, that the pastor welcomes all who seek to follow Christ - whatever their sexual orientation or gender identity. 

Funny how that is such a scary thing to put out in public! Meanwhile, while the church discerns how best to be Christ’s presence, experts estimate that over 50% of trans and nonbinary youth have attempted suicide and over 80% have had suicidal ideation. The Trevor Project reports that:

·     Many LGBTQ youth lack access to affirming spaces, with only 55% of LGBTQ youth reporting that their school is LGBTQ-affirming and only 37% saying that their home is LGBTQ-affirming. Fewer than 1 in 3 transgender and nonbinary youth found their home to be gender-affirming and a little more than half (51%) found their school to be affirming. The Trevor Project’s research consistently finds that LGBTQ young people report lower rates of attempting suicide when they have access to LGBTQ-affirming spaces. 

What they found is that microaggressions and lack of safe spaces to belong and be loved exponentially drive up these suicide numbers. This breaks my heart. These are precious children of God, created imago Dei (in the image of God), and called to be co-creators with God (Gen. 1:26-30). We the church have a powerful message of a God who so loved the world (John 3:16) - including trans and nonbinary youth - that God lived a human life and suffered an inhumane death to break the cycle of death for us all. This calls us to live together in a way that (quite literally) brings life. 

The Pew research center estimates that 87% of Americans know someone who is LGBTQ+ Meanwhile 44% of LGBTQ+ folks perceive or experience non-evangelical Protestantism as unwelcoming (this category would include American Baptists). In short, this means that most of us know, and probably love LGBTQ+ persons - but many of those people we know and love do not feel welcome in most churches. As the body of Christ, Christ who makes visible to us a God of love, we can be safe spaces and do our very best to use language that heals and does not harm. The Holy Spirit can empower us to live in Christ’s image like this. Much more than “being politically correct,” using someone’s preferred pronouns can be a prophetic act by which we stand up against the powers of death that would destroy God’s beloved creation.

This past week I preached about the economy of death vs. the economy of life, using the parable of the rich man and his barns from Luke 12:13-21. In that story, a rich man built bigger barns to store up his windfall crop, with the intention of hoarding all of the financial benefits to himself so he could “eat, drink, and be merry!” When I think of the church standing between LGBTQ folks and the profound Gospel truth that they are loved and called by God, I wonder if this is one way that the church has built bigger barns to store up its abundant gifts from God: we keep this good news to ourselves rather than proclaim it to the folks who literally need it to stay alive. Loving folks can be hard work, it can be uncomfortable - but it can also be a joy when we get to know the presence of God in another person.  

I wonder how you might respond to the graffiti on the church steps? Is your first thought to wash off the steps or complain about vandalism? What if we go with the Gospel news that all are created in God’s image and called by Christ? In Romans, the Apostle Paul writes that God’s wrath is revealed against all ungodliness (1:18), but then he says WE ARE ALL UNGODLY (2:1) and when we judge other folks we are “despising the riches of [God’s] kindness and forbearance and patience” (2:4). The Gospel is the good news that God has dealt mercy to us all and brought us all into life, let us not keep that message to ourselves but let us steward that well.

Yes, anonymous graffiti artists, trans lives do matter for God is a God of love. God loves trans folks. Let us discern together how we can be a space that brings life, loving those whom God loves. If you would like to meet with me to discuss my views, your views, or how you think the church can/should respond to issues of human sexuality, feel free to come meet with me. This, friends is a discussion worth having - and it just might help save lives.

Blessings,

Rev. Dr. Amy L. Chilton

A few weeks ago when we were up in the steeple we discovered that one of the round windows was both open and damaged. While not an invitation for trespassers, given its height, it definitely welcomes in the birds, bats, and stray dragons! I am a little surprised that when we rang the bell we weren’t overtaken by belfry bats. While part of God’s good creation, flying rat-like creatures just aren’t my favorite. It is a good thing we discovered this window, as you can’t see it from outside on the church property. The sanctuary roof blocks it from view. 

However, the other day I walked over to Dave’s Marketplace to get some kind of treat to awaken me from my heat and barometric pressure-induced sleepiness. Guess what? You can see clearly the open and broken window from Dave’s! (Can you see it in the picture above?) We just needed another perspective. I wonder if folks had come out with their shopping and thought, “hmm, that window is open. Weird.” Or maybe they didn’t. I find it interesting that the more familiar a thing is the more we might not see it. Who here has spaced out on a much-driven route only to come back to attention and realize you got to your intended destination but don’t actually remember seeing the things you passed?  

I love new perspectives, but I’m not always good at finding them. Sometimes I walk around and around a project or problem without being able to figure it out, only to have a new perspective dawn on me because someone else contributes some wisdom. 

Prayer, meditation, and Scripture reading can be like this. We think we know it and then something shakes us up. When I went to Israel in 2005 I discovered that compared to the Puget Sound the Sea of Galilee was a lake. And that mountain Jesus climbed with his disciples? It was not Mt. Rainier! It took a new location to give me a better vision of what the Gospel stories looked like. 

In John 2:4 Jesus says something that sounds suspiciously like sass to his momma: “woman, what concern is that to you?” Seriously. How rude. But, there is another perspective. Musa W. Dube, a New Testament scholar from Botswana, interprets this as a statement against patriarchy: Jesus called Mary “woman” and in doing so gave her full humanity in a context that would strip down to a subservient child-bearer. I would never have seen this perspective had I not read Dube’s work.

I have invited us these past two weeks to engage in regular listening to and talking to God. I want to include in that invitation the idea that by listening and praying together we can expand and shift our perspective on God beyond what our own experience can give us. Reading the Bible together with other Christians, especially with Christians who have different life experiences than our own, helps us to be more honest with ourselves and to see God more fully through God’s presence in the full body of Christ. 

How can you better position yourself to gain a broadened perspective on who God is and who God is calling us to be, individually and collectively? Who might you read the Bible and pray with? One commitment I have made is that in my sermon preparation I am using commentary resources from authors from historically marginalized groups - including Jewish resources on the New Testament. Bible study, Sunday School, prayer groups - the church has historically used these forms of Christian education to provide spaces where folks can read and pray together under the influence of the Holy Spirit. While we are discerning our way forward as a community, I invite you to find ways to pray and read Scripture together with one another - perhaps you will find a new perspective!

Blessings,

Rev. Dr. Amy L. Chilton