Reflection

A Sermon by Megan Sorensen
Preached at Urban Abbey on December 24, 2018

This week, I ordered a new Willow Tree figurine. Inquisitive boy….a denim clad, blond haired child sitting like only a child can. Clearly listening to something, learning, absorbing the world around him. When it arrives I will add that boy to my collection…one that currently contains a mother cradling a baby, a father sitting on the floor legs outstretched with a young girl looking admirably at him, a second young girl, this one sitting, but also listening. And of course, the dog. I am not a collector of figurines. In fact, this set is all I have on display in my home and candidly, it is on the bottom shelf of the end table and one would really need to be intentional to see it and to realize that it represents us…this group of humans (and creatures) we have collected in our home.

Since I was first asked to consider this worship and what I could say related to motherhood, I have not stopped listening. Waiting for the right idea and the right words to come to me. I was actually hoping it might be in dramatic fashion…maybe even fireworks or glitter or something. I should know now that that’s not exactly how the Spirit speaks to me. She likes to make sure I am paying close attention. So I have been simultaneously thinking about Advent and this worship service. Chris and I are using Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s God is in the Manger as our Advent devotional. As we have read I have been considering Mary and thinking about motherhood.

What I have heard in this intentional listening is the real work of Advent. Hoping. Waiting. Listening. Praying. Knowing that God will come. That perfect love became human and enters into the most imperfect of circumstances. I think that is the work of moms. The overarching theme of motherhood in all its forms. Imperfect circumstances. Youth, faltering relationships, uncertain environments, struggling finances, ignorance. In all of these circumstances we prepare, we wait and we hope.

In her memoir The Blue Jay’s Dance: A Birth Year, Louis Erdrich writes “Our baby gives herself to me completely. There is no hesitation, no reservation, no holding back, no coldness, no craft, no tremor or fear in her love. Although our relationship may encompass tears, frustration, even fury, it is an utterly reliable bond. As it grows, her love is literally unadulterated. Her love is wholly of the child, pure in its essence as children are in their direct passions. Children do not love wisely, but perhaps they love the best of all.”

In our children we see a glimpse of that perfect love incarnate. The love that we wait for in every moment. When we hope for a child, when those hopes are shattered, when our child was born with physical limitations, when we send one of them across the country or across the world to find her story, when we spend hours in conversation with our son about kindness and being a good teammate, when he signed the papers that made their child the child of another. We are drowning in imperfection with the hope of a glimpse of perfect love. In our children, both those we see and those we cannot, lies the hope of perfect love, the face of God.

No experience brings such clarity to this hope as the one we have been through personally in the past weeks. In the midst of imperfect circumstances 26 years ago, Chris and his partner decided to give a child up for adoption. Perfect love in imperfect circumstances. Perfect love that put the needs of another above the their own. Pain and grief that then waited in hope in preparation. Life moved on. Marriages, children, careers, but still hope and patience. In the perseverance and the hope, God was there. Several weeks ago, we received word of a son. A 26 year old, now man, with blond hair and an affinity for all things sports. A son who is seeking to connect with his birth parents. After a lifetime of patience and guilt and hope and grief, we see that glimpse of perfect love. In a matter of seconds the possibility of a step son became a reality and the depth of that love was instant. Perfect love in imperfect circumstances. Deeper love for my husband, deeper love for my children and a new and aching love for a child that had only been present in waiting. It is the face of God.

So this week I will add that new Willow Tree figurine to our display. A representation of joy and wonder at the end of the wait….of an incarnate God who became human to be among the imperfect. To be present with the love of a mother.

In the words of Deitrich Bonheoffer “Just be aware, be watchful, wait just another short moment. Wait, and something quite new will break over you: God will come.”

May it be so.

EXPLORING MARY – as a Grandmother

A Sermon by Dr. Carole Patrick
Preached at Urban Abbey on December 24, 2018

Have you ever thought about the fact that there is no grandma at the manger scene? When I became a grandmother this year, this became an important mystery because I realized if there was a Christmas pageant, I no longer had a part.

The best explanation may be that grandparents are intended to have supporting roles. Before we become grandparents, one of our most important parenting challenges is to release our child or children toward independence – making their own decisions, experiencing their own consequences, choosing their place in this world and the people with whom they surround themselves.

It’s a lot more difficult than it sounds; it’s a challenge because we spend years investing ourselves into a growing human, and it’s hard to let go. That’s because sometimes we’re confident in a child’s ability to fly; other times we’re genuinely frightened. Sometimes that changes from day to day!

One of the true gifts of being a grandparent (in my case, being Bubby) is watching that beautiful cycle of childhood begin again. I love watching my child and her husband invest themselves into this little life and being available when they need me. That means understanding and respecting my supporting role and believing that my daughter, who I will always consider “my baby” is completely and wonderfully capable of all the joys and responsibilities of parenting another.

The birth of my grandson, Hugh, has unsurfaced all sorts of memories; some wonderful, and some that taught great lessons. Perhaps my greatest realization as a parent was the value of time. By that, I mean the importance of showing up and being present in my child’s life.

One thing I’ve learned and believe with all my heart: the things that scream the loudest in this world are not the most important; and nothing says LOVE more than showing up to hear and see and be part of the small things in another person’s life.

The things that scream the loudest in this world are not the most important. In the Christmas story, it’s easy to focus our attention in multiple directions – singing angels, wise men, shepherds and their sheep, lots of animals surrounding the manger. But when we quiet those things, what’s left is two young people with a new baby feeling just a bit of pressure because that baby was born to be a Savior!

My daughter grew up during the 1990’s when cell phones began to take prominence in our society. But we had an agreement at dinner time that we set all things that made noise aside (cells, land lines, TV) and ate dinner together. It was mostly small conversation, but we both learned a lot about each other. In giving that gift of time to one another, when the big things did arise, we knew how to communicate. We knew how to love. We knew how to recognize the good in each other, even in the middle of difficulty.

How do you measure a year in the life? That’s a line from one of my favorite songs in the musical, RENT. The answer is love. Seasons of love. The small things that lay the foundation for the big things. Time is never, ever wasted when we spend it on those we love. Merry Christmas.

Reflection on Motherhood

A Sermon by Maria Walker
Preached at Urban Abbey on December 24, 2018

My experience of mothering begin many moons ago, but I will focus my attention today on what occurred 14 years ago. If you know my girls and can do the math, you can guess that this reflection does not begin with them. If that is your guess, you are correct. It was a little over 14 years ago that my sister and her husband shared with us that she was pregnant and my first nephew would arrive that following summer.

During that holiday season and well into the new year I would listen to the song Mary did you know over and over and over again. I would listen with excitement and anticipation wondering who this person would be that was just about to join our family. How would he add to the family dynamic?What would be some of his favorite things? I had this unique sense of excitement and anticipation of waiting and longing to know this little person.

And I thought of Mary and her feelings awaiting the arrival of a new member to her family. Did she feel that same wonder? What did she know as she took on this new role? Was she overwhelmed with the uncertainty of it all? I imagine she was feeling so many emotions, just as we were during this time of waiting.

Finally, on a hot day in July, the day of delivery arrived and Jack Durham Marable joined our family in all of his 10 pound and completely bald glory. About a month later, I was able to travel to Georgia to meet him. My plane landed in Atlanta and I then traveled the two hours it took to get to my sisters house. I remember walking into her dark and cool bedroom and seeing him for the first time in his bassinet. I remember having this unique experience of a complete flooding of emotion consuming me. My only logical reaction was to of course cry. I was so overwhelmed with the gift of this little boy and all the potential he had.

I stayed with my sister and brother-in-law during that time to help out. There were times when she was so exhausted but I would sleep on the floor beside her bed so I could be ready to help her as quickly as possible. I quickly learned that mothering was not glamorous, it afforded very little sleep, and it was not restricted to the experience of delivering biological children. It also involves a lot of bodily fluids and the true perfume of motherhood and a baby was actually spit up. I discovered that mothering, for me, was a commitment to being there for the spit up and the cooing noises, the sleepless nights and all the magic in between. It's the experience of inexplicable floods of love for the people that are gifted into my life, in whatever way they arrive.

I have since had 3 other nephews enter my life, 2 daughters, and many more little people with parents generous enough to allow me to share in some way in their mothering. With each one, the challenges and sacrifices remain, as does the magic and experience of floods of love. May we all give and receive that love to ourselves and others today.

Here Am I - Say It Like Mary and See What Happens

A Sermon by Rev. Debra McKnight
Preached at Urban Abbey on December 2, 2018

Dear Abbey Friends,

Mary’s story is about having a baby, so we wrap it up in pastels. We make her story sweet and soothing; more lullaby than power-ballad, more pregnant than prophet, more mommy than badass - like she can’t be both.

Mary’s story is a birth story but it is not just any birth story. And I don’t say that because her baby is Jesus, I say that because her story is the story of a prophet. Her story follows all of the makings and markings, all of the patterns and struggles of every other prophet in the Bible. She is called, it is a call story just like Moses, Jeremiah, Jonah and Isaiah. All of them have this same pattern.

Encounter God - sometimes in a burning bush or by angelic messengers

Asked to do something - usually hard, like toppling an empire

Object to call, like Jonah not wanting to go to Nineveh

Be reassured and then given an assignment - saying yes like Mary

MOSES

Take a look at Moses. He is tending flocks when he encounters a bush burning but not consumed. It seems like this bush had been going for a while; like God had the phone on speaker with hold music playing, just waiting for Moses to pick up.

“When the Lord saw that he (Moses) had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, ‘Moses, Moses!’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’ Then he said, ‘Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.’ He said further, ‘I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.” (Exodus 3: 1-6)

This is the encounter portion of the call story.

Then the Lord said, ‘I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey…So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.’ (Exodus 3: 7-10)

This is the big ask…a really big ask: go free people from the most powerful empire around.

But Moses said to God, ‘Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?’ (Exodus 3: 11)

Moses gets the call and he dissents with God. Moses names his insecurities. He actually goes on debating God for another chapter - it may be the longest anyone debates God in the Bible. At one point God has Moses put his hand inside his cloak and then pull it out and it's leprous. God really has to win Moses over. It goes on and on, Moses turns a staff into a snake with God’s help and still he pushes back saying, I am not a great public speaker, “I have never been eloquent, slow of speech and slow of tongue.” God responds, I have your brother Aaron lined up. P.S. I got this, I’m God, the Creator of the Universe, just go (well that’s not the exact translation but you get the point). So eventually Moses goes and the work is hard. His enslaved people topple the most powerful empire around but that is really just the beginning of the quest.

Moses spends 40 years wandering in the wilderness, often with disgruntled people complaining about their freedom, wanting to turn back, getting mad at God and Moses, worshiping idols, and wanting different food. They are difficult until they arrive at the land of Milk and Honey, the Promised Land, which Moses never gets to see.

JEREMIAH

The same thing happens to Jeremiah, when he encounters God. God says I created you…

Now the word of the Lord came to me saying,
‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
and before you were born I consecrated you;
I appointed you a prophet to the nations.’ (Jer 1:4-5)

Then Jeremiah objects

Then I said, ‘Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.’ (Jer 1:6)
Jeremiah does not meet the minimum age requirement for prophet. Then God responds.

But the Lord said to me,
‘Do not say, “I am only a boy”;
for you shall go to all to whom I send you,
and you shall speak whatever I command you.
Do not be afraid of them,
for I am with you to deliver you,
says the Lord.’
Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth; and the Lord said to me,
‘Now I have put my words in your mouth.
See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms,
to pluck up and to pull down,
to destroy and to overthrow,
to build and to plant.’ (Jer 1: 7-10)

Jeremiah objects only once to God’s call and then with a touch, Jeremiah takes on the sacred words and work, he embodies them. He enters a dangerous journey in the risky politics of his day, but God’s words are like fire in his bone and he is weary with keeping them in - so he speaks bold visions for the future that are rooted in the past, in the hope that his community changes in the present.

ISAIAH

Mary’s story seems most like Isaiah's. Mary responds the same way Isaiah responds. “Here am I, send me.” Isaiah experiences not just one angel but a whole team of celestial beings. And he, like Mary, expresses astonishment.

I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. (Isaiah 6: 1-2)

Then the angels start singing a song that sounds a lot like our liturgy and a reminder that Christians are borrowers

And one called to another and said:
‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory.’ (Isaiah 6: 3)

Then Isaiah objects, he names his concerns about the reality of life and community.

And I said: ‘Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!’ (Isaiah 6:5)

Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. The seraph touched my mouth with it and said: ‘Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.’ (Isaiah 6:7)

God responds to Isaiah's objection and he consents.

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I; send me!’ And he said, ‘Go and say to this people. (Isaiah 6:8)

Then God gives Isaiah something to say. Isaiah is the least reluctant prophet. He doesn’t say oh I’m not quite good enough. I didn’t pass my speech class. I’m not old enough. I hate Nineveh. I have my own plan. I have these sheep to tend and these things to take care of before I get to this. Isaiah doesn’t negotiate with God for more vacation time, a different strategy or a different assignment. He says, “Here am I. Send me.” And then he dives right in to the politics of his day. In fact, this first portion of Isaiah shows some of his impact by keeping the country safe from regional conflicts.

This is the work of a prophet, they speak truth to power, they help their community navigate the choices and values and happenings in the present, they work in the now. They do this work by being rooted in the past. Their primary tool is painting a vision for the future but their work is all about the present, the now. Sometimes their vision of the future is grim, violent, and distressing. Sometimes their vision is a wildly hopeful one, like when Isaiah proclaims that God is setting a big table with the fattiest food and the best wine, a table where everyone is welcome. But, even in looking to the future, they are helping their community navigate the choices of the present. Remembering who they are and dreaming into a more hopeful place: a land of milk and honey, a big inclusive table, and a baby born to a poor unwed mother changing the dynamics of power. There are few things more hopeful than bringing a life into the world, deeming the world worthy to live up to the care of a new vulnerable dream.

MARY

That’s what Mary is up to. She gets a call from God, just like the prophets before her. She encounters the Divine in the form of an Angel named Gabriel.

26 In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth….And he came to her and said, "Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you."

Then she asks some questions.

29 But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.

And then she is reassured and gets a big assignment.

30 The angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. 31 And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. 32 He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. 33 He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end." 34 Mary said to the angel, "How can this be, since I am a virgin?" 35 The angel said to her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you;

She given details and the language of “overshadow you” is used. I have often disliked this portion or this term, but this same language appears in Exodus when God provides manna in the wilderness, or chats with Moses on the mountain top, or celebrates the creation of a tabernacle at the end of the Exodus story. This moment of Divine presence is connected with God’s liberation. Mary’s story is connected with Exodus, when slaves toppled empires, without any of the tools. God gives Mary a choice and she says yes. God seeks consent. And when she says yes, she sounds a lot like Isaiah. Here am I. I imagine her learning it, hearing it…over an over growing up dreaming of a different world and now embodying it.

38 Then Mary said, "Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word."

She says yes, with out all of the drama of Moses or disbelief of Zechariah. Here am I. She is confident and humble, with out hesitation she assumes the call of God. Here am I. Mary doesn’t try to manage God’s intrusion into her life or control the process or direct the divine. She doesn’t say, “Sure I’m in but can we do this some other way..like without me having a baby when no one thinks I should be pregnant.” Mary doesn’t believe that the work of God’s love will be easy, if it was God wouldn’t have to show up to ask.

Mary says, “here am I let it be with me according to your word” and the first thing she does is sing a song. She sings an old song reaching into the tradition she loves. The song links joy and justice, thanksgiving and liberation. She sings of God lifting up the lowly and filling the hungry with good things. Mary says, “Here am I” and her life is never the same. And we every year, share her story and probably think: oh good for Mary - glad it's not me.

I never hear God tell me exactly what to do, particularly from a burning bush, and I’m not sure I would know what to do at the sight of a six winged creature bringing a coal to my lips. Perhaps that’s one reason I, myself, have never experienced God that way. We may not see bushes burning or angles with wings, at least many of us, but I suspect you, like I, have felt a nudge. Those moments when you know you have to say something, your whole body tells you too, even if it's risky to speak up. Perhaps you have felt compelled, you intuition and the right moment lining up. Maybe there is something that breaks your heart or keeps you up at night and suddenly you find yourself driven to a new work. Mary’s story is asking us to take the risk. Mary says, “Here am I” and ask us to do the same.

Try it and see what happens….
Here am I, when trans lives are taken.
Here am I, when our systems for mental heath care are so far from adequate.
Here am I, when creation is parceled up and sold off for profit.
Here am I, when the anniversary of Sandy Hook passes once again without legislation for change.
Here am I, when survivors of human trafficking receive more jail time than powerful predators.
Here am I, when a child dies in US custody, away from her family and without the basics of care.
Here am I, when our systems for mental heath care are so far from adequate.

Here am I, may we have the courage to say it, embody it and be ready for where it takes us.

May it be so. amen.
Rev. Debra McKnight

© 2018 Rev. Debra McKnight, Urban Abbey

Celebrating our Partnership with UNO's Student Veteran Organization

Dear Abbey Friends,

As you may have heard, last month Urban Abbey received the 2018 Community Partner of the Year Award from the University of Nebraska at Omaha's Office of Military and Veteran Services. This was for our work and partnership with UNO's Student Veteran Organization (SVO), with whom we co-host our Coffee Talks Student Veteran Small Group. This small group is led by Joel Walker and provides a space for student veterans to connect and discuss their experiences and the unique challenges that come with being both a college student and a veteran. As the daughter (and granddaughter) of a veteran, I am eternally grateful to each and every one of these students for their service and sacrifice, and to UNO for providing such an array of services to their student veterans. I give thanks that we as a faith community are able to make space for UNO's student veterans to talk, share, and make connections on campus.

I'd like to thank Rev. Chris Jorgensen for establishing Coffee Talks in 2016; SVO Presidents Eric Velander (2016-17), Kat Clyde (2017-18), and Kyle Keener (2018-19) for all their work to make Coffee Talks a success; UNO's Office of Military and Veterans Services staff for their partnership, generosity, and support; and to Joel Walker for his leadership of this group since 2017. This year, Joel and Kyle together have helped grow this small group from an average of four students per week to an average of ten, providing space and opportunity for more and more students to fellowship and deepen their relationship with one another. And, as always, thank YOU for being with us on campus each week as part of the Urban Abbey community!

Warmest Wishes,
Sierra

Sierra Salgado Pirigyi
Chief Operating Officer

 

“I am really excited about the partnership between Urban Abbey and the SVO, and our recurring coffee talks is an event that I look forward to each week. Together, we have created an atmosphere where everyone feels comfortable and we are able to discuss different viewpoints on a variety of topics. Plus, the fresh brewed coffee and donuts are a great way to kick start a Wednesday morning in a positive way! Thank you, Joel, Sierra, and everyone at Urban Abbey for the continued support.” - Kyle Keener, UNO SVO President (2018-19)

"What an honor it has been to facilitate the Coffee Talk discussions with the veterans and military members at UNO. Despite the diverse backgrounds and perspectives these students bring to the group, a deep civility and respect of one another is abundant. Whether we are talking about exams, family life, military experiences, politics, or spirituality, I always know that everyone leaves having learned something new about others in the room. Minds have been stretched in new ways, and rich fellowship has occurred. The world outside of Coffee Talks would benefit from seeing what goes on in that hour each Wednesday morning.” - Joel Walker, Coffee Talks Student Veteran Small Group Facilitator

Magnificat Exploration 2018

By Rev. Debra McKnight

My Soul magnifies the Lord and dances in the dream of God’s great Love,
opens eyes to the vulnerable and sets the oppressed at liberty,
for God looks with favor on the lowly.

My soul dreams for a day when a mother’s great worry is getting kids to school on time,
scheduling dance class or
deadlines for what ever summer camp sets her sweet ones heart on fire.
rather than tear gas, gangs and genocide
without one thought to the old echos of poverty,
without one worry about where the next night will be or
if the food will be enough to nourish a hungry tummy.

My soul dreams for a day when fathers weigh heavy under his words
of encouragement and growth,
rather than the burden of the ransom they might have to pay
or the risks of a long road to safely or the paper work they need
or legal systems build for privilege of some other race,
some other face, some other religion.

My soul dreams of grandmas who dance and tell stories of peace and prosperity
Grandmas who breathe grit and whisper, “you can be anything you want to be”
without one thought to the news of the next school shooting
or brown face gunned down with tax payer dollars or
transgendered teen left broken, battered and abused.

My soul dreams of grandpas who build swing sets and bake good bread,
setting out the seeds for the birds of the air,
saying, “look close to the wisdom of God’s green earth”
without one moment of worry to the polluted air or
500 year storms coming every five or ten.

My soul dreams of aunties and uncles and families made out of friends,
gathered to share in hope and in good faith when the health of one is uncertain
without one moment spent raising funds,
without one hour lost arguing with insurance or
minute squandered debating a fee.

My soul dreams of children crying only for forgotten toys, spilt milk or skinned knees,
asking, “Are we there yet” when the travel is by choice and not fear
and pleading only for another piece of candy or one more book or
one more hug before bed.

My soul dreams of earth as it is in heaven, lowly lifted and hungry filled
My soul sings Mary’s song that the proud, haughty, arrogant and rude
the selfish and small that looms large in this present hell we make
be transformed, utterly changed,
God’s love making all things new and
our hearts making earth as it is in heaven.

© 2018 Rev. Debra McKnight, Urban Abbey

Shopping: Evil vs Tempting

A Sermon by Rev. Debra McKnight
Preached at Urban Abbey on November 18, 2018


Scripture: Matthew 6: 25-26
‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?

Sermon

We are approaching Thanksgiving, but if you look in the stores you know it has been looking a lot like Christmas… since July. The season of consumption is before us. Jesus is coming, and everyone is running to the mall or searching on Amazon. It is a season where Fox News will begin broadcasting from the front lines of the War on Christmas; except the perpetrators will likely be sales clerks saying, “Happy Holidays,” rather than luxury car brands using the birth of an impoverished baby to sell extravagance or define worth. It is a season of gift giving, a season of meal making, cookie baking, party celebrating, and more. It can be driven by love and abundance but it can also be driven by excessive consumption and incredible debt. So today I want to pause and think about shopping, shopping as a faithful act. While we might all feel differently about shopping, loving it or perhaps hating it, this will not be a sermon that condemns it as evil… sorry if that is what you were here for.

I come by a love of shopping honestly. So when I approach shopping I think of my Grandma Lila. She loved shopping and gift-giving, and for the last 15 or 20 years of her life, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving was Grandma’s Shopping Day. On those days she got her motorized scooter out and hit the mall. We helped her shop for Christmas, sorted her coupons, helped her use her senior discount, and checked her list. We tried to warn people about her scooter before she bumped into them - we still recount the story of the day she tipped a rack of bras over and we needed help getting her unhooked.

My Grandma Lila loved shopping, and it was something we did together. When I was little, it was a big deal to be old enough to go with Grandma and Mom and my Aunties, particularly on days when my all of the male grown-ups were left to watch some athletic event and the babies. It was a chance to look around, to imagine, to think about gifts you were giving or see what interested you. It was a time we spent together and it became a part of all the big moments in life; like buying a dress for a school dance, buying a bra for the first time, or buying shoes for a graduation. It wasn’t just about what we were buying.

My Grandma loved shopping and giving and remembered all of your important dates, but she also illustrated a deep care for finances. She was frugal, perhaps even cheap sometimes. She knew where every penny in her account was spent. When she and my grandfather moved from their house of 50 years, she had ledger books detailing every expense they shared. My grandparents were a teachers, but once the school found out she was pregnant, Grandma was not allowed to teach. My Grandpa taught and did all the extras like coaching or teaching drivers ed, but I know they lived within their budget. My Grandma worked and sold Avon but when their four kids were little, I suspect they were intentional about their dollars and cents.

Our scripture invites us to worry less about the material, about what we consume for food or put on our bodies. It is part of a passage where Jesus invites spiritual practices around prayer and names that where we put our treasure is where we put our hearts. Our tradition pushes us again and again towards intention for consumption. Jesus speaks about money more than anything else, perhaps because he knows that is the most powerful indicator of our values. He pushes us again and again to be intentional about how we enter the economy, how the marketplaces and our national budgets say something about our collective values. These scriptures invite simplicity and deep intention.

In these scriptures Jesus says we shouldn’t worry about the material and warns against letting the material hinder your connection to God and community. These scriptures have also inspired people into anti-materialism or anti-consumptionism, suggesting that all consumption is evil. I find this to be similar to the ways the church - or at least the church fathers, the early ones and the middle ones and some of the current ones - related to women’s bodies; telling women how to dress, how long their hair should be and if they can braid it, if they can wear pants, or any number of suggestions. It is easier to decide something is evil or to codify it than it is to work through your own issues of sexuality and sexual expression. It is easier to tell women their place than to work through your patterns of objectifying and commodifying women’s bodies. It is the difference between saying something is tempting to me verses something is evil. And I don’t think we can blame objects or commodities for our broken values. This anti-material theology also gets into an unhelpful honoring of the poor - idolizing poverty, but from a distance. Liberation theology invites us to see God’s preferential option for the poor and to engage in solidarity. But it does not invite us to say, from our relative comfort, that somehow the poor are so lucky to be poor. I often imagine such a person in a dark wood study, swirling the brandy in their cup as they wax on about how lucky the poor are to inherit the kingdom of heaven and how hard it is to get a needle big enough for a camel’s entry.

On the other end of the spectrum from anti-consumption or material goods is a theology that suggests abundance or even excess is a sign of God’s love, a sign of God’s favor and blessing. This theology called the prosperity gospel can be found on television and in some of America’s biggest churches. It says you have not because you ask not and, at its worst, it teaches that you have not because you are not worthy.

Theologian Michelle A. Gonzalez, author of Shopping: Christian Explorations of Daily Living, invites us into a deeper reflection than either of these extremes. She loves shopping, whether she is going to the market in Honduras or the mall in the US. She notes how there is an energy and liveliness around the creative opportunity to shop, to choose, to imagine what you might make for dinner or bring into your life, or choose to make your house a home. It is a chance for creative expression but it is also dangerous. In her book, Shopping, she notes how our American economy is driven by consumption and really by excessive consumption. We see this in national crisis when we are asked to be good Americans, to go out and buy things. This economy impacts our wellbeing. As individuals, we can be driven to consume in a way that makes us feel like less, we have to buy more so we can be more. We can shop to feel like we are worthy, we can shop to keep up, and if we don’t shop we might feel like we are behind. Our model from last year can make us feel like we are not quite enough. We can shop to feel better about ourselves, we can shop and feel worse about ourselves - like when the dress doesn’t fit. We often are driven into a dangerous level of debt. This excessive consumption is not only hard on us as individuals but as a global community. We demand more than our fair share of the earth’s resources. Our demand for cheap, disposable goods means that our global brothers and sisters work in death-dealing conditions.

I say this as a person who has participated in all of the worst ways. I have purchased cheap shirts, likely produced in terrible working conditions. I have purchased shoes because I felt sad. I have shopped driven by loneliness rather than creativity. I have purchased a dress that didn’t fit thinking it would change my life, to stop eating and start wearing it. I have even purchased a pilates machine on a late night infomercial, which I planned to put in my office at First Church. I imagined myself using it all day while I worked and in the end becoming the most fit pastor in Western Christendom. The truth is, I never figured it out and couldn’t even figure out how to send it back. All of this is to say that I come to this conversation with a spirit of trying more than an attitude of having it figured out.

My hope for all of us this season is that we enter it mindfully. That we think about the gifts we are planning to give and the people we love. That we seek to consume and share in ways that are most ethical to our global neighbors as possible. There are tools for thinking about how we engage in the market place: If the maker was treated with care, if the labor of the clerk was valued, does this support the neighborhood I love? We can think about shopping as close to home as possible, and in doing so we can re-invest more into our community. A year ago there was a children’s toy store run by a woman with deep care, and when it closed I heard parents lament that they couldn’t go in there anymore. I have also heard those same parents tell me about shopping with Peggy and then finding the toys online for much less. They had a choice, spending the same amount, consuming less, and investing in a place they loved, or spending the same amount and consuming more because it cost less online.

We choose what kind of community we want to walk through daily. I hope we ask ourselves questions about meaning and intention. I hope we ask where a product is made and how people were treated. I hope we set boundaries in the forms of budgets that guide our spending, our giving, and our sharing. I hope we think about the community we want to be a part of and support the businesses that matter to us, those that invest in our world in a way that is important.

This is a season of preparation and a season of waiting. It can be a season of busy schedules, overwhelming showing lists, and deep debt, but it doesn’t have to be. We get to choose. We get to make our way into to this season of waiting.

Thanks be to God, we get to choose.


Questions

1. What is your experience with shopping?
2. What does it mean to shop in ways that express your values?
3. What do you plan to give and share this holiday season? How will you make that meaningful and life-giving to those who receive it and to our global family?

Wild Wilderness

Abbey Birthday Prayer
I want to invite you to pray with me. This has been my prayer, a fervent and urgent prayer at times. In 2014, Mike Ramsey, my spouse and accountant, did some projections for the Abbey. He does these for a little place called Mutual of Omaha, so I figured it was serious when he said, “The Abbey will close in a year.” We had enough grant money to make it one more year. I said, “What if this happens? What if that happens?” and we played with the spreadsheet and the best case scenario was 18 months. That year led to the even more challenging year of 2015; the year in which we graduated from an identity as a part of First Church and becoming an independent new church start. That is when I found Psalm One. When it was hard to imagine our future, when it didn’t seem very fruitful or possible, I leaned into this ancient poetry and the image of a tree bearing fruit in due season. This prayer reminded me to be planted. It reminded me that maybe it wasn’t our season yet. Join me in praying this Psalm as we give thanks for the past and set our hearts towards the future.

Psalm One
Happy are those
who do not follow the advice of the wicked,
or take the path that sinners tread,
or sit in the seat of scoffers;
but their delight is in the law of the Lord,
and on God’s law they meditate day and night.
They are like trees
planted by streams of water,
which yield their fruit in due season,
and their leaves do not wither.
In all that they do, they prosper.

Scripture: Exodus 16: 2-3
2 The whole congregation of the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. 3 The Israelites said to them, ‘If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.’

Sermon

The people of Israel are complaining. This is after Moses saw a burning bush; after the Pharaoh tried to kill the Hebrew baby boys; after plagues and crossing the sea; and everyone is still complaining. They are in the wilderness and they are hungry. They are complaining to, against, and probably about Moses, Aaron, Miriam, and God. There was probably a “go back to Egypt” contingent organizing, sowing dissent and disagreement; saying, “Why did you bring us into the wilderness to die?”

It sounds a little harsh to the modern reader, but we are not the ones wandering hungry in the desert, painfully aware that no one has a strategic plan, or a GPS. or enough provisions to make it to the Promised Land. All they had were the leaders that brought them this far. They were longing for the fleshpots, which must be some kind of Egyptian crockpot that had some meat, or the taste of meat, not the nice meat you give to the Egyptians, but the parts you give to people you don’t treat like people. The wandering folks were hungry, they remembered Egypt, and they remembered eating from the Egyptian crockpot. They were not remembering their forced labor, they were not talking about the violence they experienced, the pain of losing their children, or watching them being raised as slaves. Right now the only thing that mattered was getting something to eat. At least when they were in Egypt, they had something to eat!

I like to imagine God responding to this moment, gently and softly, “Oh my darlings, did you forget how the sea moved for you? Did you forget how you toppled an empire’s designs of exploitation and death?” God responded to the wilderness hunger with manna. The, wilderness landscape is covered with food, this divine bread called manna. The Israelites learned to collect and eat what they needed. They learned that hoarding the gift invites it to rot, turning it into food for worms. God sent the bread of life in a place that seemed barren; bread of nurture when the landscape seemed impossible and death seemed so near.

The story of our faith is written in the wilderness. The people of Israel will always grumble and complain again and again. They will be attacked and survive. They will leave Egypt, but Egypt will stay in their hearts and minds. It will be a constant struggle to get Egypt out of the people, to get bondage out of the people. They will build an idol and yet they will claim their identity on a mountaintop with Moses and Ten Commandments. The wilderness is where they found their way to the promise they had only imagined when they sat around the fleshpots of Egypt.

As the Abbey turns seven, I want to ask you to stay in the wilderness with me. We don’t usually like wilderness, it’s not our first choice. Walter Brueggemann suggests that we idolize certainty to the detriment of our faith. In most churches, particularly those older than seven or ten years, there is a committee that I like to call the “Go Back to Egypt Committee.” This committee usually meets in the parking lot. You can hear this committee when you hear phrases like: “We can’t do something that big, we are too small. Those people aren’t contributing, but are receiving. We don’t have enough money. We don’t have enough people. We have never done it that way. We tried that. I just want the church to be here for my funeral.” Yes, that last one is more real that you can imagine!

I want to ask you that as we celebrate our seventh year, that we stay in the wilderness, that we stay open to the next steps and the next phase; that we imagine beyond where we are, knowing we have come this far. The Go Back to Egypt Committee is powerful because we know the details, we know the systems and the structures. Even if we know they are not the best, we at least know them. Perhaps you have felt this in your own journey, those wilderness moments that are hard and defining, and those choices to stay in a career or a system that is hard out of fear of making something new.

Imagining is hard for us. Imagining the Promised Land when you are in bondage in Egypt is probably near impossible. But it is the space that gives life. We see this not only individually with our choices but also communally, with government systems that we have to dream beyond. This is why there can be such appeal toward the past. “Remember the systems of 1950? Let’s go back there, when it was great, even if it wasn’t really great for everyone.” Egypt is always whispering or shouting, “Come back!”

Our larger United Methodist church is struggling with the wilderness of a new day. There is an organization called the Wesley Covenant Association, that wants to make the Methodist church great again. They want to go back to a day when everyone just came to their local church because they grew up Methodist and they all loved to serve on a committee or 10. Maybe everyone really worked a 40 hour work week and were paid enough to have one partner stay at home. They want to go back to the day when stores were closed on Sunday and kids didn’t have soccer games during worship. Their answer is to dive back into the kind of theology that served a different time, when the church held more power and privilege, a time when diverse voices were less valued and women didn’t have a seat at the table. But we are in a wilderness time and going back is not an option.

The Abbey has been the most uncertain adventure. It is a gift. I was on the road to being a really good religious professional. There would have been the facade of certainty, I could have climbed the ladder to big church senior pastor. It was my dream, or so I thought. When we started the Abbey, I didn’t even drink coffee, but Chris Smith, owner of Beansmith, knew all about coffee. And when we started the Abbey, I didn’t know about staffing or permits or painting or spreadsheets - but Janelle did, and Jeannie did, and Mike did, and Barb did. For every unknown there has been someone with gifts who emerges in the just the right moment.

In 2015, when we set out on our own, my only hope was to grow enough that first year that when we ran out of money the Conference would see some merit in funding the gap (after I begged them to bail us out - which I planned to do, of course). And do you know what happened? I never had to ask them to bail us out. That year, two things happened: one, this community grew in giving, our giving doubled in one year. Two, our campus ministry grant came through. I set totally unreasonable (but necessary, if we were going to exist) goals for the next three years. I turned them into the Bishop’s office, knowing that if I was the one receiving them I would have laughed because they were such a stretch. And yet, every year we have made it. Every year, I worry; every year it looks uncertain; and every year I am amazed at our sure and steady growth, at people taking ownership in this place and at the generosity inspired by our work. And the truth is every time I get really confident, I am quickly reminded to stay in the wilderness. In fact, the Sunday I announced that our morning service had grown so large we needed to split it in two, was the smallest Sunday attendance we had experienced in nine months. The truth is, I looked out and thought can I stop this train? Can I say that mailer was a typo? Can I just go back to Egypt?

I am asking you to join me in the wilderness for a while longer. I’m asking you to stay flexible and fluid and dream something impossible. We are in the wilderness. What will it look like for us to include more people? What does the space look like for our next steps? How do we staff for the future? I have participated in plenty of “inclusive churches,” particularly in Dallas, where everyone was a close family and it was actually hard to be included. I have participated in small churches that liked being small, so folks were not really welcome. We have held enormous smallness in tension, including and maintaining relationships. We have leaned into this living sanctuary and made it active to a diversity of people all the time. We have hosted more non-profit events than ever before and included more people in our work. Our work now is to stay in the wilderness, to stay open and bold and flexible when certainty seems so attractive and actually attainable now - in a way I only dreamed years before. As we turn seven, I ask you to pray with me from the Psalm One and to imagine all the seasons before us, seasons of yet more growth, more room for more connection, and more relationships.

May we stay in the wilderness together.

Questions
What have you experienced in reading the Exodus Story? What do you hear in the scripture?
What has wilderness looked like in your life and your story? What did you learn from the wilderness?
How do you experience uncertainty? What is that like for your spirituality?

A Note from Charles

Abbey Family

I’ve only been coming to the Urban Abbey since the beginning of this year, but I knew by the middle of that first service that I had found a place to call home. From the moment I walked in the door I was greeted with total love and acceptance and that was something that I was not accustomed to. As a closeted gay man I had lived almost my entire adult life in hiding and especially so at the fundamentalist nondenominational church I attended for the last few decades.

I recently asked Pastor Debra before attending the recent All Church meeting if it was ok to share with people that I was gay. Debra looked at me and gently admonished “There is no more hiding," that alone almost brought me to tears right on the spot and I don’t have enough fingers or toes to count the number of beautiful and supportive conversations the members of the Abbey have shared with me over these last several months.

At the end of the All church meeting I was able to meet our Bishop and asked if I could share a little bit of my story with him, he kindly agreed and I began to share with him how my life has changed in so many wonderful and incredible ways since finding the Urban Abbey. He encouraged me to use my gifts at the Abbey and at the end of our talk I thanked him for his time and asked If he would please do whatever is within his power to make sure that Abbey could continue to do the extraordinary work that it does.

I’d like to ask the same question of you, will you please consider doing whatever you can to help Abbey continue the amazing work that it’s doing here in the city of Omaha? I’m constantly astonished at that sheer volume of ministries and outreaches that we have and partner with here at the Abbey and that my friends is why I not only volunteer, but I also made a yearly pledge to help keep our little coffee shop bookstore church vibrantly growing and able to meet the needs of even more people. Together we can help transform our neighborhood into something that looks a little bit more inclusive and loving every day.

Would you please consider pledging a percentage of your income to help with the work here at the Abbey? It’s because other people just like you were willing to pledge a percentage of their income that I was able to wander in to this remarkably inclusive and caring coffee shop bookstore church and find myself in the midst of a life being completely transformed.

Thank you!
Charles Schlussel

All Saints Sermon

Scripture

Isaiah 25: 6-8

On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples
a feast of rich food, a feast of well-matured wines,
of rich food filled with marrow, of well-matured wines strained clear.
And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples,
the sheet that is spread over all nations;
he will swallow up death forever
Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces,
and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth,
for the Lord has spoken.

Sermon

God sets the table and She goes all out, like Martha Stewart and Julia Child multiplied by 100! The wine is of such quality that even if you left it out it probably would never turn to vinegar. The vintage is so good that it is named twice and the food is rich, fatty, and succulent, filled with the ancient Mediterranean superfood, marrow. God sets the feast, everyone is welcome at the mountain top table.

We can imagine them sitting down, oppressor and oppressed, insider and outsider, all together delighting in the abundance, licking their fingers, running the bread through the rich drippings on the plate. God doesn’t swallow up the feast; God swallowed up death. God swallows the shroud, the last mystery that we all share, death.

Death comes for all of us, no matter our status or economics, we all face the mystery of death. This poetry where God swallows up our greatest fear and grief, and then wipes every tear looms large in our faith journey. Paul reminds the people of Corinth about God swallowing up death and John of Patmos in The Book of Revelation does the same. So it makes sense that on this day when we name our grief for ones we love and name our own struggles with mortality out loud, that we would lean into this ancient poetry about God swallowing up death. The gift of this day is that in a culture where we are zealously individual, you do not have to carry your grief alone. We can name that we wish for more time with people we love, even as we name the strengths and gifts they have given us. We can name together how we long for life, how imagining the loss of a partner and friend is almost unbearable; and we don’t have to do that alone. We lean into this poetry of God drying tears so we might be able to live life as abundantly as this table is set in our scripture. That is perhaps one of the most strange and profound aspects of this text for our modern times, it is deeply communal. God sets the table for everyone, invites everyone.

This text where God sets a big table is part of the “Mini Apocalypse of Isaiah” and I don’t know how you feel but I don’t usually use the word mini alongside anything talking about the end times. Isaiah might better be understood as the Isaiah(s) it has three distinct periods, all of which are times of struggle for Israel. The apocalyptic literature emerges from a struggle so deep, the only way to find justice, peace, and comfort is for God to wipe everything clean. Sometimes in our Bible this comes in the form of a final conflict, and sometimes if comes in the form or a great big table. God’s table in Isaiah is on the mountain, the place where God makes covenants and welcomes everyone. Banquets were tools of the empire, ways of making trade deals, way of establishing loyalty and relationships between nations; but here in this space God sets the table and everyone is invited, all the nations are included.

The language of God swallowing up death resonates with Isaiah’s audience, They know the story in Canaanite theology where Baal brings calm out of chaos until he is swallowed up by the God of the underworld/ death and chaos return. Our own tradition names the power of a greater being swallowing up death, death dealing forces and even chaos. Most powerfully, we can look to Exodus when the Pharaoh’s army, in pursuit of the Hebrew people, is swallowed up by the earth. That which would bring death and stop the people’s liberation is swallowed up. The sweeping change of swallowing up death is a part of this literature that people in extreme poverty and despair lean into. You see this “Mini Apocalypse” that culminates in a beautiful, abundant, table feast is written to people who don’t have much food on their own tables. The chapter before the feast rings with the desperation of the Isaiah’s first listeners, I suspect it must name the painful reality to be authentic or the promise of God’s feast will ring empty.

Isaiah 24

The earth dries up and withers,
the world languishes and withers;
the heavens languish together with the earth.
The earth lies polluted
under its inhabitants;
for they have transgressed laws,
violated the statutes,
broken the everlasting covenant.
…The wine dries up,
the vine languishes,
all the merry-hearted sigh.
The mirth of the timbrels is stilled,
the noise of the jubilant has ceased,
the mirth of the lyre is stilled.

​(Life is so hard there is no more music.)

No longer do they drink wine with singing;
strong drink is bitter to those who drink it.

​(The wine they miss for feasting and merriment has changed, strong drink is bitter, medicating pain, people intoxicated in the streets…perhaps.)

The city of chaos is broken down,
every house is shut up so that no one can enter.
There is an outcry in the streets for lack of wine;
all joy has reached its eventide;
the gladness of the earth is banished.
Desolation is left in the city,
the gates are battered into ruins.
For thus it shall be on the earth
and among the nations,
as when an olive tree is beaten,
as at the gleaning when the grape harvest is ended.

​(All the nations are in struggle and the earth itself stumbles like a drunkard.)

The earth is utterly broken,
the earth is torn asunder,
the earth is violently shaken.
The earth staggers like a drunkard,
it sways like a hut;
its transgression lies heavy upon it,
and it falls, and will not rise again.

On that day the Lord will punish
the host of heaven in heaven,
and on earth the kings of the earth.
They will be gathered together
like prisoners in a pit;
they will be shut up in a prison,
and after many days they will be punished.
Then the moon will be abashed,
and the sun ashamed;

There is no wine and there are no feast days when an empire makes the schedule. This piece of Isaiah is written to people who look at desolation, who look at the earth and see it staggering, polluted and failing. People who have experienced such pain and injustice that even the sun and moon should be ashamed. People who long for the kings and cosmic beings to be held accountable for their sins. Just before the feast, the prophetic poetry celebrates a God who cares for the poor - people who know the harsh sun and the bitter cold rains. This is 100 percent different from any kind of end time narrative I heard in the stories told by “Left Behind.” Stories where preppy young adults worried about personal salvation and painted the picture of nice cars driving unmanned. The end times I was taught about - and even the salvation I learned about - in these groups was deeply personal and individual. It was my relationship with God or Jesus, it was how could I help others have a personal salvation to save them from a violent end time or eternal damnation. Perhaps we do this because the individual seems more easy to manage and because we love certainty, almost to the deficit of deeply exploring the mystery of faith. Or perhaps it is the mirror of our culture that likes rugged individualism and picking yourself up by your bootstraps. Or maybe it is just to hard for most of us to really read these prophets and realize that we do not fit. It’s not for us. We resemble Babylon or Rome or Egypt much more than we resemble God’s chosen but despairing people.

So I invite you to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. To imagine this scripture from the vantage point of a parent, walking miles in the sun’s heat and the cold rains to bring your three year old daughter to a safe place to dwell. This week I saw beautiful and heartbreaking photos of children on what has been labeled the ‘caravan’ and when I hear this scripture through them it sounds different. Listen to Isaiah 25 just before the feast is set and imagine yourself reading from the caravan.

For you have made the city a heap,
the fortified city a ruin;
the palace of aliens (the outside forces of destruction) is a city no more,
it will never be rebuilt.
Therefore strong peoples will glorify you;
cities of ruthless nations will fear you.
For you have been a refuge to the poor,
a refuge to the needy in their distress,
a shelter from the rainstorm and a shade from the heat.
When the blast of the ruthless was like a winter rainstorm,
the noise of aliens like heat in a dry place,
you subdued the heat with the shade of clouds;
the song of the ruthless was stilled.

A few weeks ago I was listening to the Detroit’s Public Health Director, watching his images of the city, and witnessing how he mapped public health concerns against the most blighted zip codes. Listen to the scripture from the street of boarded up homes.

The city of chaos is broken down,
every house is shut up so that no one can enter.
There is an outcry in the streets for lack of wine;
all joy has reached its eventide;
the gladness of the earth is banished.
Desolation is left in the city,
the gates are battered into ruins.
For thus it shall be on the earth
and among the nations,
as when an olive tree is beaten,
as at the gleaning when the grape harvest is ended.

These voices are hard to hear. We like to appropriate them, assimilate them into our context without the discomfort of realizing that most of us find ourselves on the side of the country that is ruthless and oppressive. So what is here for us? What do we do that isn’t making this about us without asking anything of us? I believe this still calls to us. We are created in the image of God. Our earliest stories witness to this and so we are called to be a part of God’s communal act. We can set the table. We can open the doors, rebuild the broken places and offer shade to the sun weary sacred souls. We can offer our best to the most vulnerable. We can be a part of swallowing up death dealing systems, death dealing broken and death dealing poverty. We can be a part of this most beautiful image of the divine, drying eyes weary with tears. We can be a part of the feast that feeds hungry people. This All Saints Sunday we can name our grief and our own mortality, so that it sends us into the world whole and open to making change. We can name our grief and our loss so we can help others find a way through. We can witness to the ways we make earth hell rather than like heaven. We can take hands and set the table because we are not alone.

Questions

What is your experience with grief and loss? Who do you miss that taught you, loved you or challenged you?

What does it mean to practice faith in community? What does it mean to share your grief and worry and loss in community? Do you feel pressure to manage grief alone?

What is it like to read the scripture from other vantage points? From what other eyes might you look at this text? What do you learn from their ears?

Reflection Shared by Rev. Debra McKnight at Beth El Synagogue's Memorial Service

As a United Methodist clergy woman, I grew up in tradition that spoke of holiness that was not simply personal but social. Our faith is communal. It is relational, and so sometimes our heartbreak is not only personal but social. I think of this as systemic grief. And when I am feeling systemic grief, which can be a lot lately, I lean into the story of two Egyptian midwives. You can find them in the First Chapter of Exodus. It is this space where we can see a country, Egypt, go from welcome and embrace of outsiders escaping hunger in their homeland to systemic oppression, forced labor, and violence as they march towards genocide. The Pharaoh, in this moment of the story, has a new idea to deal destruction. He asks the midwives to kill baby boys born to Hebrew women while their mother is yet on the birthing stool. The narrative we inherit says, “but the midwives fear God,” and say no. They fear God, they stand in awe and openness, a posture of listening and action that makes them fearless in the face of Pharaoh. I suspect they have plenty of reason to fear Pharaoh, nobody likes to be called to the Principal’s office let alone the Pharaoh’s. He has all the systems of wealth and power, funneling privilege and control to his hands. In their resistance they risk everything, and their death at the Pharaoh’s hands would not be murder but state sponsored violence perhaps in the name of keeping the peace.

I imagine them at the birth stool. They dwell in a thin space, life and death so near. Their work is about giving life. They know how to coach the most unsure woman into the fullness of her power, they know how to stand in struggle and bring life into the world. They know how to manage an anxious room, how to quite the auntie who says all the wrong things at all the wrong times. And they know, when the worst outcome is near, how to make room for grief and loss with the most grace, care, and compassion possible. I imagine them, at the birthing stool, looking towards a mammoth wall, as big as a pyramid, of systemic violence, oppression, and destruction, and they give life anyway. They find a way to fight for life in the face of Pharaoh’s executive order to deal death. They give life because they work in a space where they know all the boundaries and barriers and divisions men make mean nothing, absolutely nothing.

So I look to them when I am grieved, systemically grieved. We see seeds of violence, hatred, antisemitism, and white supremacy nurtured rather than uprooted, and systems of injustice seem almost impossible to change. I pause to remember ancient voices that refused to succumb to despair and indifference. I look to the stories of those messy, holy-imperfect people who journeyed before us. We have the stories that can save us. We have the stories of midwives who faced the King of Egypt, we have the stories of those little guys defeating their Goliaths, and the stories of those who would not go back to Egypt but marched on to a bigger promise. Those midwives call to us today. Join in the work that gives life and breaks down the systems that deal death.

May we have the courage. Amen.

© October 29, 2018 Rev. Debra McKnight

Me Too Me To & God Too: Seeing Each Other as Sacred

Scripture

Matthew 5:5

‘Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

Esther 1: 10-12
“On the seventh day, when the king was merry with wine, he commanded the seven eunuchs who attended him, to bring Queen Vashti before the king, wearing the royal crown, in order to show the peoples and the officials her beauty; for she was fair to behold. But Queen Vashti refused to come at the king’s command. At this the king was enraged, and his anger burned within him.”

Sermon


We know a few things about Queen Vashti: She is the queen of a powerful empire, her husband thinks she is fair to behold, and they are hosting a great party. If you take a look at the book of Esther, you will find this is an epic party...180 days of food and drink and entertainment, the king hosts the men; heads of state, trade partners and powerful people. He spares no expense. Queen Vashti hosts their wives... that's how they roll, two separate parties. And then the King has a great King-ly idea (like when the Grinch has a really Grinch-y idea and his whole face curls with Grinch-y delight). What is the one thing that can make his party even better - showing off his trophy wife. So he calls for the servants, the eunuchs, a group of men whose masculinity didn’t threaten the king, and sends them to invite the queen to appear in her royal signet or royal crown. It is possible this means appear only in your royal crown or with your royal symbol. So the king, “merry with wine,” asks his wife to appear, perhaps nearly nude before a hall of intoxicated men, and she says no. She says no to the king - a man who never hears no from anyone. This could not have been an easy choice. Later we learn Esther could be killed for speaking to the king without being invited to speak to him first. Literally seen but not heard. Vashti risks it all and says no.She decides her worth and value, she chooses to stand up for herself.

This is perhaps the no heard ‘round the world. It creates a national crisis, all of the king’s advisors gather because they fear the word getting out. If the queen can say no to the king then wives may say no to their husbands. And this is a real problem!


“Then Memucan said in the presence of the king and the officials, ‘Not only has Queen Vashti done wrong to the king, but also to all the officials and all the peoples who are in all the provinces of King Ahasuerus. For this deed of the queen will be made known to all women, causing them to look with contempt on their husbands, since they will say, “King Ahasuerus commanded Queen Vashti to be brought before him, and she did not come.” This very day the noble ladies of Persia and Media who have heard of the queen’s behavior will rebel against the king’s officials, and there will be no end of contempt and wrath!” Esther 1:16-18

In the end the advisors send a decree to every corner of the empire that Queen Vashti will never be invited before the king again. I like to imagine her saying, “Oh Thank God.” The fact that she avoids execution if probably a miracle.

Vashti comes up again throughout history as a dangerous woman. A woman you shouldn’t be like if you’re a girl, and a woman you shouldn’t seek out if you’re a boy who likes girls. Thousands of years of history share her story as an example of what not to do and how not to behave. Don’t set off a national crisis, just comply with your king/husband when he asks you to show up in a crown surrounded by intoxicated men. She is the shrew who isn’t tamed, she is a troublesome woman... the opposite of meek and mild.

The church has a history saying, “Be meek, blessed are the meek;” honoring the meek. We picture meek in Mary, quiet, glancing down at the manger. We, the church, have used meek in ways that serve the not so meek. Reminding enslaved people they are blessed, being meek and poor. Reminding women to be meek when they name the violence of husbands. Or reminding children to be meek when they name abuse at the hands of the powerful - particularly if they are clergy. We use meek when it suits the status quo. But when Jesus says blessed are the meek, he does not mean be a doormat or just be cool with maintaining the status quo. Meek actually resonates with worth, knowing who you are, knowing you belong in God’s family, knowing you are created in the image of a loving God and so you are sacred. Blessed are the meek is a blessing for those who will not be measured up against someone’s standards, your power is not about the worlds measure of power regardless of if that is based on race, gender, economic status, age, dress size, and any other measure the world sets out. Blessed are the meek, I think is most powerfully expressed in Mary and not the Mary we have simplified over history. Mary speaks up in the Gospels. She is not the quiet, turtleneck wearing statue we always see opposite of a wild haired Eve at the church door. She is pregnant when she shouldn’t be pregnant. And rather than feeling ashamed of herself she says, “I help you see God, “my soul magnifies the Lord.” She sings a song about God throwing the powerful from their thrones and lifting up the lowly. Meek is not about being a quiet doormat for the status quo; meek Mary sings about God sending the rich away hungry. Mary is meek enough to be bold and resilient and courageous because she knows she is a part of God.

We have a history we must name and change. We have misused meek. I have heard the stories of women who have confided in their male clergy about domestic violence and they have been met with an encouragement to be meek, that this is the cross they must bear. Women and children have named church leaders as perpetrators of assault; and the church leaders of all denominations have defaulted to institutional protection, rather than a call to action to forever change the church and the world. We must honor Me Too stories from the past and the present so the future looks differently.

I believe part of this work towards a new future asks us to think about the words we use for God. We historically name God as He, we are “his children,” and we pray to our Father and sometimes our God and King. In 1973 Mary Daly reminded us that the way we name the sacred impacts how we see each other and ourselves, she said, “If God is a male, then the male is god.” She noted how we value masculinity. I see this when occasionally I slip a She into a conversation about God. Sometimes I get a “Wow,” a curious, happy, interested, surprised, wow. And sometimes I get a “Wow,” an unbelievable how could you would insult God with feminine pronoun, wow. It catches people off guard. We swim in culture of masculinity for God and I propose that if we could dive deep into our tradition and lift up more diverse images of God we might transform the way we see the sacred in others. God is a mother giving birth, a nursing mother, a tender comforting mother, a mother hen gathering her chicks and the two most intense I think must be the mother bear and the mother eagle…to which I say do not mess with her babies. We have lady wisdom to learn with and we are from the start all formed in the image of God. We are gifted with diverse and beautiful names for God because all of them fall short and all of them are needed to help us find our way.

When I was in seminary, a Ph.D. student assisted in one of my classes. He was not a part of the United Methodist Tradition and he invited conversation around an article that suggested women were to be excluded from church leadership because they don’t resemble Jesus. Men most resemble Jesus. I proposed that “resembling Jesus” might invite us to courageous leadership, participation in healing, a willingness to take risks, and servant leadership. Perhaps that resemblance was more important than physically being a male church leader. He disagreed. He named how some people, particularly women, needed a male clergy person, for him it really was about a particular body. I alway wish I had suggested that the Christian Church only hire 30 year old, Middle Eastern, Jewish men from Palestine to serve as priest, clergy and pastor. If we are going to really focus on the body, let’s focus on the body. I suspect he wouldn’t have been willing to take resemblance that far and disqualify himself.

We are in a faith of incarnation, God embodied in us and around us and through us. But we get hung up on the culture’s values of who is in charge, who is powerful, who is worthy; rather than living into Jesus’s message of abundance and blessing that is extended out beyond all of the boundaries we create. If we can see each other as sacred I believe we will treat each other as sacred. That means getting God out of our boxes particularly of masculinity. If we sang of God as mother, would it change how we cared for mothers after birth? If we saw the divine in girls and women, would we act to change an epidemic of sexual violence on our college campus? If we took seriously seeing God in the vulnerable baby, laying in a manger, would it change how we see the poor children longing for a safe place to call home? If we explored the images of God as mountain and God as living water, would it give us pause before mining the hillside or polluting the stream?

Our tradition pushes us to see God beyond He. We can see God in He, She, and They. We can imagine God as a vulnerable baby in a manger, we can see the sacred in Vashti’s no, we can celebrate courage in Mary’s song about God lifting up the lowly. We can celebrate God in the meek, the truly meek - self-possessed and living into God’s big dream.

May it be so. Amen

Discussion Questions

• What image of God did you grow up with? What does it feel like to add a new image? How is that hard? 
• What do you hear in Vashti’s story? 
• What do you hear in Mary’s song and the images we see of Mary? 
• How can you be an advocate for seeing the sacred in people the world doesn’t value? 

© Rev. Debra McKnight, Urban Abbey

Pray for Me Too

God beyond all face and form,

You gift us with stories, fiery and faithful, stories that shine a light on the depth of human suffering and inhumanity. The stories of bodies broken, battered, used and owned, grabbed without consent, traded, bartered and bought as objects, betrayed by family, stranger, and friend.

These stories terrify us, we hate to read them, they’re not nice enough for church.
But they are there. Brave ones shouting, whispering just between the printed lines,
         witnessing, raging, “Me Too.”
         Tamar and Hagar, Lot’s wife and Lot’s daughters,
         David’s daughter and Israel’s son, both had princess tunics torn,
         the concubines, the slaves,
         the prisoners and captives,
         and the daughters, all of them unnamed.

They are there, witnessing to humanities great sin, dismissed quietly.
        Powerful women, simplified by history, brought down in size,
                Mary the quiet, downward glancing saint and
                        Eve the wild haired sinner hardly covering her breasts,
                sculpted and re-sculpted in word and stone,
                        over 2,000 years of the patriarchy’s fearful gaze,
                                proclaiming just how good girls ought to look and behave.

But Mary… You give us Mary and she sings anyway,
        sings of God lifting up the lowly and throwing the mighty from their throne.
        “Time’s Up,” she cries in an ancient song, “My soul magnifies the Lord.”
                Vashti, Queen of self possession roars, “No,”
                         time’s up on kings controlling, demanding, deciding what my body is for.
The Woman at the well preaches time's up on the old ways, we are filled with the water of life.
        Time’s up on crumbs from the master's table and slurs dismissing our humanity.
        Time’s up on sacrificing bodies with Jephthah’s daughter, we dance in defiance.
        Time’s up on God only looking like “He.”

We remember the pain of me too, past and present.
        But the future must look differently, time’s up for the epidemic of inhumanity.
Our hands are made for helping,
        our hearts are made for loving,
                our bodies are sacred, and our dreams are worthy of living,
                        we gather, witnessing to our resurrection faith, Love making all things new.

God, you give us stories, stories where people are never the same, stories where people find their way out of no way, turn the tables, and discover they are beautifully and wonderfully made.
        They light the way as we write our own verse in creation’s eternal song.
 
Time’s up on false humility and quiet little women in church,
        Deborah and Lydia lead with wisdom and courage and grace.
Time’s up on ‘cat fights’ and divisive narratives,
        girls support girls, and we celebrate our strengths,
        Mary and Martha both have our back.
Time’s up on the vulnerable going it alone, Ruth taught us to stand side by side,
        no matter how challenging the road.
Time’s up on the glass ceiling, Mary Magdalene calls us into action, finding the funding, proclaiming the truth, and crushing the patriarchy,
        so all, all people
                he, she and they, can be free.
Let’s do this. And all God’s people said, Amen.

© Rev. Debra McKnight, Urban Abbey

My Life-Giving Space

Thank you, Debra, and thank you to all of the Urban Abbey for dedicating this service to Mental Illness Awareness Week, October 7-13.

I’m not bipolar! I’m Suzie.

I have the diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder, but that does not define who I am. I’m a spouse, a mom, a Nana! I’m funny, insightful, passionate. I’m a leader. I’m a follower. And, quite honestly, I’m “badass!” I’m so much more than my mental illness and the stigma attached to it.

I work for NAMI Nebraska, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, and NAMI’s theme for 2018 is “Cure Stigma.”

Stigma is toxic to our mental health because it creates an environment of shame, fear, and silence that prevents many people from seeking help and treatment, and in some cases, it takes lives.
Compassion, empathy, and understanding counteract stigma.

When I’m really struggling, what hurts?  When I hear:
“What’s wrong with you?”
“You just need to... (fill in the blank).”
The messsage I get: “I’m broken.  I’m not okay as a person.”

What helps?
“Wow. That must be really hard.”
“I’m so sorry you’re hurting.”
“How can I best support you?”
The message: “You value and respect me.”
            “You’re not going to leave me.”

I’ve been treating my mental health for over 20 years, so I have quite a story, but for today I’ll stay more in the present.

Two years ago I stopped working because my mental illness took me to a very dark and painful place.  I was no longer capable of supporting others who needed and deserved to be heard. I walked away from the best and most meaningful job I’d ever had.

Even though my depression was very heavy and I felt suicidal much of the time, there were signs that I truly wanted to live.

4 1/2 months after I stopped working because of my mental health, I was diagnosed with breast cancer.

My initial thought was, “Okay, well that makes this easy.” My depression was severe, but I did not succumb to my mental illness or cancer! I chose life!

I went through the prescribed treatments for my cancer as well as continuing to treat my mental health. I fought for my life! I made that my full-time job, and it was some of the hardest work I’ve ever done.

My healing involved many things, and the Urban Abbey has been one of the most valuable supports on this journey, and continues to be. I’m forever grateful Paige and I walked through the door 3 1/2 years ago.

Every week Debra asks us to name a life-giving moment. I had no idea that THAT would be a life-giving moment, literally. Not only does the Abbey give me life and make my soul come alive.. .the Urban Abbey honestly saved my life. When I say “the Abbey,” I mean more than the physical space.  Don’t get me wrong, I love books and coffee, they definitely give me life! When I talk about the Abbey, though, I talk about Debra, and the barista, Gabe, who was working that first day, told us what the Urban Abbey is about, and invited us to our first service. (A barista’s job at the Abbey involves much more than making a good cup of coffee!) But, mainly, I talk about you, the people of the Abbey. I’ve never had a church family that I’ve loved and trusted like I have here.

During those two years, I came into this space for peace and healing... serenity... clarity.. .to clear and quiet my mind. Some days I talked with Debra, prayed with her. Other times I sat back, talked to no one, was simply present. It brought great peace to look across the room at my pastor, my friends... and all the books! Some days that’s all I needed.

When I walk into the Abbey, my shoulders drop, my tension releases, and I can breathe.

On one of my worst days, a very cold day, when I thought my options were few, I found myself walking down the hill to the Abbey. I really didn’t know what to do and this was my only logical choice. I talked things over with Debra, made some phone calls, and a member of this church, who was volunteering that day, drove me to the hospital so I could get the help I needed. My church family was with me. Members of the Pastoral Team, my friends, visited me, let me know I’m not alone.

By getting involved in the church through reaching out and service work, I’ve made some lifelong friends.

I want to thank you, Debra, for taking the risk, starting a church, and making it the Urban Abbey.

And thank you all for BEING the Abbey. Thank you for saving my life.

- Suzie Noonan

Beatitudes: Blessed 2018

Blessed are the uninsured with conditions pre-existing and
the ones with co-pays and deductibles beyond their means,
pressured under a mountain of out-of-network bills,
weighing their care with a lifetime of debt,
they will find healing.

Blessed are the unemployed seeking opportunity,
the under-employed seeking dignity,
and the underpaid working three jobs to earn enough to almost get by,
they will be valued.

Blessed are the queer homeless youth,
turned out and away,
homes broken by ‘family values’ and ‘righteousness’
they will be at welcomed home.

Blessed are the hungry, seeking nutrition on the dollar menu,
thirsting for fresh from deep in the food desert,
they will be nourished.

Blessed are the fat, heavy with body-shaming,
weary in their own skin, worried about where they fit in
they will be comfortable.

Blessed are the harassed and abused,
the trafficked and assaulted by the power-hungry,
‘grabbed’ as an object for control rather than a child of God’s great love,
they will be empowered.

Blessed are the immigrants seeking a way out of no way,
traveling through danger,
detained and families divided,
sacred bonds broken by state sponsored abuse and ice cold lies
they will be reunited.

Blessed are students afraid to go back,
walking weary through hallways once rocked by the rhythms of war,
grappling with survivor guilt and PTSD, a lifetime of grief and lost,
wondering when it will happen again,
they will be comforted.

Blessed are the resisters, uncovering their privilege working to change themselves
and untangle systems of suppression,
risking it all to speak truth to power,
protesting injustice and working for a better way,
they will be heard.

Blessed are the veterans with wounds to deep to see,
blessed are the single parents shouldering it all,
blessed are the refugees dreaming of home,
blessed are the diagnosed and the undiagnosed,
blessed are the broken hearted living with vivd dreams and memories,
Blessed are the poor and the poor of spirit,
Blessed are the meek, the mild and the ones longing for peace.

Blessed.

© Rev. Debra McKnight, Urban Abbey

Teacher Blessing

May the light of your spirit bless your work.
May the light of your soul be a gift to each sacred child that receives it.
May you breathe grit and strength into each soul that enters your classroom,
        hungry, beleaguered, bullied or shamed.
May you have eyes that see possibilities that standardized tests can’t explain,
May you have ears that hear the words unspoken and the needs that are to hard to name.
May you have wisdom to know the time for love, both tough and tender.
May you never feel bland, and may you go to bed tired but not exhausted.
May you have support from friends and family along the way,
and may you feel passion that can push you through the hard weeks and the longer days.
May you pause in gratitude for this day, this work, this dream,
        and rest in blessing that you may offer gifts to others.

May it be so. Amen.

© 2018 Rev. Debra McKnight, Urban Abbey