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
Thursday, November 29, 2018
Wednesday, November 21, 2018
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
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
- What is your experience with shopping?
- What does it mean to shop in ways that express your values?
- 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?
Wednesday, November 14, 2018
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!”
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?
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?
Thursday, November 8, 2018
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
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
Wednesday, November 7, 2018
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?
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