Dear Edwards Church Community,
It is not too soon to start planning for how we will come “back to normal,” as if the return of some members of our community to the sanctuary on Sundays will demonstrate that all is as it was and should be. The return of people to the sanctuary and gathering for communal worship will be signs of life returning to patterns that we enjoy. It will be genuinely reassuring. But what will we have learned and how will we have grown in the meantime, if all we did was survive?
A decade ago, my mother and one of my sisters were being treated for breast cancer at the same time. For Mom it was a recurrence of the disease that would ultimately end her life. For my sister (and all who love her) it was the sort of threat every family dreads. Even so, the minister of faith formation in the church she attends, who knows my sister very well, asked her the first time they were alone, “What new thing is God inviting you to learn?”
If one already accepts that illness and suffering happen in life, even to “good people” who do all they can to avoid it and do not “deserve” it, then a life-threatening illness is not a cause for complaint (Why me?) so much as a time to revisit basic questions. (Have I been living with the right priorities?) That faith formation minister and my sister knew each other well enough that the minister could offer the question lovingly, and my sister received it as an expression of spiritual support.
When Jesus first tells his inner circle that following him will also require facing death, they recoil, and with good reason. No one chooses death, at least not when they have a choice. But we all know that eventually we will die, and that how we live with that knowledge makes all the difference.
When Jesus says to Peter, the other disciples, and the crowd around them, “those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it,” he is not being metaphorical. He is challenging them to take the first difficult step toward finding the depth of meaning they will discover in their lives when they bring their lives into his movement. He is also offering them the grace that will help them do it. Lent is the time in the Christian liturgical year set aside to ask ourselves what is holding us back from living “for the sake of the gospel.”
As individuals, we come to terms with our own conscience, or we don’t. As a community, we are a gathered body of Christ with almost 200 years of history. We need to ask as fearlessly as possible what stands between us and living our collective life as a church “for the sake of the gospel”. I think our 2015 vision statement is best understood as requiring that. And as individuals living in community, we need an ongoing dialog about keeping each other and our church focused on that. You and your church have moral claims on one another, or you are not really a church, you are a club.
In 2021, as we prepare to transition to the next phase of life with COVID (I’d love to say post-COVID, but we all know that could be premature) I hope we can focus on becoming an anti-racist church. As an overwhelmingly white mainline church, most of whose members are secure (in terms of work, housing, and food) and which has the added advantage of institutional wealth, we have a lot to consider.
The year since March 2020 has laid bare the reality of continuing racism in our country and world. I cannot imagine trying to deny it in the face of all we’ve seen. Undoing the embedded racism in our society can start with acknowledging “white privilege”. If you are unclear about what white privilege is and how real it is, please read these primers:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/01/16/white-privilege-explained/
http://privilege.uccpages.org/
Deb Moore can also direct you to a number of useful books, many of which can be found in the lending library started by our Justice Education Ministry Team, whose current focus is anti-racism.
Like the dawning realization that we are capable of being self-centered and don’t always catch ourselves in the act (theologians call it acknowledging our sinful nature), merely being willing to accept the reality of white privilege and its impact on people of color in our society is just the beginning.
What are we willing to give up to dismantle the vestiges of legal, but nonetheless immoral, racism in the past? What social or economic advantages, what habits of thought, what attitudes are we willing to notice still alive in us and our world and actively uproot? What new commitments might we make and, with the grace of God, learn how to keep to free ourselves and our neighbors from those invisible but very real chains?
This Easter, may we rise to new life in Christ not only with renewed awareness of what God wants for us, but also what God wants from us, until God’s love and justice is shared equally among all her children.
In faith, with hope, for love,
Michael
From the Minister of Faith Formation
Dear Beloved of God,
Psalm 139:1-5
O my Beloved, You have searched me
and known me!
You know when I sit down and
when I rise up;
You discern my innermost thoughts,
You find me on the journey and
guide my steps;
You know my strengths and
my weaknesses.
Even before words rise up in prayer,
Lo, You have already heard
my heart call.
You encompass me with love where’er I go…
from Psalms for Praying: An Invitation to Wholeness
by Nan Merrill
Each of the liturgical seasons of the Church year are sacred and each offer opportunity for reflection, for wondering, for discerning, for journeying as disciples of Christ and as beloved children of our God. Lent, for many of us, beckons an intentional call to wilderness formation as we go through this period of forty days and forty nights (not counting Sundays).
“The only way out is through, but the only way through is in” is a line from a Carrie Newcomer song that has sparked reflection for me on several fronts before the beginning of this Lenten season and continuing into it. It is often said that we can’t get to Easter without going through Lent – Holy Week in particular, and I would agree. Christians are encouraged to consider engaging in a spiritual practice such as prayer, fasting (giving something up or taking something on), and almsgiving as we go through this liturgical season.
During his time of wilderness formation, we are told that Jesus fasted from food and drink. We can imagine that as he journeyed through this time Jesus prayed, even called out to God for guidance in discerning what God would have him be about and how God would form him for that to which God called him. We can imagine, like the psalmist, that Jesus was aware God knew his strengths and weaknesses, and that God would guide him and encompass him with love.
I recently learned from a friend that the space the early Christians named where Jesus was in the wilderness translates as ‘quarantine.’ For a year, the world has been in varying degrees of quarantine and many have faced temptations of one sort or another. Personally, after nearly ten months without the touch of another human being, my greatest temptation is to get in my car, drive to Southeastern Mass and hug Ryan, Ashleigh, Matthew and Jenn. It wouldn’t stop with them, however; as I would be further tempted to visit each of my siblings and their kids to do the same.
The Gospels of Matthew and Luke each provide us with an accounting of Jesus being led or driven into the wilderness where he was tempted by the devil with power, principalities, and protection.
“The only way out is through, but the only way through is in…again.” The songwriter adds the word ‘again’ the second and third times she sings the line. In my Lenten reflection during this pandemic time, my heart and mind have been drawn to the imposed quarantine, wilderness time, all those who have been oppressed, excluded and still are by the racist policies, injustices, and the systemic inequities our Black, Indigenous, People of Color, and LGBTQ+ siblings have endured again and again for generations as the power, principalities and protection have benefited those in the dominant culture.
“The only way out is through, but the only way through is in…again.” In my Lenten wilderness formation this year, I pray that the God who knows my strengths, weaknesses, and my heart call, will guide my steps during my continued journey in, through, and out towards helping to bring about God’s vision of shalom for all. I pray the same for this faith community as we continue to live into our Vision Statement, listening for God’s still-speaking voice as to how God would form, reform, transform us in the process.
May God guide your steps and encompass you with love during this time of wilderness formation.
Deb