Reflecting on Soup'd Up Worship Last Night

Last night at Soup'Up Worship we played theologically with the image of the church as a family gathered around a table. Obviously it is not a radical image as it is at the heart of what we do together week after week.



But it has always struck me as so beautiful that a meal would be the central symbol of what it means "to do" church. We come together as a family around a table. It can be relaxed or formal, but either way there is hospitality and sharing and fellowship.

One of the most helpful insights that I took away last night was the phrase that one of the participants used. She said that a meal was great because "we let our guards down." This really resonated with me because I realized that of course part of the reason we come together is to come to know each other better, and we will never do so unless we let our guard down. And coming together over food and drink is ideal for creating the context where people feel comfortable and welcome. It is a place where we can talk and share.

Of course it raises more questions:

Does the way we do church work against the intimacy of a meal?
How can we make this part of our gathering together stronger?

Here are the quotes that guided our discussion last night. I especially love the Dorothy Day quote:

Dorothy Day:

"We cannot love God unless we love each other, and to love we must know each other. We know him in the breaking of bread, and we know each other in the breaking of bread, and we are not alone any more. Heaven in a banquet and life is a banquet, too, even with a crust, where there is companionship."

Eugene Peterson:

"For the Christian, every meal derives from and extends the Eucharistic meal into our daily eating and drinking, our tables at which the crucified and risen Christ is present as host."

“It is virtually impossible to be detached and uninvolved when we are sharing a meal with someone.”

Sermon Notes from October 6th

• You will have to forgive me about changing the prayer for the day to reflect the feast of St. Francis and to preach about Francis. Normally I try not to insert my personal preferences, but this day is really important to me, for if I had to put myself in a box, which I am loath to do, but if I had to, I would call myself a Franciscan, and it is because St. Francis showed me, more than anyone, what it looked like to have faith.
• What is the difference when you love what you do?
  • Wood worker: make a table just for use in a work room, or something beautiful as a gift.
  • Study a language because you have to for credit, or study because of the beautiful woman who only speaks French and you want to speak with her.
  • Throw dinner together because you are hungry, or make a meal because your best friends are coming over.
  • To love to do something is to add something
  • From Donald Miller's book, Blue Like Jazz: "I never liked Jazz music because Jazz music doesn't resolve. But I was outside the Bagdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes. After that I liked Jazz music. Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way."
• It is something like this why I love Francis so much
• He showed me what it looked like to have faith, to love Jesus
• [About Francis]
  • There is an interesting prayer: "Lord Jesus Christ, when the world was growing cold you
  • raised up blessed Francis, bearing in his body the marks of your
    passion, to inflame our hearts with the fire of your love"
  • The church by the time of Francis was in many ways an institutional church in the worst way
  • The church of the 13th century was wealthy, comfortable, powerful. The pope at the time, Innocent III was particularly gifted in power politics and was able to consolidate a good many powers in the church. 
  • The church was cold
  • It was into this church that Francis came, and it could be argued that no single person outside of Jesus and the apostles made a bigger impact on the church with the exception of St. Augustine.
  • But he didn't do it in any ordinary way: he didn't write theology, he didn't change liturgy, he had no authority, he was no bishop or anything like that. He was just a poor beggar. 
  • How did he do it? The answer is painfully simple. He had a radical faith. 
  • He lived more like Jesus than anyone other than Jesus or Paul ever has.
  • He absolutely trusted God for everything; he gave to everyone who asked; he forgave everyone who attacked him; he didn't care about what he wore or his possessions; he served freely; he loved everyone; he exhibited pure joy and radiant peace in his life. 
  • And it all came out of his radical love of Jesus.
  • What he did was to fire the imagination of the people of the church, and even if they couldn't completely do what he did, they saw that the way of Jesus was so beautiful and moving and powerful that they were affected.
  • And they rededicated themselves anew to the faith; gave themselves over to Christ again.
  • People can look at his life even centuries later and still be moved
• A moving example for me is the book Chasing Francis
• About a pastor of a church who has gotten into a rut. Something is missing. Everything is humming along, but the passion isn't there, the excitement. 
• There is infighting in the church and it is weighing him down. Some people want to force him out.
• So he goes to Italy, forced to go to visit his uncle who is a Franciscan priest. 
• He finds a whole new world of Christian witness. His imagination is set on fire seeing how the church there is so involved in the life of the poor, in the arts, in peace making, in the inner journey.
• And he comes back to his church with a new vision. He sees a different calling for his church.
• • Transcendence: Knowledge and theory are not sufficient! Encounter God! Encounter! Francis believed transcendent encounters with Jesus were the key to people's coming to faith. Opening our ears to God's voice in creation, being touched by the Spirit's presence in the community of believers, walking in solidarity with the poor, practicing contemplative prayer and meditation, saying the liturgy, and meeting Jesus in symbol-rich spaces and events like Communion - all of these are vital experiences that can act as portals into the life of God.
  • Community: We are an expression of Jesus on earth. No artificial distinctions between the sacred and the secular. Into the marketplace. The world community: we consume too much. What does it mean to live in the community of the world. Simplicity. Community of reconciliation and peacemakers.
  • Beauty: arts and music. Francis was a singer, poet and actor. The imagination is a beautiful way into people's souls, a way to think about and experience God. The arts used to be a huge part of Christian expression in the middle ages. The church could be a safe place for artists to practice their vocation.
  • Dignity: People come to us broken and looking for acceptance and healing. We also need to fight against the things that rob people of their dignity such as racism, sexism, addictions, injustice, poverty and so on. Give creation back its dignity; we can find areas that are trashed and make it beautiful again for God.
  • Meaning: People are meaning seekers. We have to understand people in terms of the story of which they are a part. We want to invite people to be a part of what God is doing in the world.
• Now the Gospel is problematic for my story.
• A very hard message.
• My interpretation: there is evidence that some of the disciples thought that they were going to get patronage positions in the kingdom of God based on their loyalty. And Jesus is telling them in a hard way that this is not how the Kingdom works.
• About the humility of St. Francis
• What I have realized recently is that it is not really St. Francis that I love; it is the one whom he reflects: Jesus, my Lord.

From Steve's Office:

Dear friends, I pray that you are well. There are just a few couple I wanted to talk to you about. Many of you were able to go to the concert for the Common Cup Company this week. What a wonderful event that was in the life of our congregation! The music was entertaining and uplifting and it was a lot of fun to sing as well as visit with so many people. But one thing I want to mention that I got to see that a lot of other people didn't. The amount of effort to put on the event was tremendous! There was selling tickets and CD's, putting the band up for a whole week, preparing lunches and dinners for the band, and so on. The whole week was a lot of fun. But a lot of people worked hard and with joy and I really want to thank all of them. Really wonderful stuff! Thank you, thank you.

Also, the other thing is that I am getting excited about the Ecumenical Mission for a couple of reasons. First, I know that Danielle, the leader, is a tremendous speaker, and it will be interesting and challenging. I am confident that the content will be first class. And second, this kind of event which is churches all over Sherwood Park is really a rare event. I have never run into anything like it and it is something to be supported. In so many ways, the divisions within the Christian community are such a sadness and tragedy, and this is a small glimpse of what real ecumenical work can look like: Churches coming together to better proclaim the Gospel. Please join me!

Sermon from June 9th

• I often wish that everyone could write sermons. I love doing this because it allows me a chance to really explore and dig into really great questions. Most of my sermons aren't actually final products, but steps on the way of exploration of the spiritual life. 
• Reflect on scripture, current events, the writings of the past.
• Sometimes I like to reflect a bit on certain words that resonate with the human soul. And that is what I am doing today. Some are universal and timeless. Words like: courage, truth, honour, love, justice, compassion.
• Other words are newer, have come about in the last century or so but speak to our current situation. Words like: creativity, authenticity, holistic, inclusivity and relevance.
• I want to spend a few minutes reflecting on the last of these words, relevance. And the reason is that the word relevant represents a bit of a tug of war in how we understand what the church of Jesus Christ is supposed to be.
• The word relevance means "pertaining to the matter at hand."
• There is a lot of debate about things like whether the church is supposed to be relevant to where people are today in their wants or their needs, or is the church more timeless, not running after passing fashions. And if the church is to be relevant, what does that mean?
• To think through this, I want to look at three different aspects of the concept of relevance by looking at three different stories: the first is the story of the Apostle Paul, the second was a conversation with someone in my youth group at my last church and the third is about the enthronement of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
• First, Paul
• The reason I wanted to look at St. Paul is that I wanted to look briefly at why we still read him. What I mean is that here is a man 20 centuries distance in time from us from a completely different cultural and historical context and yet we say he is still relevant for us. What do we mean by that?
• Who was Paul?
  • Who he was. Convert who became a great planter of church across the Mediterranean world.
  • Why was he so effective? He wasn't terribly charismatic. Reading between the lines, he was a great letter writer but not necessarily a very charismatic person.
  • • In another place he tells us that the love of Christ compels him. What does that mean?
    • We know he had a life changing experience.
    • Simultaneously realized that what he thought he was doing for God was truly monstrous, that he was a murderer, and also experienced the cleansing power of the love and grace of God. That in the same moment he knew his sickness, he was healed.
    • It was an encounter that he could barely put into words.
    • He had found an inner freedom like he had never known
    • He realized that at the heart of God is a love that is completely undeserved and yet giving
    • Called drunk on grace
    • He wanted to share that freedom that he knew
    • He was effective because he spoke about an experience that is timeless and common to all humanity:
    • The need to be loved and accepted, no matter our failings or our sufferings. The need to be healed of our brokenness, and he pointed to Jesus as the one to bring the healing.
    • The word religion incidentaly originally meant to bind, to connect, to root and it meant to connect us to the transcendent God. 
    • I think this is why Paul is still relevant. He points to this universal need for connection to God, and he found it in Jesus.
• The second story goes in a different direction: one of the relatives of a member of my youth group came up to me and said I needed to talk with her.
• About what?
• I think she is getting down on organized religion.
• I wanted to tell her my joke, don't like organized religion? Become an Anglican, there is little here that is very organized!
• I resisted.
• I told her I didn't think I might be the best person to defend organized religion.
• But the question raised a bit of a paradox for me. Here I was, a duly ordained priest in good standing serving in the institutional church. But it wasn't really the institutional church I was interested in talking about. I wanted to talk about Jesus.
• And yet for her, the institutional church was actually getting in the way of that. And I could sympathize.
• I could remember in high school going to a Bible Study with a very kind man, he was the basketball coach, and part of the pull was that he brought Little Ceasar's pizza every week. But he had a crisp clear answers to questions I didn't have.
• I wanted to explore, and he wanted to give answers. I wanted to be a seeker, he wanted me to make a decision.
• I left the church and wandered for a long time. But the wandering was good; I did come to faith in Jesus, because he had answers to not only my questions, but to the needs of my heart and soul.
• But because of my path, I understand people who are searching and I have an extreme sensitivity to ways in which he church hampers the search.
• So when I spoke with her, I listened closely to her struggles, her questions; told her some of mine, and tried to answer HER questions, being careful not to answer the questions I think she should have.
• And it resonated. It was a great conversation.
• For me, I want to talk about Jesus.
• I have found such joy and meaning in following Jesus. I know him to be a close companion; I know him to have compassion on my many, many failings and to forgive me; I know him to be a challenge to me, to help me grow spiritually and in maturity; I know him to fill me with the love of God, so much sometimes I feel as if I can't take it anymore; I know him to be the answer to my questions. And if others can know him like I know him; nothing gives me greater joy.
• But I also realized that her questions were not my questions, and if Jesus was going to be relevant to her, I had to let him speak to her heart where she was at, and what she needed.
• I realized she wasn't just looking for timeless truth, but truth that spoke to her questions and her needs.
• Jesus has to speak to her in a different way than he speaks to me, but I hoped I could play a small role in bringing them together.
• This was where I started really thinking about the question of relevance. And it colours my thinking on the subject.
• To me the real issue of being relevant is not so much what kind of music we play or what kind of words we use, but the fact that we as a church are slowly realizing that Jesus does not speak in only one way, with only one kind of music and one kind of prayer book.
• As I have now prayed with and spoken with dozens and dozens of people about Jesus, I have become crucially aware that people have different personalities, different cultural backgrounds, different spiritual needs and challenges, different sins they wrestle with, different questions that are on their hears and all of these effect how Jesus needs to speak to them. And relevance is perhaps creating as best we can a space for all of them to encounter the living God in their hurts, their sorrows, their joy, their hope, their whatever. 
• Final story: paradox of Justin Welby's Enthronement 
• About the AofC
• About the service: pomp, ceremony
• But what spoke to me was the words of his entry
• Staff on door:
• Justin Welby's Enthronement
• • "Who are you and why do you request entry?"
  • "I am Justin, a servant of Jesus Christ, and I come as one seeking the grace of God, to travel with you in his service together."
  • "How do you come among us and with what confidence?"
  • "I come knowing nothing except Jesus Christ and him crucified, and in weakness and fear and in much trembling."
• Humility
• This was the language of St. Francis and it is no accident that there is a resurgance in his popularity.
• It is the language of the new pope, and that is why he is touching millions.
• I think relevance for us has to come through humility.
• That last line comes from Paul and ties the stories together. 
• The good news of the Gospel is only good news when it speaks to the universal need of the human heart, but paradoxically only in such a way that it speaks to the individual where they are and when it is brought in a genuine spirit of humility and service. 

Notes from Vestry May 21, 2013

• We welcomed our new administrative assistant, Sherry Poulos.
• Janitorial: we chose Clarence's company to clean the church. Their offer fit well into our budget, and they will clean three times a week.
• Admin Assistant: Thanks to Gordon Weighell for all of his work on this. We interviewed several people and have hired Sherry Poulos and very please that she has joined us.
• Alpha: no new news
• Fire Alarm: Information was combined with engineering.
• Pay Pal: we are working on putting an electronic system of giving for the web site. Chris is heading this up. He will be in touch with the Envelope Secretary.
• Vacation Bible School: we have decided not to have one this year either like last year or using the Crosstalk team. We are still in conversation with Fusion about a possible summer program.
• Revenue Opportunity: there is a music teacher who has expressed using the church as a base for teaching piano. He is willing to pay $800 a month for 10 months. The corporation is looking at exploring this more fully.
• Assistant: Chris is going on Marriage Encounter this weekend. He has been busy with Soup'd Up and the Facebook workshop. He is looking at working with the youth group in the fall.
• Financial. We have finished the first third of the year in a good position. We have a $9,606 surplus. But that is with the surplus from last year being rolled forward; without the surplus we would have a small surplus of $674 which puts us in a good position for the more difficult third of the year financially.
• Stewardship: Gordon Voth presented on our plans for the fall. They will be tied in with the Mission Fest and Back to Church Sunday.
• Executive Council: will meet on Thursday
• Youth: We are sorry to see Devon going but wish her well. She is going to the University of Victoria.
• Engineering: The fire alarms are in and functioning. The county was happy with all of the work that we have done. We may not have to put in fire doors as we thought. This will save us a lot of money.
• Maintainance: William is going on vacation for six weeks; he is passing the baton onto Jim Reville in the meantime.

Spirituality for Millennials

One of the big questions in church circles is what does it engage the next generation. The name given to the current 'next' generation is the Milennials and they have specific, interesting demographic trends. Here is an interesting article on the spirituality of millennials: (the original site is: http://episcopaldigitalnetwork.com/ens/2013/05/14/ministry-among-millenials-the-spirituality-of-young-people/)

Note: While religious affiliation amongst young adults is down, it is intriguing to find that studies show significant numbers of unaffiliated young adults pray daily and meditate weekly. This article addresses this opportunity.

Many young adults are investigating themes in spirituality more willingly than formal religion. Across religious traditions absentee young adults are no longer an exception, instead they have become the norm. This drift could exist because young adults express disappointment regarding relationships with families and institutions. More than ever, young adults are alive to the inconsistencies that exist in what they are told to do and what they are shown to do by example. Furthermore, with millennials, dissociative behaviors are customary. This new way of being could have several influences: parenting styles, non-traditional familial structures, technology, social pressures, and/or mental health issues.

Additionally, post-modern, global situations have millennials searching for deeper meaning, beliefs, values, and relationships that can offer greater support for self-integration in this convoluted world. Young adults do not only want to cope with the realities of post modernity, but seek opportunities to thrive in it.

Contemplative spirituality enhances the spiritual lives of young adults. Practices in the contemplative tradition offer young adults a path toward prayer, depth, and awareness of the presence of God. When young adults regularly engage practices within the contemplative tradition they can:

1. Discover and understand their distinct relationship with the divine.
2. Draw out and build up their overlooked innate strengths and spiritual resources.
3. Notice what encumbers and sustains their awareness and reaction to the divine.
4. Cultivate their spiritual lives through practices, worship, and/or education.
5. Interpret or simply be present to their lived experiences of the divine.
6. Be a witness to the transformation of their perceptions, responsiveness, and overall ways of being in the world.

The theological concept of Koinonia, spiritual companionship, is a guiding principle that weaves throughout the contemplative tradition. Groups are an ideal vehicle for spiritual growth in the lives of young adults. Groups, large and small, are a significant part of spiritual formation, facilitation, and direction. When we are in communion, we are better able to engender hope, express universality, encourage altruism, and develop an ecology for the Spirit.

Since 2009, I (Andrea Noel) have engaged young adults with practices from the contemplative tradition. As a spiritual companion, I pray, listen, encourage, and respond to the presence of God in young adults’ lives. Some practices include: meditation, lectio divina, labyrinths, examen, journaling, chanting, collaging, body prayer, group and individual spiritual guidance, and others.

As the Chaplain at University of Maryland College Park, I (Rev. Gaddis) find myself at the intersection of religion, spirituality, and young adults. One of the ministries of the chaplaincy is a contemplative spiritual practices group. This group bears out many of the assertions above as the majority of students who come are spiritual, but not religious. Through my pastoral presence and facilitation, the community is one of non-religious people encountering the Episcopal Church and its theology. The group is an experience of spiritual direction where being Episcopal or Christian is not necessary. Yet, students are adopting in their own way an Episcopal identity.

As we close the second semester, I (Gaddis) regularly see 7-10 students attending, and an additional 10 students who are part of the community irregularly. Each week we see newcomers who have been expressly invited by other attendees. The students are beginning to have spiritual experiences that are opening them to a coherent, real-time relationship with God. Conversations about one’s relationship with God are happening with several students who simply would not have been willing to two months ago. The students have even asked me to continue the group during the summer. This desire is an unprecedented request.

This is the effect of creating environments where people can have and process spiritual experiences. For those who are spiritual but not religious, this is exactly what they are looking for: something real. Because these practices are drawn from our Christian contemplative tradition, what is happening here is a repeatable authentic expression of the Episcopal Church.

Our hope is that exposing young adults to these practices invites them to a deeper encounter of God. We want to empower them with the ability to see their intrinsic value, strength, and connection to God. Contemplative spirituality allows young adults to express their own lived experiences of the divine without judgment or qualification and with genuine freedom. These practices help to cultivate a regular prayer life, encourage self-discovery, and create a knowing self in relation to God.

Andrea Noel completed a Master of Divinity at Howard University, residency at Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation in Leading Contemplative Prayer Groups and Retreats, and is currently enrolled in the Master of Arts in Spiritual and Pastoral Care at Loyola University Maryland. Her life’s work is to help young adults go inward, realizing the deepest purpose within them that the world desperately needs, and reconnecting to the one true source. 

Otis Gaddis III came to the University of Maryland as a recent graduate of Yale Divinity School (2012). He studied young adult ministry, progressive evangelism, and community organizing during his time there. At Maryland, he serves as the Episcopal/Anglican Chaplain.

God's Vision for the World

Here is a nice piece from Brueggemann about God vision for the all of creation:

Living Toward a Vision

by Walter Brueggemann

 

The central vision of world history in the Bible is that all of creation is one, every creature in community with every other, living in harmony and security toward the joy and well-being of every other creature…. Israel has a vision of all people drawn into community around the will of God (Isaiah 2:2-4). In the New Testament, the church has a parallel vision of all persons being drawn under the lordship and fellowship of Jesus (Matthew 28:16-20; John 12:32) and therefore into a single community (Acts 2:1-11). As if those visions were not sweeping enough, the most staggering expression of the vision is that all persons are children of a single family, members of a single tribe, heirs of a single hope, and bearers of a single destiny, namely, the care and management of all God’s creation.

 

That persistent vision of joy, well-being, harmony, and prosperity is not captured in any single word or idea in the Bible, and a cluster of words is required to express its many dimensions and subtle nuances: love, loyalty, truth, grace, salvation, justice, blessing, righteousness. But the term that in recent discussions has been used to summarize that controlling vision is shalom. Both in current discussion and in the Bible itself, it bears tremendous freight—the freight of a dream of God that resists all our tendencies to division, hostility, fear, drivenness, and misery.

 

Reprinted from Peace (Understanding Biblical Themes Series), (Chalice Press, 2001), 13-14.