Here are excerpts from some recent pastors’ columns:
Acting nice or moving into chaos “We have lived, as Scott Peck points out in his stages of community, in a pseudo-community where we have acted nice and as if we have overcome the racial divide. Hopefully we are entering his next stage of chaos, where hurts and truth are expressed. If we do this well, we can enter into a time of letting go and move on toward real community where we thrive in a process of living an honest and healing life together.” — Rev. Gen Heywood, Congregational Community UCC, Sunnyvale
Spin is the enemy of spirit
“As we continue our series on covenant, our worship themes during May will focus on what it means to have a sacred, spirit-led conversations that foster deeper bonds of understanding.
“I also want to open my office door for a pastoral conversation for all those who need a safe place to respectfully share what they are thinking and feeling in response to the words of our most famous UCC pastor and UCC congregant who are in the limelight these days.
“My biggest encouragement in all of this to take the time to read whole transcripts and not rely on soundbytes. Spin is the enemy of Spirit. Spirit is the antidote of spin.
Spirit welcomes diversity and fosters unity and wholeness.
For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body - Jews or Greeks, slaves or free - and we were all made to drink of the same spirit. I Cor. 12:13
Spin splices and dices, fragments and divides.
Spirit speaks in all native languages and inspires human understanding.
All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Acts 2:4,6
Spin confuses language and undermines human understanding.
Spirit is non-discriminating and widens the circle of inclusion.
I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh. Acts 2:17
Spin creates caricatures and narrows the world into us and them.”
— Rev. Laura Rose, First UCC, Alameda
A house of worship is much more than a pastor
“So amidst all the posturing, rhetoric and hyperbole, I found these comments by Katherine Moon, professor of political science at Wellesley, rather refreshing. Dr. Moon, a Korean-American, remembered the ethnic church in which she was nurtured and the special role it played in her life. ‘Often, the immigrant or ethnic church is the one public place where a common language, food and humor particular to one’s cultural heritage can be shared. It is through the congregation that we ask for help — to look after our children or elderly parents. Often it is the people in the worship hall who help us paint our houses and visit us in the hospital. A house of worship is much more than a pastor.’
“Her words reminded me of a comment I once heard from Yvonne Delk, an African-American UCC minister. She said that as a young black girl, growing up in the South, for six days of the week she was told she was nobody. But, she said, “Then we could come to church on Sunday and there we would be told, You are SOMEBODY.’
“I would hope that each of you could say that about the Community Church of Sebastapol. I’m sure, after all of the thousands of words that I have preached over the years, it would be possible to lift up a few less than flattering soundbytes. But so what? What matters most is the context of our church’s entire ministry. If, for you, this has been a community of mutual support, help and guidance, a community where you have been affirmed, challenged, stretched and given direction in your journey of faith . . . that will have been enough.”
— Rev. Gene Nelson, Community UCC, Sebastapol
Bonds of love don’t come from soundbytes
“Jesus gained a reputation for being a miracle worker. The greatest miracle, in my opinion, really happened in the rural villages of Galilee with the historical Jesus and continued to bear fruit throughout the Roman Empire after his death. It was the coming together of people who were rich and poor, Jew and Gentile, male and female, slave and free, respected leaders and marginalized prostitutes into a community of care that enacted the Kingdom of God through its common life.
“This miracle fed the multitudes with an honor and a respect denied them by society, with a sense of solidarity and inclusivity they had never known before, with liberation and equality, and with food that nourished their bodies.
“I pray that we might experience more such miracles today and know the strength and beauty of the deep bonds that connect us with one another regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, abilities or any other distinction. The bonds aren’t born out of soundbytes but through our daily reaching out to one another in love, compassion and mutual support.”
— Rev. Rick Yramategui, Carmel Valley Chapel
Listening with ‘the ears of our heart’
“The members and friends of our church and Congregation Shir Shalom who recently finished discussing Amy-Jill Levine’s The Misunderstood Jew sat together, listening, speaking and trying to understand. Our meetings were not free of misunderstandings and miscommunication, by any means, but they were filled with careful, sometimes painful listening and speaking. Our conversations allowed us to hear some truths from one another’s lives and to be changed in the hearing, and I’m grateful for the chance to have been part of them.
“In the months ahead, I invite all of us to look for and create other conversations where we have a chance to listen to one another with what Benedict of Nursia called ‘the ears of the heart.’ Take the time to listen carefully and to name the truths in your own hearts. Here, in this congregation, I invite us all to listen and speak so that we can understand and be understood, not so that we can win an argument or prove a point. Especially in this election year, remember that we are called together, not to agree on everything, but to love one another and to learn and grow with one another.”
— Rev. Nancy Taylor, First UCC, Sonoma
Fox can hoot and holler all it wants
“Rigorous religious freedom is the cornerstone of our faith and practice. It allows UCC members to hold dynamically different views. As a member of Trinity UCC, (Sen. Barack) Obama is encouraged to find truth and inspiration in all kinds of religious traditions and all manner of political perspectives. He’s not instructed what to think by a pope, bishops or his own pastor, for the UCC does not grant that power to anyone.
“In my own congregation, I dare not expect that all my congregants agree with either my politics or my reading of Christian tradition. . . Wright and Obama come out of a Christian tradition that steadfastly believes in the power of education — for all citizens. They come out of the tradition that steadfastly believes in the importance of health care — for all citizens. And they come out of a tradition that grapples with issues of racism and prejudice and war — because Americans can do better.
“Pat Robertson and George Bush no long have a stranglehold on Christianity in public discourse. Fox News can hoot and holler all it wants, but that doesn’t change a thing. Faith matters again.”
— Rev. Dave Grishaw-Jones, First UCC, Santa Cruz, in the Santa Cruz Sentinel
Don’t check your brains at the door
“The main thrust of the Pilgrims was the freedom to worship as they chose. They wanted a church that would not copy the elitist church of England. They wanted both pulpit and pew to be free to speak up and speak out.
“Three things follow as a result of this; freedom of the pulpit, an educated clergy and an educated laity. . . The educational emphasis for the congregation is still heard in the words of many UCC pastors: ‘Don’t check you brains at the door.’ The pews are called to be filled with thinking, questioning and differing parishioners.
“If Obama or Wright were the pastor of my church, I probably would have questions and disagreements on a regular basis. But I would not leave my church because of them.”
— Rev. Jim Truesdell, Pioneer UCC, Sacramento, in the Sacramento Bee
Hatred is not a patriotic virtue
“This week, I heard an echo of Christ calling, calling us to a broad vision of the world, calling us to oppose the hatred that so frequently becomes a patriotic virtue, especially at election time.
I hear Christ calling us to engage in acts of compassion and justice rather than stirring pots of suspicion and hatred.
And I hear Christ calling our denomination, my beloved United Church of Christ, into deeper acts of boldness and truth-telling on behalf of people of color.
I hear Christ calling us to stand with our sister church, Trinity United Church of Christ, a church that has stood with the poor and needy in an attempt to raise them up as God’s people of hope and love.
Today I hear Christ calling us out of tombs of our own doubts and fears into new life and new hope on behalf of all God’s children, but especially those who are poor, desperate and attempting to survive in war-torn parts of the globe.
Jesus lives. Jesus lives wherever the spirit of love is alive and death has lost its sting.
I hear this affirmation not as a brief sentence of an experience that took place once and for all, but as an ongoing celebration of the presence of God in the midst of an aching world. Jesus continues to be experienced after his death in radically new ways. He is no longer flesh and blood, but a sure reality, present with us, in jail cells and dark dungeons, on battlefields and at high school dances, in conflict-torn Kenya and at the world-class university across the street.
Today God says, “Yes” to the world. The powers that killed Jesus have not had the last word. Today, God has sided with Jesus against the domination systems of the world and the cross is vindicated. They do not have the last word. God does and the word is “Yes.”
— Rev. Patricia DeJong, First UCC, Berkeley, from her Easter sermon
Politics ignores the claims of the blessed poor and meek
“I have a strong hunch that during the next six months it may be unusually difficult for us to remember who, and what, Jesus Christ regards as “blessed.” And that is because we’re entering a presidential election season, a season of particular urgency, passion and desperation.
As you know, we have currently under way a deepening recession, a financial meltdown in the vital home mortgage sector, rising unemployment, an unpopular foreign war in the Middle East as well as a smoldering cultural war in our own country, an immigration crisis, a continuing threat of terrorism and state-sponsored violence, an escalating bill for food and gasoline, deficit budgets for infrastructure, education and social services, and a looming environmental calamity of unforeseeable consequences.
The challenges, anxieties, angers and intensely conflicting opinions attending each of these issues pretty much guarantees that we’re all in for a very rough ride ahead.
What troubles me is that in such circumstances as these our national political narrative tends to veer so recklessly in the opposite direction from the Sermon on the Mount. In the months ahead we are likely to hear and see a great deal that celebrates the significant — but limited — virtues of power, might, forcefulness, strength, readiness to command and take charge, protection of our way of life, security, toughness, readiness to fight, leadership, self-reliance and certainty.
What we are not likely to hear is much at all that recognizes or affirms the claim of the poor, the meek, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, the persecuted, or those who mourn, who hunger and thirst, who are persecuted and reviled for the sake of righteousness: those very qualities that Jesus said were “blessed,” those very people that Jesus said would “be comforted and filled,” would “inherit the earth, receive mercy and the kingdom of heaven, and be called children of God.”
In this anxious and angry election season it will be essential for our community of faith — for people like you and me — to remember who we are, and where we have come from, to keep the blessed of Jesus in the picture, to broaden and deepen the political dialogue by recalling and retelling the stories of our faith as we have received them in the gospels and renewed them through in our own spiritual experience with Jesus Christ who still says, “Blessed are they: the poor, the meek, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, the persecuted, or those who mourn, who hunger and thirst, who are persecuted and reviled for the sake of righteousness.”
Indeed, with Christians of every time and place, may we yet again “rejoice and be glad” with them, “for their reward is great in heaven.”
— Rev. Frank Baldwin, Community UCC, Orinda, from a sermon on the Beatitudes. |
