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Can These Bones? A Reflection on Pentecost

5/25/2018

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by Mother Brenda Sol
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“To reveal God’s love by nourishing the community through worship, acceptance, and service.”  --St. Andrew’s Mission Statement--

A mission statement encapsulates, and reminds us, of our values as a community. The values we identified as core to who we are as a parish include:
  • We are an open and welcoming community.
  • We love and serve our neighbors together.
  • We care for each other as family.
  • We joyfully live out our faith, grounded in the Gospel.
  • And, we celebrate the journey!
I had been thinking about our core values in relation to Pentecost ever since I read an article from a podcast called “Can These Bones.” I can’t remember where I came across the report, but, of course, with a title like “Can These Bones” it caught my attention because I knew we’d be reading about “dem bones” in the Ezekiel passage on Pentecost Sunday.

As I read the interview with the Executive Vice President of Jet Blue Airlines, I got really excited about how the mission statement of a company in the for-profit world was so similar to ours in the not-for-profit world. Both statements are about making a difference in the world.

The Jet Blue mission statement can be boiled down to two words: Inspiring Humanity.  And the airlines very consciously intend the double meaning: both “inspiring humanity,” as in their actions inspire the rest of the world, and also “inspiring humanity” in terms of taking actions that inspire others to do things that are humane, just, true, and respectful—“inspiring humanity.”

In that article, the Jet Blue executive talked about how not only do all the employees—from the cleaning crew to the cabin crew—have the company’s core values memorized, they are empowered to take actions that might go against protocol, if those actions would better live into the company’s values. So, for instance, after the shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando a few years back, Jet Blue offered free travel for families of victims, back and forth from Puerto Rico to Orlando. So while increasing the company’s bottom-line is surely a desired outcome, it is not one of their core values.

When we identified the core values of St. Andrew’s, we were coached to think about what we would keep doing as a parish—as the body of Christ—even if we received negative criticism for doing so. Jesus might not have ever mentioned the words “core values,” but he certainly embodied and modeled for us the kinds of risks one ought to take when living into “kingdom values.”

Even though his actions did not win Jesus popularity contests with those in charge, he healed people on the Sabbath, he sat with the other, he insisted that people in his company care for each other—even if they were strangers to each other, because, like Jet Blue employees, Jesus had been empowered to take risks in order to better live into the values of God that would inspire humanity.

The Ezekiel story we read on Pentecost reminds us that sometimes—although the values were there all along, we require new life to be breathed into us. So that breath might be a reclaiming of sorts. It’s not that we’ve been doing church wrong, but the fabric of our culture continues to change, so we dig down deep and we find the points at which more people can access Christ’s message, and we breathe new life into the bones of our parish.
Lately life is being breathed into a national movement called “Reclaiming Jesus.” The founding group is a couple dozen clergy from a number of different denominations—from Baptists to Methodists to Episcopalians—including Michael Curry, our current Presiding Bishop. The preamble to the joint statement of faith they created on Ash Wednesday quotes Martin Luther King Jr., who said, “The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state.”

The statement includes six affirmations, each of which is counterbalanced by a rejection. I’ll highlight a couple of them that follow the thread of our core values:
  • We believe each human being is made in God’s image and likeness. Therefore, we reject the resurgence of white nationalism and racism in our nation.
  • We believe how we treat the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the stranger, the sick, and the prisoner is how we treat Christ himself. Therefore, we reject the language and policies of political leaders who would debase and abandon the most vulnerable children of God.
    ​
One of our vestry members was so moved by the statement that she traveled to D.C. to be a part of a prayer vigil the Reclaiming Jesus group held outside the White House this week!

I think that sort of stirring—that feeling that “I have to be a part of this!”—is what the sense of “astonishment” must have been for the people gathered on that day of Pentecost. It’s way more than that they heard their own language being spoken. That kind of astonishment comes in the recognition that the thing that’s happening is so much larger than us, and that we are included in it. That’s the whole point of Pentecost—to alert us, to remind us, to blow through us with a Holy wind that God’s values—God’s love—is for everyone…no matter the language they speak!

This is included in a couple of our core values:
  • We are an open and welcoming community.
  • We love and serve our neighbors together.
Just as Jet Blue has claimed they are about more than simply airplanes, they’re about making a difference in the world, we are not just about this building, we are BEING church out in the world—sharing kingdom values with all we encounter.

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Resurrecting Dignity: The Voices of Young Prophets

4/5/2018

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by Rev. Richard Hogue
PictureCREDIT: Getty Images
A phrase I’ve been meditating on for a few weeks now is: “It’s easy to rush and make a mess, it’s hard to wait and give birth to a promise.” I’m someone who likes to see and get things done. I’m someone who has been too quick to answer, and too quick to move on in the face of frustration. There’s a word for that: impatient. I can be impatient about so many things in life, and I’m not the only one.

When the shootings in Parkland, Florida  rippled through the lives of the young people there, we all experienced some form of impatience. Wherever you stand on issues related to the second amendment and gun control, there’s impatience in the air. Something does need to be done, but what, and how? How do we resurrect dignity in the face of our own impatience?

The young people of Parkland spoke. They used their voice to raise this impatience. In the space filled with sorrow and anger, they used the instrument God gives to prophets. How long, o Lord, how long? They restored their dignity by speaking to vulnerability and suffering.

When I imagine impatience and waiting, I see a sort of dance. Impatience wants things done now, and waiting is okay — letting some pieces fall naturally into place. Neither is wrong, we should want things done quickly; and we need to learn to heel our expectations. All of this is wrapped in the most valuable resource we have: time. In our Greek scriptures in the New Testament, there are two words for time. Kronos (chronology) is sequential time: this happened then that happened. Kairos is opportune time: the time to act, decisive time. I’ll throw in one more Greek word for fun: kerygma. Kerygma is proclamation.

For youth and young adults at St. Andrew’s and across the United States, we are in a moment of kairos. Our confirmation class is at an opportune time to practice their (kerygmatic) proclamation of faith. This summer, the youth group will participate in a kairos moment in fire swept areas of Northern California, proclaiming a Gospel truth of God’s wish to restore us and all of creation. With some help from my fellow young adults, we will embody a moment of kairos, seeking to serve people in our age group by studying our needs and understanding what needs kerygma amongst us.

What we make of any kairos moment becomes kronos, a sequence of events, in the rearview mirror. But in this moment, we still need to listen for the Spirit, discern our call, and then act in prayer and hope. What Christians kerygmatically voice is the resurrection of dignity of all people through the life of Jesus Christ and the grace of God. We, as the body of Christ, are called to restore dignity wherever it lies in shambles, or simply needs restoring. With the example of the Parkland students in mind, may we speak boldly in this kairos moment, and may we proclaim the restoration of all people’s dignity.



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Amidst Another Mass Shooting, We Consider How to Love More Than We Hurt

2/18/2018

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by Paula M. Fitzgibbons
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On Ash Wednesday, as we in the church pondered both love and death, 17 children were killed — and many more wounded — in yet another school shooting. This time, the lives were lost in Parkland, Florida.

It is natural to respond to such news by either fighting or fleeing. As a parent of three teenagers, I wanted nothing more than to hide the news from my children and go about our Valentine’s Day/Ash Wednesday events. Others jumped into argument mode, immediately debating the issues that arise when there is a mass shooting. There is a reason we hold a strong fight or flight response: it helps us to survive even the thought of such incomprehensible atrocities.

There is another response we can work to muster, though. We can take action. On Ash Wednesday, we considered our own sin and mortality. “I think we need to ask ourselves today,” I started with my kids on our way home from both a Valentine’s Day activity and receiving ashes, “If, when we die, we want to be remembered for our sinfulness or for what we did to ease the suffering in the world caused by sinfulness. Will we be remembered for how we loved or for how we hurt?”

What actions can we — as a community of faith — do to love more than we hurt?

We can work to dismantle the hatred and bigotry that often lead to such violent acts. We can commit to nurturing those who feel overwhelmed by loneliness and isolation. We can work to effect the legislative changes necessary to reduce gun violence. We can create systems that assist those whose needs outweigh their resources. We can take steps to build strong, welcoming communities that embrace all people. 

Responding to the mass shooting in Las Vegas in 2017, the Episcopal organization Bishops United Against Gun Violence wrote, “We must look into our own hearts and examine the ways in which we are culpable or complicit in the gun violence that surrounds us every day.”

We at St. Andrew’s express our prayers for and solidarity with all those affected by the school shooting in Parkland, Florida. We vow to take action to eliminate our own complicity in violence and to help heal a nation lost to grief.
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You can read the entire statement from Bishops United Against Gun Violence here and their more recent statement regarding school shootings here. 

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Seeking Peace

1/31/2018

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by The Rev. Brenda Sol, Rector
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Several years ago, I decided to reclaim a cross pendant I hadn’t worn in a long, long time. I spent a lot of my young adult years exploring other spiritual traditions, and, at the time, was really turned-off by what I knew about Christianity. By the time I found the cross, hidden away in a drawer at my parents’ house, alongside my 4-H ring, I had a new understanding of Christianity.

I also had warm memories of this particular cross – I think it was a confirmation gift from one of my grandmothers – and yet I was uncomfortable wearing a cross out in public. For starters, I lived in Seattle, where I had previously been comfortable in the land of “spiritual but not religious.” Moreover, I didn’t want other people to make up a story about me – judge me, I guess – based on my jewelry. 

I had embraced the teachings of Jesus that we are all beloved children of God and that right behind “loving God with all our hearts, all our souls, all our minds, and all our strength,” the second most important commandment is to “love our neighbors as ourselves.” So after much thought and prayer, I realized that I needed another symbol to slide onto the chain to complete the message I wanted to communicate — a peace sign.

I’d been wearing this peace sign/cross combination for quite awhile when I visited Bethlehem four years ago. Standing alongside the dividing wall in Bethlehem, reading the outcries of people around the world to bring peace to this land, I understood, at a deeper level, all that my favorite necklace means.
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Encinitas, California, 92024
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