Telling My/Our/God's Story

This week I got an inquiry about our church from someone who is interested in attending, wanting to know a bit about who we are, what we embrace, etc. It’s not an uncommon question and I suspect that if you engage with neighbors about St. Mark you might face the same kinds of questions. This particular inquiry came from someone who has spent most of their life in an evangelical church, so my answer was shaped in that direction. When we tell our story like this, we end up telling a curious blend of “my story,” “our story,” and “God’s story” together. There is no need to try to separate one from the other, because we experience them as an amalgam, not as disparate things. So, let me tell my/our/God’s story below (roughly what I wrote in response to the inquiry, but expanded a bit). And perhaps it will enable you to find fresh ways to tell your/our/God’s story as well. 

Many of us at St. Mark have had journeys from evangelicalism to a church that embraces a more capacious view of the gospel of Jesus Christ. That was my experience, raised and educated in the Pentecostal Holiness Church. Back when I left that church for the Presbyterian Church, it seemed like all of the traffic was moving in the other direction. In the years since I became Presbyterian, a lot of folks have taken the journey, who are sometimes called 'exvangelicals,' finding at St. Mark a meaningful blend of commitment to the gospel and attention to what God is doing in our world today. What I still appreciate from my church upbringing is a dedication to meaningful worship, a deep love for the Scriptures, and a strong commitment to sharing the joy and justice of the gospel. 

I have spent many years learning to embrace the loves I that inherited differently than I was trained to embrace them. Worship at St. Mark is liturgical, in the sense of following the model of Isaiah 6:1-6, which begins with adoration, recognizes that when we encounter God's glory we realize our own unworthiness, so we offer our prayers of confession and hear an assurance of pardon. And then we listen for the Word of God as a way of instructing us in our life journeys. It can feel a little stilted at times, even though we aim for a proper balance of 'order' and 'ardor.' We have a Sunday morning service that would be called “traditional,” with a choir and activities for children or Sunday School (which resumes Sept. 18). We also have a Saturday evening service that follows much of the same form, but with a more contemplative feel, accompanied by a jazz trio. Likewise, we have a very strong weekly Bible Study, where we spend time in a critical study of the Scriptures, with attention to the historical context and the meaning that the Scriptures have in our contemporary world. And our way of sharing the joy and justice of the gospel is not about coercing someone into making a faith profession, but begins with our trust that God is already at work in everyone’s life, making “evangelism” more a matter of discovery than persuasion. 

Much of our church life is shaped around two biblical texts. The first is Micah 6:8, which calls us to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly before God. And much of our faithfulness is driven by the last parable of Matthew 25, where we meet the Christ in the experiences we have with the poor, the imprisoned, and the marginalized. With those Scriptures in our DNA, we are always going to be a church that lives on the cutting edge of justice, whether it is by practicing radical inclusivity, advocating for environmental sustainability, or engaging in anti-racism work. All in all, we are a congregation very committed to inclusion and compassion inwardly, justice externally. 

So, how would you tell your/our/God’s story?

Mark of St. Mark

St. Mark SMARTER Stuff

 Friends, 

 

Today’s missive is about two things: Our COVID policy and our forthcoming Text Study. 

 

This week, following a motion by our Health Ministries Commission, the Session voted to continue the COVID policy at St. Mark that is currently in place. The policy requires masks for those who have been unvaccinated and recommends but does not require masking for those who have been vaccinated. Of course, there is no perfectly right answer to this challenge. You can enter a medical plaza and facemasks are required. Then, you can go into a restaurant and see your doctor there without a mask. It’s not hypocrisy. It is simply that each decision-making body is looking at the science and then making choices based on a balance between the data, the context, and the various states of mind at play. Your Session is one of those decision-making bodies, listening to our health team as well as concerns that others have, and making the best decision we can. Thank you all for understanding that this is not an exact process and for bearing with it. 

 

One thing I’ve really appreciated lately is our Parish Nurse Ann Scott’s acronym of being SMARTER: Shots, Masks, Awareness, Reaction, Testing, Education and RX (treatment). Significantly, the Session’s decision is to invite you to be the one who ultimately decides your best way of ensuring that others are safe. For the Session to offer you that power means that they trust in the common sense and good will of each of our members and guests. I really appreciate their decision-making process and I hope you do as well. 

 

Second thing: Many of you have reached out with interest in participating in our Text Study that begins in September. The first 30-minute video will go up on Monday, September 5 (Labor Day), with the first discussion following on Wednesday, September 7 at 9:30 AM in the Bonhoeffer Room. We will be taking a detailed look at the first portion of Luke’s gospel all the way through our Advent season. I will give out a full schedule of each week’s scripture readings and theme in our first class and email it to those who are on the list. 

 

I am combining the previous email list that we have been using, and adding some of you who have contacted me since last Friday. So, again, if you want to be added to the email list that will alert you to when the videos are ready for viewing, as well as how to view them, please drop me a note here.

 

Third thing (Bonus!): I cannot tell you how delightful it is for each of us when someone finally feels free to return to gathered worship after an extended time away during the pandemic. It is wonderful to see you and I hope you know that. And, if you are still hesitating on making your way back, please remember that when you are ready to do so, we are ready to welcome you with open arms safe gestures of welcome. And we are anxious for you to meet the nine new members that we have received into our church, along with their children, over the last few weeks. 

 

Mark of St. Mark

Text Study and Reading the Scriptures

 Friends, 

 

Our weekly Text Study resumes in September. Every Monday we will upload a 30-minute video of a study onto YouTube, then we will have a one-hour discussion on Wednesday mornings at 9:30 here on the church campus. The discussion will be on zoom and will be recorded, so you can also watch it live or later from home. If you want to get an email each week notifying you when the study is ready and sending the zoom link, please drop me a note here or call Sue-Ann in the church office (949-644-1341). Next week I will describe the focus of our study and list the different texts for each week. I’m trying to coordinate the study with our worship services, so there are some discussions that I need to have with our staff before I present it publicly. I think you will like what we’re cooking up.  

 

This week in worship we will be hearing the story of Luke 13:10-17 during our Saturday and Sunday worship services. It is about a woman who was bent over double and is released from that condition and raised upright. I have an essay on the Political Theology blog about this story that you can read here. Or, I have a verse-by-verse analysis of the story on my blog that you can read here. In most Bibles, this story is prefaced with the subtitle, “Jesus heals a crippled woman.” There are 1,001 reasons why we ought not to use that subtitle, some of which I will address in this weekend’s sermon. For now, I want to address something about the way that we hear healing stories in the gospels, which has a troubling effect on the way we think of abilities and disabilities in real life. 

 

I recently heard a recording of Dick Cavett interviewing Ray Charles during which he asked, “If I could just wave a magic wand and give you your sight back, would you want me to?” Sighted people might imagine an enthusiastic “Yes!” but Ray Charles’ answer was very circumspect. He said he would like to see, perhaps for a short time, to see his children’s faces and perhaps a few works of art and natural beauty. But he was not interested in having his sight restored for the rest of his life. He was happy with the way that he encountered and experienced the world as a blind person, “So, no thanks.” That interview enabled me to see the wisdom behind the story in Mark’s gospel when Jesus encounters a “blind beggar” named Bartimaeus, who is screaming to Jesus for mercy. When Jesus meets him, he asks, “What do you want me to do for you?” In this case, Bartimaeus indeed wanted his sight back. In the ancient stories any disability seems to be treated that way – as a lessening of humanity, a deficit that needs restoring. Ray Charles represented a different way of speaking about his blindness – not as a deficit or a weakness, but as a different and rich way of experiencing the world.  

 

I believe we need to reassess the worldview that is presumed in gospel stories about healing. The point is not to criticize the gospel writers or the culture in which they were embedded. We can assume that they were inspired people doing the best they could with what they were aware of, and so we should aspire to do the best we can with what we are aware of. When we see a person with a disability in the gospels, the presumption of the story is typically that they want or need that disability to be “healed.” That notion of “healing” often becomes either a way that the power of the God ought to be present in our lives today, or a magical view of the world from the past that we dismiss with eye-rolling. I would suggest, instead, that it reflects a worldview present generally (not just among biblical communities) in the 1^st century. As such, that view of disabilities and healing is fair game for us to interrogate as those who take the Bible seriously. When we do so, we see that many of the gospel stories have subtle ways of differentiating between a person’s identity or worth and their struggles or disabilities. But we also see how many of those stories are grounded in assumptions with which we disagree. I think this question about the worldview that is present in healing stories is even more important, or at least prior to, the common question of whether healings still occur today. 

 

There’s so much more to explore here, but I should stop now. One cannot dig oneself out of a hole by digging deeper and deeper. 

 

Mark of St. Mark

Death, with an "I"

 During the last few weeks those of us of a certain age have lost some childhood, teenage, or young adulthood heroes. A friend of mine – a fabulous singer – has taken the death of Olivia Newton John very hard, partly because she was coming into her musical identity as he was developing his own love of music. Another friend was particularly touched by the death of her role model Nichelle Nichols, who played Lieutenant Uhura on the Star Trek television show at a time when few African American women were cast in leadership roles. And many southern Californians heard the news of Vin Scully’s death with fond memories of his comforting voice wishing us “a very pleasant good evening” and informing us that “It’s time for Dodger baseball.” Finally, I had a basketball jersey when I was in elementary school, with the number 9. After the season I got to keep the Jersey and I removed the number so I could flip it and hang Bill Russell’s number 6 on the wall above my bed – my earliest childhood sports hero. It is sobering to see those whose lives are inspirational to use age or die. We know that one or the other is inevitable, but part of admiring folks is holding in our memory a snapshot of their lives as we appreciated it, instead of allowing them to move on. Likewise, it is a curious thing about death – we know it is inevitable, yet it saddens and surprises us all the same. 

 

I recently read a story about a dad telling his son about the chance meeting that brought him and the boy’s mother together. It was a series of incidents, each of which could easily have gone otherwise, and he ended the story by saying, “It’s hard to believe, but your mother and I were very close to never meeting each other.” The son asked, “If you hadn’t met mom, then who would be my dad?” The correct answer to that question would be, “You would not exist.” But the idea of never-having-existed, what the philosophers call “nonbeing,” is a dreadful thought that sends existentialists into lifelong despair. What kind of dad would foist that burden onto a child? So, the dad said, “I guess one of your mom’s old boyfriends would have been your dad.” ~\_(ツ)_/~ 

 

Imagining one’s nonbeing is not just a challenge for children. In his book, The Reason of Following, Robert Scharlemann notes the way we ‘hide ourselves’ in everyday talk about death when we say, “Everyone has to die sometime.” That broad language takes on new meaning when we add, “And I, too, have to die.” Suddenly the “I” that is hidden in the word “Everyone” becomes stark and open. Scharlemann goes on to state “I have to die” differently as, “To die is something that I have.” I carry it around with me; I own it; it is part of who I am. And yet, Scharlemann is right to say that this ‘possession’ is what we hide in everyday talk, partly because we don’t want to appear dreadful or morbid. Some Christian folk quickly point to the resurrection and aver that death is nothing real, but I suspect much of that bravado is just a pious form of ignoring the “I” in “Everyone must die.” 

 

I don’t know if it is healthy or helpful to contemplate our death to a great degree. The “preacher” in Ecclesiastes implies that our inevitable death makes everything else nothing but “vanity.” My own thoughts and faith move in a different direction. Finding the “I” hidden in the phrase, “Everyone must die” can be vastly liberating. Who I am and what I do will always be finite, mortal, temporal, ever “imperfect” in the sense of never-being-completed or perfected. The inescapability of the “I” in “Everyone must die” releases us from grandiose schemes of being eternally young or infinite in our life and accomplishments. Once we let that fantasy go we are open to meeting the Christ of the resurrection, the one for whom death was a reality and yet who lives. If we rush to resurrection too soon, it can be a copout, a way of hiding the “I” in “Everyone.” But, if we find ourselves in the phrase, “Everyone must die,” we reach that moment of finite vulnerability that enables us to embrace as we are embraced by the one who is “the way, the truth, and the life.” 

 

Well, those are my ruminations for this morning. And a very pleasant day to all of you. 

 

Mark of St. Mark

To Gentle the World

 Friends, 

 

Did you happen to read Yesterday’s Daily Meditation from Richard Rohr? (That’s how I start my mornings. It prepares me for reading the news.) Thursday’s meditation began with this story: 

 

Once a brother committed a sin in Scetis, and the elders assembled and sent for Abba Moses. He, however, did not want to go. Then the priest sent a message to him, saying: “Come, everybody is waiting for you.” So he finally got up to go. And he took a worn-out basket with holes, filled it with sand, and carried it along. The people who came to meet him said: “What is this?” Then the old man said: “My sins are running out behind me, yet I do not see them. And today I have come to judge the sins of someone else.” When they heard this, they said nothing to the brother and pardoned him.

 

Then the meditation moved to this profound comment about contemplation by Sister Joan Chittister: “Contemplation breaks us open to ourselves. The fruit of contemplation is self-knowledge, not self-justification. ‘The nearer we draw to God,’ Abba Mateos said, ‘the more we see ourselves as sinners.’ We see ourselves as we really are, and knowing ourselves we cannot condemn the other. We remember with a blush the public sin that made us mortal. We recognize with dismay the private sin that curls within us in fear of exposure. Then the whole world changes when we know ourselves. We gentle it. The fruit of self-knowledge is kindness. Broken ourselves, we bind tenderly the wounds of the other.” 

 

I find that phrase, "We gentle [the whole world]" to be very arresting and worthy of bouncing around the echo chambers of my heart and mind all day long. While I’m not always a fan of verbing nouns and adjectives (see what I did there?), this one is well done. We gentle the whole world. What can I do, day after day, to make the word “gentle” a verb? And, to gentle “the whole world”? That sounds like a tall order. 

 

There are folks in this world whom I think deserve a swift kick in the seat. But that’s the justice of someone who is self-righteous, not someone who is self-knowing, whose self-righteousness has melted in the presence of a truly holy God. For those who have stood, naked and open before God, we can only choose paths that are not filled with judgment, spite, or hate. To “gentle” the world seems a very worthy alternative. 

 

I like this description of contemplation. It is tempting to look at meditation, prayer, mindfulness, and other practices of centering in stillness as simply taking a breather from the madness of the world. What Sister Chittister is describing is different. The breath that we take in contemplation is purposeful, without a prescribed goal other than to be transformed into whatever we are called to be. One thing that makes me grateful for Dr. Gail Sterns, who has led mindfulness meetings here, is that she pushes us to think of mindfulness as more than just something that we are doing in our own heads. It matters that God is present, transforming our space to sacred space. That encounter with a holy and loving God is what allows us to see ourselves in truth – our failures as well as our gifts and beauty. To see ourselves truly, while being loved through it all, is what transforms us from vengeful self-righteousness to people who gentle a world that is often harsh and broken.

 

Oh, I’ve rambled enough. Sister Chittister’s phrase, “We gentle the world,” has captured me and I am a grateful prisoner to it. 

 

Mark of St. Mark

This and That

 Friends, it was absolutely delightful to be in worship with you again last weekend. We use the phrase “Presence of the Holy Spirit” to try to describe that strangely wonderful connection that we feel when we are gathered in worship, even with all our differences of opinion and stages in our faith journeys. It’s a connection that is more powerful than any lingering resentments we may harbor, more sustainable than passing misunderstanding, and more comforting than words can convey. For all the criticisms that one can generate against the church in general or a church in particular, that shared heartbeat makes it all worthwhile. I missed that when I was on sabbatical and at home recuperating from COVID. 

 

Second, I want to speak a bit about our Saturday Evening worship services. As you may recall, we began the “Saturdays @ 5” worship seven years ago, after spending some time exploring and discerning together how we might widen our music and worship repertoire here at St. Mark. After about a year of experimenting with different styles and locations, we settled on a worship experience that was deliberately contemplative and – because of the smaller numbers – intimate. I’ve never cared for the language of “contemporary” and “traditional” or the “worship wars” approach to making worship and musical choices. I’m more inclined to think that each congregation has its own gifts and character that ought to indicate how God is glorified most authentically, rather than relying on popular styles and publishing houses to provide one-size-fits-all worship products. It’s the same reason why I cannot use too many prefabricated worship litanies and prayers that are available for churches. It’s worth the time and effort to write our own liturgy week after week to capture the spirit and power of what God is doing here. And I want to add that I have never tried to siphon off Sunday worshipers to boost the Saturday services. Our Sunday worship experiences is a beautiful thing in its own right, where God uses our gifts and talents marvelously week after week. Our two services are not in competition with one another and never will be.

 

The “Saturdays @ 5” worship services have evolved nicely and continue to provide a very meaningful worship opportunity for St. Mark members and our surrounding community. Up until 2020, the average attendance was climbing each year. But the shutdown during the pandemic affected worship attendance at both of our services (and everywhere else for that matter) and it has been especially noticeable on Saturdays because of the smaller numbers initially. After the shutdown and prior to my sabbatical, our “Saturdays @ 5” services were rebuilding slowly. We decided not to provide the customary “Saturdays @ 5” services during my sabbatical because it would have required housing our guest speakers overnight, providing meals for the entire weekend, and other added costs. As a result, we are again in a mode of rebuilding the momentum of our Saturday worship. 

 

I have often felt that our “Saturdays @ 5” worship might be where those who do not have happy memories of worshiping in their past may find a place that’s just different enough and just familiar enough to be meaningful. If you know of someone searching for a meaningful worship experience, but for whom Sunday morning may not be the right solution, I encourage you to bring them to a Saturday service. But, again, if you are a happy worshiper yourself on Sunday mornings, stay there and keep it sacred. It is a gift. 

 

Third, I want to say that some of you responded very kindly to my invitation to “return to worship” two weeks ago. I was looking forward to starting anew with you after my sabbatical absence. I did not know at the time that I would be down for the count that first weekend, but we are all better now and I look forward to seeing you again. 

 

This weekend we will be welcoming some new members into our congregation and I will be sharing a very personal message with you, which I think is important for understanding our unique ministry and calling as a church. I look forward to seeing in worship either Saturday or Sunday. 

 

Mark of St. Mark 

Catching Up

 Last weekend, in an opening video during worship, I mentioned that moment in Luke’s gospel when Jesus tells his disciples, “With desire I have desired” to eat this meal with you. I felt the depth of that redundancy all last week, as I was so anxious to be in worship with you again and to participate in all the weekend activities that we had planned. With desire I had desired to be with you again! Alas, a better quote might have been the old Yiddish phrase drawn from the 2^ndPsalm, Mann tracht, un Gott lacht, meaning, “Humans plan and God laughs.” With all the tragedy in the world God could use a good laugh, so I’m okay with being the butt of that one. However, I am ready to return this week and be with you physically, not virtually. According to the protocols that we follow for our staff, Tuesday was the end of my 5 day isolation period, which is followed by a 5 day time of extra caution – wearing a mask and keeping social distance. That means I will be in person for Julie Hume’s memorial service on Saturday morning, as well as for worship on Saturday evening and Sunday morning. And, except for those moments when I am actively speaking to the group, I will be wearing my surgical mask and careful about distance. And, once again, thanks all around to our excellent staff and volunteers for stepping up and making all things smooth. Okay, enough about that. Now, for the bitter and the better. 

 

The Bitter: It is astounding how commonplace mass murder has become in the United States. During my sabbatical there were three such events that particularly caught our attention – A racially motivated shooting that killed ten persons and wounded three more at a supermarket in Buffalo, NY; a mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, killing nineteen students and two teachers, wounding seventeen other people; and a Fourth of July parade shooting in Highland Park, IL, that killed seven people and wounded 46 more either directly or as a result of panicked fleeing. Each of the shooters was a male between the ages of 18-21. 

 

We don’t know if each of these young men had the same politics, if they played the same video games, listened to the same music, or watched the same violent movies. We don’t know if they have similar religious feelings or any such feelings at all. But something enabled three young men to conclude that, whatever itch or grievance they felt that they had, their course of action was to use weapons to murder children and adults, most of whom - if not all of whom - were strangers to them. There is something about our culture – that’s the catch-all term for speaking about all three of these events collectively – that made the action of ‘callously taking the lives of others’ an option. Ours is not a culture that instills such a deep sense of respect for human life that such an act would go unthought. While we might say it is “unthinkable,” it is not. They thought it, they planned it, and they did it. And the worst part of this cultural misanthropy may be that during that same period we hardly noticed other atrocious acts of violence because the numbers weren’t quite as large. 

 

During that same time, the Supreme Court made any governmental action toward regulating the sale and possession of such deadly firearms even more difficult with a ruling that seems incredibly myopic. I’m not a “strict constitutionalist” for the same reasons that I’m not a biblical fundamentalist. As such I don’t see where 1^st century mores regarding marriage should be binding on 21^st century relationships, and I don’t see why late 18^th century dispositions toward firearms should be binding on 21^st century armaments. These opinions, of course, are my own. I am not speaking on behalf of St. Mark or the Presbyterian Church USA, and these are matters on which persons of faith and good will can disagree. My only purpose in mentioning them as forcefully as I am is to recognize the added layer of anger or frustration that many of us have felt on top of the horror of the mass shootings themselves. 

 

All of that is to say that, while I was on sabbatical, I was commiserating with you, experiencing the horror and the frustration of things that lie beyond our immediate control. At the same time, we feel some measure of responsibility. So, we pray. And we educate. And we advocate. And we keep going, using the power of persuasion and good will to work toward justice. 

 

The Better: While we cannot repair the state of our shared culture magically, quickly, or easily, we can provide a better way. One way of doing that is through our youth ministry. This weekend we have four adults and seven youth attending the Youth Conference at the Montreat Presbyterian Conference Center nestled among the Black Mountains of North Carolina. Pastor Hayes will tell you that anyone in the southeastern portion of the Presbyterian Church knows about the beautiful setting of Montreat and the energetic Youth Conferences that they host every summer. If their week goes as we anticipate (see the Yiddish phrase above), we can expect our seven youth and four chaperones to return with energizers and energy, along with a lot of new friends and Instagram followers. While this week should be fun and enjoyable, it is also one way that we cultivate a different way of being in the world, based on compassion, hope, and justice. This week we will lift up our Montreat attendees in prayer as part of our radical hope that our world can be a place of joy and justice. 

 

See you in worship, 

Mark of St. Mark