The Past Is Forgiven; the Future Is Open

One of the most effective Young Church moments I ever witnessed was when a mother with two children talked about their family’s nighttime routine. She or her spouse would sit on the side of each child’s bed and talk about their day – what went well, what did not go well, etc. – and say a prayer after. Then, especially on days that had been very challenging for the children or the parents, she would tell them that tomorrow would be a new day, a time to begin anew, and all is forgiven. It was a nighttime routine that embraced the words we heard last Sunday during worship, “The past is forgiven and the future is open.” And that’s how I invite you to embrace the beginning of this new year. 

 

The past is forgiven – that’s an interesting phrase. The word “forgiveness” itself is quite interesting. The Greek term ἀφίημι that is sometimes translated “forgiveness” in the New Testament is actually a very versatile word. It can be translated as leave, forgive, allow, forsake, put away, send away, divorce, lay aside, let go, or yield up, depending on the context. Translators simply have to do their best with it, since translation is also interpretation. I’ve notice that if the word “evil” or “sin” is anywhere nearby, translators tend to go straight to “forgive.” I wish they could be a bit more reflective on it. Nonetheless, the thread of continuity among all the potential translations is that ἀφίημι involved letting go of something. 

 

So, when we say “The past is forgiven,” what might we mean by it? The phrase many of us have been taught to say it that we need forgiveness for “things done and left undone in thought, word, and deed.” There is a lot of wisdom in that phrase, but I think we often hear it too narrowly. What if the word “forgiven” is secondarily about our life experience on an individual level, but primarily about the life we have together. If, for example, someone we love has mistreated us and we are harboring pain over it, for that past to be “forgiven” does not mean that we are assuming fault, but that we are letting it go, or at least bracketing it into its proper place, rather than letting it destroy us any further. Or, if we live in a system that benefits some and punishes others, to say the past is “forgiven” can we a way of being liberated from simply accepting injustice as “the way it is” and to allow for new possibilities. In each case, the connection between the past being “forgiven” and the future being “open” is powerful. 

 

So, how might we live into the phrase, “The past is forgiven and the future is open”? On an individual level, I pray that you will find ways to be as forgiving of yourself as God is of you. Whether it is something “done or left undone in thought, word, or deed,” or whether it is a hurt that you have suffered that has taken the wind out of your sails, God is a renewing God, ever ready to give a new beginning. On a congregational level, I pray that we can be as forgiving of one another as God is of us. If you are someone who has had to pull back from the community – perhaps driven by doubt or disagreement or simply not ready to be in close quarters with the coronavirus still at large – here’s what I want you to know. No one has to stop and grovel at the door. It is there for you to enter joyfully and you will be joyfully received. And on a communal level, I pray that we will be liberated from some of our more ungraceful, unmerciful habits of mind and begin to find beautiful ways to live in harmony with the earth and with one another. May the past be forgiven and our collective minds freed to think anew about what it means to be human in the 21^st century. 

 

No doubt you can imagine other ways of living into the phrase, “The past is forgiven and the future is open.” I invite you to do so. And please, feel free to send me your thoughts on the matter so that I can benefit from your insights. 

 

The past is forgiven and the future is open, 

Mark of St Mark

Greetings to You

Well, my friends, the time is nigh. Our mantle is full of cards from friends, near and far, including many of you. Many of them are delightful, a few are heartbreaking. Such is life and this is the time of year when we are open with one another about life in all of its fullness. I think sending Christmas cards is one of our best traditions. We send our best wishes and sentiments to one another, because God sent God’s own love to us in Jesus Christ. So, in that spirit, I offer our family Christmas letter below. More than anything else, the Davis family want you to know how much we treasure you and our call to be part of the church life here at St. Mark. 

 

‘Tis Christmas time in the year twenty-twenty-two,

but surely that is something you already knew.

What you may not know, unless you are psychic,

is how this year went and why the Davisfolk liked it.

 

This year Chris and Mark did something quite radical,

after years of churching, they took a sabbatical.

And now they are fluent in the tongues one should say,

things like “merci, grazie, Laizzes le Bon Temps Rouler.”

 

Mickey, Amanda, and the sweet Miss Tallulah,

delight us with videos, FaceTime, or Zoomah.

They make music and art, raising dog, cats, and kittens,

and live where it’s cold and one has to wear mittens.

 

Luke cooks up a storm, making meals that are scrumptious.

I can’t share his big news – that would be presumptuous.

Just trust when I say that you’ll wear a smile,

when you read next year what he did the meanwhile.

 

Nic labors in law his last year at the ‘Zag;

with torts, contracts, (Lindy), and peer reviewed mags.

But he doesn’t stop there, with some school nerd conforming,

he’s often on stage with his bass while performing.

 

Abigail crossed one thing off her bucket list,

as the last of four children to be a barrista-ist!

She dances and teaches, drives a big ol’ van,

and spends much time hanging with her Lucas man.

 

So that’s how it went for us Davises this year,

and now we do wish you a load of good cheer.

Christmas began with the world’s greatest gift,

so joy, peace, and hope is for you our wish list.

Maddening Repetition and Yearly Advent Hope

 Friends, 

 

Ten years ago today was a Sunday, so I was preaching in Iowa as part of an Advent series called “Great Expectations.” I focused on the part of the Christmas story that originated with the prophet Isaiah – A young woman shall conceive and shall bear a child and you shall call his name ‘Emmanuel’ – and was ruminating about the power of children as symbols of innocence, a fresh start, exuberant possibilities. Then I wrote this: 

 

Friday’s awful tragedy at Sandy Hook elementary school has laid a pall on even our best feelings and sentiments. It reminds us that the prophets, whose voices we hear during the season of Advent, are ever speaking out of a time of dismay – where disasters leave even the mightiest leader speechless and numb. And just when we thought that we had this seasonal celebration figured out, suddenly we find ourselves groping for some way of comprehending the incomprehensible.

 

It is still, ten years later, hard to wrap one’s head around the reality of Sandy Hook. It’s hard to imagine how someone can dehumanize children and teachers to make them targets of murder without hesitation. It’s hard to understand how a nation that pretends to value life seems to love its guns more. It’s hard to comprehend how an unspeakable tragedy like Sandy Hook has been repeated again and again and again. It’s simply wrong that guns are the number one cause of death among children and teens in the US. In an essay on Wednesday, German Lopez offered this chart and the observations that I will cite below it. 

As this chart shows, “The U.S. accounts for 97 percent of gun-related child deaths among similarly large and wealthy countries, despite making up just 46 percent of this group’s overall population.” What makes the US stand out so much, German states, is this: “The U.S. has more guns than people.” (German Lopez, “The Lives They Lived,” The Morning, The New York Times, December 14, 2022.) 

 

Ah, but we’ve heard all this before. We’ve heard the arguments and the counterarguments. We’ve seen the cycle: Hideous act of violence; outrage; gun control activists demanding change; thoughts and prayers from weapons manufacturers and their supporters; very little change, if any. Repeat. I don’t mean to be cynical. There have been some small incremental changes along the way that do matter. But, by and large, it is a frustrating cycle of the same thing over and over. 

 

The endless cycle of violence may be one of the best arguments for repeating the Advent season year after year. Year after year we hear Isaiah longing for a day when weapons are transformed into tools. Year after year we hear John the Baptist calling for radical and systemic transformation. Year after year we proclaim how Jesus came to us as God’s gift to free us from the power of sin and rescue us from our own worst tendencies. Year after year we lean into hope – hope for a new day, a day of peace, and time of justice. And year after year we learn that a baby in the manger doesn’t magically change everything, but invites us into a new way of being where everything can change. So, year after year we embrace hope anew. It is a chastened hope, a hope that remembers last year and the year before that and ten years ago with sober reality. But year after year we proclaim hope because to lose hope is to allow the powers of death and destruction to have the last word. 

 

The season of Advent is much more than just holding our horses a few weeks before celebrating Christmas. It is the performance of hope itself, a hope that resists violence and lives toward peace. Over and over. 

 

May this season fill you with a resilient and persistent hope,

Mark of St. Mark

Songs of Justice; Songs of Hope

 My Friends, 

 

This weekend marks the beginning of the season of Advent. The word “advent” is the Latin term for “coming” and the Season of Advent is the time that we spend deliberately preparing for the coming of Jesus on Christmas. It is the tradition here and in many Christian churches to spend the four weekends prior to Christmas preparing for our Christmas Eve and Christmas Day celebrations. (We do not typically have worship on Christmas Day, but this year Christmas is on a Sunday, so we will!) 

 

For this season, we will be looking at four “Songs” in Luke’s story about Christmas. Perhaps they are not songs proper, but they are poetic in nature, something you can see visually when you read your Bible and the words are arranged in poetic meter, rather than in prose paragraphs. 

 

The songs that we will read together are Mary’s “Magnificat,” Zechariah’s “Benedictus,” Simeon’s “Nunc Dimittis,” and the angels’ “Gloria.” Generally, I don’t like using Latinate terms because I associate the prevalence of Latin with that part of the church’s past when the radicality of following Jesus was compromised as the church became the official religion of the Roman Empire. (That process, the association of the church’s missionary movements with colonization, and the use of Christianity to support racism in the US are what I consider the three greatest sins of our church history.) But, alas, Latinisms are so tightly bound to the history and language of the church that they cannot always be avoided. So, I use the term “Advent” and these titles for the songs with ambivalence. I appreciate the faithfulness that our tradition has handed down over the last two millennia, and I grieve the brokenness and sinfulness that has always been a part of our tradition.  

 

Mary’s “Magnificat” is so called because when her song – which begins with the words, “My soul magnifies the Lord” – was translated into Latin, “Magnificat” is how the word “magnifies” was translated. Likewise, Zechariah’s “Benedictus” is the Latin translation of his opening word that is translated in English Bibles as “Blessed.” (It’s a different word from the first word of the Beatitudes.) And then there’s Simeon’s song, historically called “Nunc Dimittis” because that’s the Latin for the first words, “Now dismiss.” And finally, the angels sing, “Glory to God in the highest,” the first word of which in Latin is “Gloria.” So, there’s Latin all over this Advent season for us. My two whole weeks of studying Latin in graduate school better pay off! 

 

We are calling this time of preparation, “Songs of Justice; Songs of Hope.” And here I will share a story that I’ve shared before, but it is golden: Soren Kierkegaard once went to a Christmas worship service and noticed that the wealthiest people were there, dressed in finery and seated in their paid seats in the ornate sanctuary. Then, someone began singing Mary’s Magnificat. You can find it in Luke 1:46-56. It speaks of God bringing down the high places, lifting up the low, filling the hungry and sending the rich away empty. Kierkegaard began laughing and expected everyone else to join in. But, as he looked around, nobody was laughing with him and he was perplexed. Surely they must have been hearing Mary’s words as a joke, because if they were serious words the people gathered on that day were hearing of their own demise. No one laughed, but it appeared that no one took Mary’s words seriously either. Is that really what we expect with the coming of the Christ? 

 

Kierkegaard was on to something. Mary’s song is about justice. It is more akin to a protest song from Woody Guthrie, or a spiritual that decries slavery than a beautiful aria that displays vocal prowess. It stirs the imagination, loosens our grip on the status quo of inequality, and equips us to see all persons living without excess or deprivation. So, too, are all the songs in Luke’s story. They are songs of justice and songs of hope. 

May God give us ears to hear, mouths to join the song, and hearts that are ready for the great transformation that Jesus’ birth brings. 

 

Mark of St. Mark

Supporting Our Answer to God's Call

Quick Note: This week I have an essay that was published on a blog called The Politics of Scripture. My essay is “Christ the King and the Challenge of Symbols” and you can find it here. 

St. Mark is a unique church. There is vibrancy and joy in the air when we gather. There is purpose and meaning to our worship experiences. There are children of all ages who know that they are the church. We say, “All are welcome” as an extension of God’s steadfast love, which overcomes all of our barriers and welcomes our differences. We hear God’s call to “do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly,” so we give generously to local service organizations, refugees, farmworkers, schools, and homeless services locally, while supporting an orphanage and girls’ school in Kenya, as well as medical ministry and community organizing partners in Nicaragua. We walk alongside local service organizations to encourage and empower their work. We take the Scriptures seriously and find in them the “words of life,” not just rules and traditions. We support the arts in many varieties. We pray for those who are grieving or dance with those who are celebrating. We coalesce our voices to make a difference on matters of LGBTQIA rights, honoring Black lives, Indigenous lives, Brown lives, and standing up against Asian American/Pacific Islander hate. We write letters to support the struggle against hunger, gun violence, and the suppression of women’s choices. We work to ensure health care, nutrition, and access to viable food choices no matter where one lives. We support mission partnerships in the Presbyterian Church (USA), as well as with some of our sister churches in Orange County. We make mental health resources available to all ages. We study deep issues of foreign policy and personal issues of mindfulness or relationship-building. Phew! That’s quite a litany.

 

I’m not bragging. I’m certainly not bragging about myself and not even bragging on you (which I like to do!) I am simply presenting the span of topics that our Elders oversee month after month and our Staff empower week after week. But note this: Many churches are vibrant. Many churches are committed to justice. Not many churches are both. That’s a harsh truth. I’m not kidding when I say that St. Mark is truly a unique church. 

 

Your contributions enable us to do all these things and do them well. And in order to be open to where God is taking us in the future, we need three things: A facility that is fully operational; a staff that is fully compensated; and a robust mission budget that reflects our priorities. Those are our three largest budget items and we need all three of them to be fully funded. 

 

So, how can you help that happen? First, please hold the pledge card that you received this week and ask yourself, “How you I ensure that our church remains both vibrant and dedicated to justice?” We need generous folk in order to do our work well. Second, consider the church in any estate planning you may do. Our Finance Commission can guide you if you have any questions. And finally, pray. Pray at the beginning. Pray without ceasing. Pray while listening. Pray with your feet. Pray with your checkbook. Pray with one another. 

 

And may God bless you as you continue being the unique church called St. Mark.

 

Mark of St. Mark

Alternative Christmas Market

 Friends, 

 This weekend will be filled with joyful and meaningful activity at St. Mark. On Saturday, following worship, we have our “Meet Me at Muldoon’s” gathering, which is always full of joy and energy. Then, on Sunday, following worship, we will host our Alternative Christmas Market, live and in person! Both of these events are meaningful parts of our community life here at St. Mark. The gatherings at Muldoon’s offer us a chance to “be the church” offsite, remembering that the church is the people and not the building site itself. Today I want to focus on the Alternative Christmas Market, since it is an annual event that we have not been able to enjoy in all of its in-person glory for too long. 

 

The number of organizations, volunteers, and even children from St. Mark who have been working hard to make this year’s market a success is remarkable. Under the skillful leadership of Diana Light and Denise Christensen, with able assistance from Sue-Ann Wichman and Judith Hug, and a lot of extra effort by Alex Cardenas and Jeremy Smith, in addition to the volunteers, and guest organizations, this event is an “all hands on deck” phenomenon. The beauty of it all is this: All the preparation, activity, and purchases are signs of our commitment to justice. We will have a chance to purchase fair trade products, products that benefit those who do the work more than those who monopolize the industry, and products that are created with the earth’s safekeeping in mind. This Alternative Christmas Market allows us to participate in a new way of being, even if just for a day.

 

There is a large grocery store in Iowa where I know of two different people weeping in the aisle. The first was a guest from El Salvador who was simply overwhelmed with the plethora of choices, meats upon meats, vegetables upon vegetables, processed foods upon processed foods, all stacked neatly, with constantly rotating stock, in shelves, refrigerators, display buffets, and endcaps. The sheer enormity of the choices for someone who’s morning usually began by walking in the dark to get water from a well, was simply too much. So, she wept. 

 

The second person I saw weeping was in the cereal aisle. It’s no small thing that there is a “cereal aisle,” but this person was not weeping due to the overwhelming excess. She was holding a box of a corn-based cereal that cost $3.69 for puffy cereal that actually contained a small amount of corn. As I was trying to be politely present but not interfering, she looked up at me and said, “The difference between what this company pays us for this corn and what they charge for it is just criminal.” 

 

Those two sobering grocery store encounters displayed something about the system of production and sales in our marketplaces that we easily take for granted. And that was before an app could ensure that we can have goods on our doorstep within minutes. The convenience, choices, and ease of the market is admirable, a gift that serves us well in many ways. But it also hides the hands that create, harvest, and prepare the goods we order. It hides the exploitation of those who work with raw materials and the enrichment of those who exploit them. My suspicion is that if either of those two persons who so prophetically wept in the grocery store were to enter our Alternative Christmas Market, they would weep tears of joy. And that’s what I invite you to do this weekend. Come see the faces and hear the stories of those whose products we can purchase. It is a way of doing justice together. 

 

Mark of St. Mark

 A Thriving Church

Last week during worship I mentioned that I had been invited to a gathering of "pastors of thriving churches." While it seems at times that we are busy rebuilding our momentum following COVID, today's missive to the folks at St. Mark presents a compelling vision of a thriving church. Enjoy! 

This weekend is one of those weekends when we will have a lot of everything, so hang on as I take us through the list! 

On Saturday and Sunday, we have worship. That may be obvious, but it is important to put it out there first, because everything we do is fueled by the grace of God, and worship is our opportunity to gather, remember, give thanks, and ground our life together as a debt of gratitude for God’s grace. So, even in a weekend with lots of everything, worship matters. Let’s say that first. 

During worship on Saturday and Sunday, we will observe “All Saints Weekend,” taking the time to name, honor, and remember those who have died this year. Since our lives are bracketed by the delightful promise that “in life and in death, we belong to God,” we will approach this act of remembrance as a celebration of those who have completed their baptismal journeys. We call those who have died “saints,” not because they were flawless in life, but because of God’s grace, which embraces us in our frailties and elevates us as those who are fearfully and wonderfully made.  

One aspect of our celebration of All Saints Weekend is that we are collecting “Prayer Flags,” a tradition that we began last year after a period of so much loss. You can read a brief description here. Some of these flags will name persons in our lives who have died, but we welcome other forms of loss also: The loss of pets, employment, happiness, opportunity, or anything that troubles the spirit. Like every act of prayer, this tradition will enable us to “weep with those who weep,” one of the most powerful acts of community imaginable. Bring your flags on Saturday and Sunday, and during worship on Sunday we will have an opportunity to hang them. 

During worship on Sunday, we will celebrate the baptism of one of our children, declaring God’s act of grace in his life. Having grown up in a tradition that only practiced “believer’s baptism,” I have found that the baptism of infants and children is one of the most powerful demonstrations that our life of faith begins with God’s gracious act of claiming us from the start. And how appropriate that on the weekend we remember those who have completed their baptismal journeys, we celebrate the baptism of a child of the church. 

Also during worship on Sunday our Handbell Ensemble will play our Introit, marking their first performance for this season as part of our very impressive music ministry at St. Mark. 

After worship on Saturday, we will launch Life Together, a time of connecting and building friendships before we all go our separate ways for supper. Dietrich Bonhoeffer once wrote a book entitled Life Together, where he describes Christian fellowship as “an extraordinary grace.” So, we will meet in the Bonhoeffer Room following worship to live into that beautiful vision. 

On Sunday afternoon we will have our annual Harvest Festival, with the very popular “Trunk or Treat” event outside of the Fellowship Hall. Put on a costume, decorate your vehicle, and bring some nut-free treats to share with the trunk-or-treaters as you enjoy the costume parade. We’ll gather at 4:00, the parade is at 4:20, and the trunk-or-treating begins at 4:30. 

It’s hard to imagine a weekend when we get a better snapshot of what it means to be the church. From birth to death, with joy and sadness, gathering for worship and fellowship, we become the body of Christ, sent out into the world to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly before our God. 

See you in worship this weekend, 

Mark of St. Mark