Monday, March 26, 2012

Healthy Congregations, Healthy Practices

As the season of Lent moves through its fifth week, preparation for the  Holy Week and the three day Great Paschal Festival, also known as the Triduum, reflection moves into sermon preparations and spiritual preparation.  The blogs, as you might have learned last week, will be less than daily.  After the Easter celebration I anticipate returning to daily posts.

For daily reflections I suggest the on line Lenten Devotions found at www.stjohnsec.org.

For today, Healthy Congregations Keep Promises.

The theological bedrock of keeping promises is God's Covenant with us to be steadfast in love, justice, and compassion.  The Episcopal Church celebrates, affirms, and continually guides our lives in God through our Baptismal Covenant.

In congregations the implicit promise of congregational life is that we are all God's people together. Infidelity to promises unravels the trust that builds community.  Small ways that relationships are viewed as preferential speak that not everyone is equal.  Questions about how money is used, or about how it is reported, say that what is proposed and what is implemented are different.  A tight leadership circle that controls erodes the congregation's commitment to the community.

Christine Pohl says, "When we are on the receiving end of failed promises but do not see the justification or excuse for them, we feel betrayed.   Betrayal is devastating to our trust and sense of justice-and sometimes to our faith."

Keeping the promise of congregational life means that we continually inspire and offer ways for all of God's people to participate in God's purposes.  This may come about through personal vocation, using one's gifts and talents, on behalf of the mission of the congregation,  or, being part of any number of activities that make alive that congregation's call from God.

Reflect today how you are part of your congregation's keeping promises.  Where do you need to grow?  Where does your congregation need to grow?

Monday, March 19, 2012

Healthy congregations - Healthy Practices

Gifts to us are the authors who over the last ten years have named and nurtured the aspects of our common life and lifted again and again why so many of us love the church.  Among them are Dorothy Bass, Craig Dykstra, David Wood, Nancy Ammerman, Eugene Peterson, and Christine Pohl.

Christine names four practices of healthy congregations that while they are important as individual spiritual disciplines they are magnifiers for the support healthy congregations.

To begin, a story.  Recently my husband and I traveled a long distance to see our college daughter compete in a sports event. After the day we took her out to dinner.  As we waited for the table she said,  "I am grateful that you and dad came today and are staying so long."  A simple thank you that amazed and comforted me.  She was also letting us know that her parents fill an important place in her life.

"Gratitude, Christine Pohl writes, "begins with paying attention, with noticing goodness, beauty and grace around us."

God's goodness, beauty and grace surrounds us all the time, but, do we notice?  Are we comforted by the goodness through which we make our way each day?  Do we let God know that God fills an important place in our lives?  Do we let the people around know us they are important to us?  For our communities of faith, do we name and notice the goodness that flows from the members each day?

Friday, March 16, 2012

Theology of Food III - Daily Devotion

What makes eating a spiritual practice?  Eating is sustenance, that which we need to sustain our bodies, a vehicle for incarnate love, for a handful of hours.  While sustenance may contain things we don't need, such as trans fat, salt, artificial additives, sustenance more importantly includes what we do need. We can choose to take in both the food to sustain us and the food we don't need, or, we can choose to focus only on what sustains us.  Eating reflects our relationship with God. Do we rely on God for the things we do need: compassion, patience, excellence, sharing, or, do we mix those good things together with the things we don't need.  Reflect on a day when you ate only what you needed to sustain your body.  How might that enrich your relationship with God?

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Theology of Food - Daily Devotion

"Let us give thanks to the Lord for his mercy and the wonders he does for his children
For he satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things."  Psalm 107 vs 8-9.

Food and Water often bridge the gap between God and human beings.  Food is a metaphor for the goodness and abundance God gives. God, the creator and source, and humankind created in the Creator's image and continually hungry for the source.  Food and Water bridge the gap so that we can experience all that we seek comes from God.

Yet we look often to other places other than our source to fill the gap.  Consider this quote:
"In this condition, we have many commodities but little satisfaction, little sense of the sufficiency of anything. The scarcity of satisfaction makes of our many commodities an infinite series of commodities, the new commodities invariably promising greater satisfaction than the older ones.  In fact, the industrial economy's most marketed commodity is satisfaction, and this commodity, which is repeatedly promised, bough, and paid for, is never delivered."  Wendell Berry

Consider today what in your life might be substituting for that which you can receive from God.  Consider if there is a commodity, something that you can purchase, that you experience as able to fulfill your desire for God.


Monday, March 12, 2012

Daily Devotion - Theology of Food

Last week I spent most of the week at an annual conference for church leaders, clergy and lay.
We listened to inspiring and knowledge biblical scholars, we worship and prayed with our hearts, our heads, and our voices raised in song, we heard from people serving in parishes who through their expertise provide support as we steward the resources God has abundantly provided.

One comment stands out for me above all the wonderful inspiration that surrounded us.
A biblical scholar commented that offering thanksgiving before meals is the most radical act we can offer because our thanksgiving says that all we have truly come from God.

So many of us quickly say a 'grace' because we know that is the thing to do. Contemplate that you are affirming God's abundance, God's gift of life, God's desire of goodness for us and all creation. How is that radical and counter to the other messages that surround us.

This week, our reflections will be on the theology of food.

Friday, March 2, 2012

Daily Devotion - Daily Feast

The devotions this week are from Daily Feast: Meditations from Feasting on the Word, Year B.


Mark 8:31-38

As long as self reigns, we will forever be seeking painless shortcuts to the kingdom.  We will try and try again to substitute another way for the way of the cross.  But only when we deny self and take up the cross can we follow Jesus.  All of our attempts to save our lives are futile (vv. 35-38).  All our efforts to make another way are a denial of the one who showed us the way, the way of the cross.  This is true discipleship.  In the end, true messiahship and true discipleship are inextricably connected.  When we are finally willing to accept Jesus for who he is, the suffering one who lays down his life for others, then we can understand who we are to be, and denying self, we can take up the cross and follow him.

W. Hulitt Gloer

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Daily Devotion - Daily Feast

From Daily Feast: Meditations from Feasting on the Word, Year B.


Romans 4:13-25

'On the other hand, we Christian folks may believe our sinfulness is somehow beyond forgiveness.  We despair that our sin has cut us off from God, and there is no healing that relationship.  Again, Paul would beg to differ. He might say something along the lines of, "Don't be silly.  Remember how God has chosen to break into history in Jesus Christ.  Your right relationship with God cannot be earned through obedience to the law, or faith would be useless and Christ would have died in vain.  No. A right relationship with God is built on trust in Jesus Christ who died 'for our trespass and was raised for our justification' (v. 25).  So quit rehearsing your failures and whining about your sins. Live in confident trust that you are forgiven and you are given yet another chance to try to be obedient."'

Jeff Paschal