Author: Southwest Conference Blog

Our Trip to the Border

by Jane McNamara, Chair, Immigration Task Force, First Church UCC Phoenix

Hidden along the edge of the concrete ramp were 20 or 25 coins. I carefully picked them out of the sand and put them in the back pocket of my jeans. Nearby were torn pieces of paper money from Cuba – and strewn everywhere were shoelaces, belts, clothing items of all kinds, backpacks and shoes. Lots of shoes.

There is an explanation for what we saw at the border last week. Our guides, Fernie and Nathalie with the non-profit AZCA Humanitarian Coalition, said that Border Patrol agents require all migrants to leave their possessions behind. Agents say they don’t have the personnel to do the needed security checks. So, when they process migrants seeking asylum after they’ve crossed the border into the United States, migrants are given a clear plastic bag for their papers and perhaps a phone – and that is what they bring with them to the Welcome Center in Phoenix.

And the shoes? Since many cross water, they leave their muddy, wet shoes and wear someone else’s that have dried in the sun. An explanation, perhaps, for why so many guests at the Welcome Center are wearing shoes that fit them so poorly.

It was clear from our visit that Fernie and Nathalie would like to find ways to reuse more belongings but there isn’t the volunteer network that would be needed to undertake such a project. Instead, the AZCA Humanitarian Coalition organizes border aid trips, leaving water and fruit for asylum-seekers and, importantly, “restoring” the land. Five of us helped them one morning last week, following them along the dirt road by the border from Yuma to San Luis, making six stops and encountering migrants in many places along the way. And yes there are gaps in the wall near Yuma – and the wall will never be “finished.” Farmers demand access to water and the federal wall ends where the Cocopah Reservation begins.

We did not see Border Patrol process any asylum-seekers while we were there, but the evidence that they do indeed require everyone to throw away their personal possessions is everywhere. We filled bags and bags of “trash” and left them in the dumpsters parked along the border. In a few places, migrants picked up bags and helped us.

And afterwards, some of us brought items we found on the border to the Welcome Center. I washed hundreds of shoelaces in hopes our visitors to the Ropa (clothing) Room might be able to use them. My sister brought in the white confirmation dress she found and pinned it on a wall in the Ropa Room, thinking the mother who left it behind might visit us and see it, just waiting for her to reclaim it.

And I kept the coins I had found in my pocket.

Late last Saturday afternoon, four women who had chosen some clothing items from the Ropa Room were sitting on benches in the hallway, and one of the women was crying. I gave her a small stuffed dog and asked if she missed her family. One of the other women said she had been talking to her mother in Peru. Peru? I had never met anyone at the Welcome Center from Peru, but the coins in my pocket were Peruvian. I gave them to her and she placed them in her hand and stroked them ever so gently.

It was surely another one of the “God things” we witness so often at the Welcome Center.

We are truly blessed to be able to help welcome our newest immigrants to this country, and assist them as they pass through Phoenix on their way to sponsors throughout the country. And everyone who has donated clothing or shoes or tote bags or who has contributed to our meal fund is part of our First Church team. We are making a difference in people’s lives. Thank you.

Will the Minority Rule Again?

by Rev. Dr. Richard Einerson

There is a strong majority in this country that is pro-choice for women.  Yet the minority can rule on this issue if we allow it.  I have some background in medical ethics and from that background I feel compelled to make some comments.  I was co-chair of the Medical Ethics Committee at Meritcare Medical Center in Fargo, ND where I was a chaplain for 18 years.  In that role I attended weeklong seminars in medical ethics at the University of Washington as well as the “Managing Mortality” conference at the University of Minnesota.  I heard the families of two major medical ethics cases, Karen Ann Quinlan and Nancy Cruzan.  The first had to do with disconnecting a ventilator, the latter with discontinuing feeding tubes.  Ever since the religious right has fought to have the government enforce quasi-religious values in families and personal life which continues today.  (Comas:  Karen Quinlan, Nancy Cruzan, and Terry Schiavo, Chapter 2). We are in the middle of that fight over women’s health and pro-choice issues now. 

The battle has been going a while.  I had an annual lecture in medicine and religions and invited Kristie Cruzan White, Nancy’s sister to tell their story to our physicians and community.  Shortly thereafter (around 1991} I invited Dr. Daniel Maguire to lecture.  His topic was going to be on grief in families who lose young children to incurable diseases as he and his wife had experienced.  Maguire was a Jesuit teaching at Marquette but had become in the top ten on the hit list of his Catholic Church by an article he published in the Christian Century describing a visit he and his wife had made to a Planned Parent Center in Milwaukie.  Contrary to the Republican notion that it is primarily “loose women” who get abortions, they found it was often women such as a schizophrenic whose medications would malform the fetus; other women whose pregnancies were not proceeding normally. 

As a result of his unorthodox notions on abortion, I received a phone call on a Monday morning from the Chairman of the Bank which funded our lecture and who was more than nervous about our choice of lecture.  I inquired who was objecting.  It was the Bishop’s office and at least one of our conservative physicians.  I said: “Norman, would you give me 24 hours to speak with them.”  He reluctantly agreed.  But in mid-afternoon I got a call from the President.  After several statements I said:  “Are you suggesting we pay his honorarium and have him stay home?”  Of course, the answer was yes.  Fortunately, we had friends in the philosophy department at Moorhead State University across the river who paid his airfare, and we had the largest turnout ever in their huge auditorium.  Then Maguire did talk about abortion, quoting a Catholic Bishop in the 16th century.  With his Irish humor he said: “He didn’t lose his job, and his lectures weren’t cancelled!”  Let’s be clear:  This was an attempt of overruled FREEDOM OF SPEECH. 

In another article, A Question of Catholic Honesty, Maguire takes on his church’s absolute stance on abortion:  wrong all the time.  He says: “As a Catholic theology I find this situation abhorrent and unworthy of the richness of the Roman Catholic traditions that have nourished me.  I indict not only the bishops, but also the ‘petulant silence’ (Beverly Harrison’s phrase) or indifference of many Catholic Theologians who recognize the morality of certain abortions, but still will not address the subject publicly.  I also indict the male dominated liberal Catholic press which does too little to dissipate the myth of a Catholic monolith on abortion.”

To me this is clearly an issue of women’s healthcare.  It is an issue to be dealt with honestly in the privacy of a doctor’s office.  I personally, as a man, cannot imagine the agony a woman goes through who may need an abortion.  But I know that many of those who have FREEDOM as bumper stickers are all for LIMITING FREEDOM OF CHOICE FOR WOMEN. l It is amazing the me that the Supreme Court may be seriously nullifying Roe v Wade, established precedent.  It says more about this court than it does about law.  But if it does so, it is up to Congress.   Our question as a society is:  will be allow the minority to rule?  Is the filibuster more important than a woman’s civil liberties?   It is time for the majority to work at claiming its power.  We should query and pressure our congressional representatives and senators.  We should show up in the streets.  The minority and their religious dogmatism should not prevail!  It is time that the most strident voices be put down.  I am not talking about their freedom of speech, but their trying to impose their will on the majority. 

An unfortunate concomitant of the extreme right is the downright viciousness of their attacks.  I mention the Nancy Cruzan case.  The right consistently demonstrated where Nancy was lying in a persistent vegetative state.  One of the signs on that Christmas eve read:  LOOK WHAT NANCY GOT FOR CHRISTMAS:  DEATH!   I would hope that kind of viciousness might cease but I doubt that will ever be the case.  Religion always has its zealots.  They must not win this battle.  We need to demonstrate that there are other Christians who are not zealots, who are champions of women’s rights, and who believe in the constitutional rights of all Americans!

Life AND Choice Are United

by Rev. Dr. Barb Doerrer-Peacock

I wasn’t sure whether this writing wanted to be a poem or an essay. So, I just wrote. This is the result: my thoughts/feelings about the current threat to women’s reproductive rights.

They would like us to think it’s about
Sanctity vs. sacrilege
Life vs. death
Federal vs state
Truth vs. lies
Constitution vs. changeable laws
Protection of one vs. another
A woman’s issue, and not a man’s
A womb and not a penis
A fetus and not a whole human life
A private decision and not
a whole human culture.

They would like us to think it’s about
when life begins and when it ends,
and whether it is a God
or a human decision.
whether it is male or female
conservative or liberal
Biblical or profane
pro-choice or pro-life.

They would like us to think…
but not really.
They would like us to react.

The tyranny of the binary
creates knee-jerk reactions,
reactions create polarizing gulfs,
gulfs create intractable division:
Us or Them
Other or Self
Win or Lose.

The authority of the binary
creates warring clans and tribes
Us vs. Them
Loyalty vs Disloyalty
Good vs Evil
Right vs. Wrong
Security vs. Fear.

The power of the binary is
dominance of definition
over ambiguity
privilege of power
over powerlessness,
control of cultural commonality
over difference and diversity.

They would like us to think that
this is what it’s all about.
It is not.
It is only yet another mask of
Either/Or
the binary.

A continuing incarnation of something
rather small and insidious,
like a worm that burrows unnoticed
into an orifice and lays its eggs
waiting, growing in the dark
to ultimately take over its host
with fear and madness.

But Life AND Choice are united.
The two entwining, eternal lovers of
God’s Good Creation.
Holiest Gifts
out of which everything is born.

Without Choice – there is no Life.
All is dead.
Without Life – Choice ceases to exist,
All is inanimate.

I refuse the binary trap.
Instead, I CHOOSE LIFE
Together, both, whole.

I choose to believe
life has no beginning
or end – all is in the presence of God
who was, and is,
and forever will be.

I choose to believe
sanctity can be manifest
In all soul-wrestling,
anguished decisions:
to end a pregnancy, AND
to continue a pregnancy
despite all odds, AND
a myriad of other
LIFE CHOOSE-INGS.
All are in the presence of God.

Sanctity evaporates
and the presence of God dims
when
our capacity to
CHOOSE LIFE
Is stolen.

So today,
I CHOOSE LIFE.
And I denounce
those who would be its
thieves.

The Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice put together this stunning video of Barb’s poem.

Mothering the World Right Now!

by Kay Klinkenborg

Climate change, war in Ukraine, starvation in Yemen and Afghanistan to name a few places that is happening. And a world pandemic continues.  The world is not the same.  We will not be returning to ‘normal’…whatever that was.   Pastor Paul Whitlock on April 3 gave a powerful sermon on FOMO…FLOP…FOMO.  I was quite taken with his creativity.  Fun On Moving Onward (FOMO) was his challenge.  Now what was I to do with that?  Instantly my feminine energy kicked into gear.

Mothering.  Creation has been ‘mothering’ since the beginning.  God speaks of ‘we’ in Genesis; not alone as Creator. Then other Hebrew Scriptures speak of Sophia, Wisdom; which has been interpreted by highly respected theologians as the feminine side of God. 

The Talmud also introduces the term Shekhinah to connote God’s presence in the world. Though the term is grammatically feminine, in the Talmud it is not explicitly gendered, though in some passages it refers to moments when God shares in human experiences of loneliness, loss, and exile.1

 In the case of Jewish thought, grammar at times meets theology in as much as impersonal Hebrew nouns are gendered, so that words like hokhmah (wisdom) and shekhinah (presence) over time lent themselves by virtue of their feminine.1

In fact, the personal name of God, Yahweh, which is revealed to Moses in Exodus 3, is a remarkable combination of both female and male grammatical endings. The first part of God’s name in Hebrew, “Yah,” is feminine, and the last part, “weh,” is masculine.2

I am pleased that I can attest to many men I know that use ‘mothering characteristics’ in their relationships and interactions.  I am not suggesting that this is a woman’s task at all.  In fact, I think history and biblical interpretations show us that feminine traits are revered.  And our world right now needs that kind of love!.

Remember the famous song: “What the World Needs Now is Love, Sweet Love.”  One word most will resonant with to describe that is a verb:  mothering.

Since the beginning of time…’mothering’…to nurture…to care for…to watch after’ has and does occur.  It had to have occurred or evolution would not have sustained, extended or be continuing.  As the human species evolves our archeological discoveries tell us that ‘mothering’ occurred.  It is nature’s form of care taking, survival of the species.

One major thing I have learned more about these past three years… ‘getting out of God’s way’.  My instinctual need to control, be in charge is being challenged.   I am learning more about the spiritual discipline of surrender.  Let God evolve.   There is no surprise that we have a pandemic. There have always been pandemics, disasters, wars, a disappearance of life as we understand it.  That there is a new virus is not news.  Our ownership that this can happen to us is what is new.  This is nature. This is the evolving of life in this known Universe.

I have found myself ‘shoulding’:  I should do this; I should say that; I should not be having this fear and anxiety.   A sampling of my should list.   What about ‘mothering myself’?   What about starting there in order to have the energy and compassion to extend to others?   If I can have compassion for my own journey/feelings during this extraordinary time in history, will not that enable me to understand/hear and have compassion beyond myself.  Then I am ready to extend ‘mothering’.

Only in self-compassion and owning my own emotions in this particular journey will I then have the energy and compassionate response to others to be mothering the world.  Mirabai Starr writes in her book Wild Mercy: Living the Fierce and Tender Wisdom of the Women Mystics, “…we need a mothering of the world together right now.”    We need that feminine energy that is male and female brought forth to face these challenges.

I want to explicitly point out the fact that women who have not born children… mother; men… mother,  It is part of our innate design if we own that part of ourselves.  A friend taught me a profound lesson about mothering;

One particularly Mother’s Day, I was quite depressed; estranged from our son and blaming myself for his adult choices. A friend sent me a text that day that knew of the circumstances.  “Kay, you have been mothering people your entire adult life.  As a nurse, friend, manager, counselor, consultant and the list goes on.  So today claim all the mothering you have and do. Let that bring comfort.”

So I am challenging myself as I write to this audience, let my ‘mothering show forth’; let my love be visible and make me an instrument that releases a song of ‘Love, Love, Love…’

Going on without denying any aspect of the human drama is what strength is all about. We are carved by life into instruments that will release our song, if we can hold each up to the carving.
Mark Nepo
 

1”Feminine Images of God”:  Yehudah Mirsky, Jewish Women’s Archive.

2CBE (cbeinternational.org) (Christians for Biblical Equality). “The Feminine Imagery of God in the Hebrew Bible.” Joan P. Schaupp | October 30, 2000.

Good Enough Faith Keeps Coming Back

by Southwest Conference Minister, Rev. Dr. Bill Lyons, as preached at Scottsdale Congregational UCC on Easter Sunday, April 17, 2022

Easter presents real challenges. It has from the very beginning.

How exactly were the troops going to explain the disappeared body on their watch? Are they really going to tell their superiors: there was suddenly a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow.

How were the women going to move the stone? And when they found the tomb opened already, imagine their shock and agony and fear!

Mary Magdalene didn’t wait for explanations. John tells us “she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” Resurrection didn’t even enter Mary’s mind when she first visited the open tomb. The other women went inside and were perplexed. Messengers – one or two, no one quite remembered – on the stone or inside the vault, that got mixed up too – it’s tricky – but everyone agrees – messengers in dazzling clothes appeared out of nowhere and said, “Don’t be afraid. I know why you are here. The one you watched die three days ago is alive and He told you this would happen. Remember his words? By the way, he’s heading to Galilee and you can see him there.”

That last line in the angels’ message sounds like a set up. Go to Galilee?! Where Herod ruled and John the Baptizer lost his head?! Jesus’s followers had been in hiding for the last three days. They had plenty of examples of what Roman troops did to the friends of people who had been crucified. And now with the body missing, who do you think the troops identified as ‘people of interest’ in connection with all of this? That’s more than tricky!

Two disciples took the risk and ventured out – back to the cemetery. One went inside; one didn’t. No telling who was in there waiting for them. No angels this time, just a pile of grave wrappings and a shroud folded neatly on the niche where Jesus’s body should have been. Well, part of the women’s story was accurate, anyway. I wonder if they looked at Mary who stood outside the tomb and thought. “Did you women stage this? How did you manage it? Where did you put the body? Do you realize what will happen if the troops find out?!”

Nobody believed the women. The first resurrection sermon had no takers. Talk about a problem with Easter!

Mary stayed at the tomb after everyone else left. It’s the last place she’d see her Lord. She was looking for answers. She was looking for Jesus, albeit a dead Jesus. When she found him she couldn’t see him even when the living Jesus, a man she’d spent years following and living in community with, stood right in front of her talking. Her faith wasn’t ready for that. But she’d come back. And when Jesus said her name, she believed!

It took Mary two visits to accept the living Christ. It’s not how many visits it took that mattered. What’s important is that she came back, kept looking, kept listening.

It’s not always in church that we find ourselves re-visiting his tomb or that we hear Jesus say our name.

Ambulance attendants wheeled him into room 14 – the resuscitation suite. He had been found in a doorway of a downtown building unresponsive. The clinical signs told us he had been dead for quite some time. Still, the ER team did everything possible. Then the moment came to stop the effort, and a time of death was pronounced by the attending physician.

An hour or so later the deceased man’s family members and friends began arriving at the hospital and I was called to meet them. They cried and held each other and began to pray and to sing. Their pastor arrived and anointed the body. Then she turned to me and said in broken English, “You tell doctor shock him and he will live now.”

In the break room the attending physician looked at me with wide eyes. “WOW! Chaplain, if they can bring him back with prayer, I’ll start going to church.”

“Doc, I go to church because I know one man God brought back after three days. But right now, I need you to come in and explain to his family that this man has already been shocked and is gone. I’ll take it from there.”

The doctor shook his head. He was well aware that only doctors were permitted to share medical information with families. So, he explained the reality of the team’s resuscitation efforts and the certainty of biological death compassionately and succinctly. The pastor looked right at him and said, “We prayed. You shock him and he will live now.”

Usually when docs finished that kind of conversation, they left the room and let the support team facilitate a grieving process. But this time the doc stepped back, leaned against the wall, crossed his arms, and was as attentive as every family member there. I offered my sincere respect and appreciation for the family and the pastor’s faith in a God who could raise the dead. I too believed in that God. I knew in the end everyone who died trusting Jesus will live again. And I also knew that sometimes, as possible as a resurrection is, God takes a person to live where God is. Silence. Startlingly the pastor responded with jubílense, “¡Alabado sea Dios, se ha ido a casa!” “Praise God, he’s gone home!” and she began to pray.

I heard his pager go off during the prayer, and when I looked up the doc was gone. He found me later and said he didn’t mean to be rude and walk out in the middle of a prayer. I said to him, “What I noticed was this time you stayed for the spiritual explanation of your patient dying.” He looked at me and smiled. “You noticed that, did you.” And then one of our pagers went off…

I wonder, how many trips to Jesus’s tomb we make over time? How have your expectations or questions about what you’ll find there changed since your last visit? Maybe you decided to visit Jesus’s empty tomb this morning wondering. “How?!” Or maybe you’re at the empty tomb again not having thought much about what you’d find – an obstacle or an opening, the expected or a surprise.

Maybe the resurrection seems “like an idle tale” – dazzling extraterrestrials, a three-days-dead corpse walking and talking – the same way the testimony of the women fell on the ears of the disciples.

Maybe you’ve been trying to “remember what he told you,” a faith from childhood, lessons from catechism, or a loved one’s witness.

Perhaps the angelic questions resonate with you. “Why are you looking for the living among the dead?” “Who are you looking for?” [pause] “Who are you looking for?”

Maybe you’re waiting for an invitation to “come and see,” to take a closer look at this place where Jesus is supposed to be found.

Perchance, like Peter,– you’ve seen and still aren’t ready to step in. Or maybe like John – you believe but just aren’t sure how to explain it all.

Or like Mary, you’ve been here before. You’re back because wondering why Jesus isn’t where you thought he’d be, asking questions, making bargains.

It’s even possible all of this leaves you at a loss for words and afraid.

It’s equally possible you heard Jesus say your name once, and you just want to hear it again.

Maybe Easter, is, for you, a day to say, “Alleluia! I’ve seen the Lord!!

Whatever brings you to the empty tomb this time, wherever you find yourself in the story, what matters is you are here! That’s good enough!! Surely there’s room for all of us to grow in our faith. Easter is for celebrating that whatever faith we have in the living Jesus, that’s good enough. Because whatever else we aren’t sure of in our faith, we can be certain of this: Jesus is alive enough to have brought you back. How much more alive does he need to be? Easter faith is good enough when it keeps us coming back. Christ is risen!

He is risen indeed!!

On Seeing Bucha

by Rev. John Indermark

Seeing Bucha

            On Sunday, its liturgy was blasphemous

                        An old man lying alongside his bike

                        Plastic ties around wrists that preceded the kill shot

                        A hand and a foot exposed from the sand half-filling a trench

Seeing Bucha

            The very name stung with reverberations

                        In German, buche is the word for “beech tree”

                        In German, wald is the word for “forest”

                                    In Germany, Buchenwald carried out the genocidal fever of Nazis

                                    In Ukraine, Bucha endured the same

Seeing Bucha

            Recalled for me the story told by Elie Wiesel in Night

                        A teenager himself imprisoned in Auschwitz,

                        Wiesel and the rest of the camp witness the hanging of three prisoners

                                    One of them is a boy

                                                Whose dying exceeds half an hour because of his small size

                        As the agony stretches on, a man behind Wiesel asks outloud

                                    For God’s sake, where is God?

                        Wiesel reports that he then heard a small voice inside him answer:

                                    Where is He? This is where – hanging here from this gallows . . .

Seeing Bucha                       

            God is seen – in an old man, in bound wrists, in a sandy trench                        

For if God is not there, God will never be seen.

The Art of Blessing

by Rev. Lynne Hinton

One Sunday at church a parishioner brought me a ball cap with her favorite NASCAR racer’s name embroidered on it. She wanted me to bless it because she was worried about the driver. She was only teasing and I simply heard her story and held the hat for a second. I didn’t so much try to ease her concerns with a prayer as I did listen to her, but her request did remind me of the real reason I love being a pastor.

If I were to explain why I most enjoy being an ordained minister, it wouldn’t be the preaching or the administrative responsibilities; it wouldn’t be the pastoral visits to the hospitals or nursing homes or the teaching of scriptures. I enjoy being a pastor because I love being called upon to bless things.

In the more than 25 years since my ordination into professional ministry, I have been called upon to bless lots of things and all kinds of events. I have blessed marriages and unions, meetings of the many and the few, animals of all shapes and sizes, life arriving and life passing, houses, doorways, and even a porch swing for a hospice patient afraid of some evil spirit that hovered near. I have blessed barren fields in winter and bountiful summer harvests, rain and sun, honorable choices to leave and to stay, foreheads on Ash Wednesdays, mended hearts, surgeries and the healing of every kind of disease and discontent. I have touched fevered brows and small cherub cheeks, skinned knees and burdened backs. I have blessed cookies and milk, pots of green chile stew, and long tables filled with casseroles, Jell-O salads, barbeque, fried chicken, and a variety of frosted cakes. And in all that time, it has always been my deepest pleasure to lead a person or a gathering into the consideration of being blessed.

I don’t bless because I think I am more qualified than anyone else to pray over potluck suppers, community gatherings, or crying babies. I do not consider myself more special or more knowledgeable than anyone else. In fact, much of the time, when I am called upon for a blessing I glance around the room and find many others who could do and have done a better job than I. But blessing stuff comes with the territory when you are a minister. Just as we look to the nurse or doctor to step in when someone faints or we look to a teenager for help with the computer, just as we ask the mechanic for tips on engine maintenance for our automobiles, we expect the minister to bless us.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines blessing as “an expression of good wishes. A special favor granted by God,” and “anything contributing to happiness.” I think of a blessing as simply calling attention to that which is wonderful, to a person or event or animal or memory or dream that makes us smile. To be blessed is to acknowledge that even if everything around us is empty, we are able to see that actually our cups are running over. It is to stop everyone from brushing aside life. It is to keep us from missing the splendid. It is to say, “hey, wait a minute, this is fabulous life happening here! This is a moment you will want to remember! This, for all its ordinariness, this is sacred. This is blessed.”

I didn’t ask for favor on my parishioner’s favorite racecar driver when I took the hat from her, but I did smile and thank God that she has something in her life that brings her delight, something that connects her to the world, something that engages and pleases her. The fact that she has found a little pleasure is in itself a great blessing. And I am the fortunate one who gets asked to call attention to it.

Common Tables

by Southwest Conference Minister Rev. Dr. Bill Lyons; the following is his keynote at the Common Tables interfaith prayer and networking luncheon at the Arizona State Capitol on Tuesday, March 29, 2022

Inviting everyone to the table is something between a buzz phrase and an overused platitude these days. We say it with the best of intentions trying to counter a hyper-polarized culture and the long-practiced injustice of exclusion. But what do we really mean when we invite people to the table?

“JOIN US” – WE WANT THEM TO FIT IN

There are the “join us” invitations. Sometimes we invite people to table because the time has come to acknowledge and interrupt the prejudices and biases that have silenced the voices of our neighbors. We feel embarrassed by the racism, sexism, ageism, classism, or heterosexism any one of a host of other ‘isms,’ and we want to stop the privilege, supremacy, and outright hate that have othered people to the margins. Our invitation to join us is intended to be an expression of our commitments to equal opportunity and fair treatment.

When people accept our “join us” invitation, we are quick to celebrate demographic diversity and the promotion of fair and equal treatment. But the celebration often comes too soon – before anyone new at the table has a chance to say anything. It really wasn’t their voices we valued or wanted among us, it was their numbers, their bodies if I may be so bold, something we could count, not someone to whom we wanted to listen or who might possibly change us. We wanted them to join us, to join US. The expectation was that if people can just share a common table everyone will realize “they are just like each other.” What we hold in common is idealized. The ways in which we are different get subverted to preserve harmony and avoid conflict. The tacit assumption in an invitation to “join us” is that “’we are all the same’ or ‘we aspire to being all the same.’” Because, after all aren’t we all the same in our deepest humanity? And the answer to that is most assuredly no.

BRING A DISH TO SHARE – WE WANT WHAT THEY BRING WITH THEM.

Then there are times we invite people to table with what I call a “bring-a-dish-to-share” invitations. A leader notices that the world around them is becoming a more diverse place while the organization they lead isn’t. Think of the business that wants or needs new markets, the church that needs new members, or the party that needs new voters in order to expand, or to remain viable, or to survive. Fear takes root – the fear of losing. The objective of bringing more voices, new voices, diverse voices to the table is really to gain access to or legitimacy with a more diverse clientele or constituency. The very qualities, characteristics, competencies and contributions that lead to that access or legitimacy are pigeon-holed rather than integrated. Integrating new voices would mean changing the way we do things, or even changing ourselves. Instead, people are exploited rather than being affirmed to bring their whole selves – culture, language, art, beliefs, orientation, and identity – to t e table. When that realization sets in people begin to feel devalued. Bring-a-dish-to-share invitations are born out of the desire to win. Practitioners of access-and-legitimacy diversity fail to realize that they’ve lost the long game.

“COME AS YOU ARE” – ONLY WITH YOU CAN WE BE OUR BEST SELVES TOGETHER.

When we are at our best – faith leaders, business leaders, political leaders, any leaders – we invite people to table with “come as you are” invitations. We are intentional, asking people to bring their whole selves to the conversation. We listen for understanding, not for the best way to make our next point. Together we are mindful that “I cannot remain the same because you have joined me at table.” Differences are not simply valued; they are integrated into everything that happens around the table. And at our very best selves, we tear down the old tables and build new ones together – tables of different substance and different quality.

My faith teaches me that in my humanity I begin to hear the infinite God whom I serve and worship by connecting with and listening to the voices outside myself, as many of them as possible. No voice from the margins can be excluded from the table without risking an unheard word from God, for God has habit of siding with the oppressed.

Today we are being offered “come as you are” invitations. The goal is building relationships in which prophetic calls can be issued and just actions taken. This is a time to be our best selves, to listen one another into understanding, to integrate the differences among us, to set aside our need for a personal win and join the effort for a team victory – the human team, by committing ourselves to building new tables of substance and quality. This is time to break bread together, and without trying to break one another, to find ways of including rather than excluding and therefor silencing as many voices as possible in our democracy, beginning in voting booths, extending to our borders, through the forging an economy that promotes personal dignity, by creating opportunities for rehabilitation, offering forgiveness, and removing stigma. Come as you are. Bring your culture, language, beliefs, and experiences. Be courageous and vulnerable. Together let us end our time together today better for it.

I think I’m a little strange…

by Rev. Deb Worley

“Let us now confess our sin…” 

This is from [the 3/13/2022] worship service, as the introduction to our time of confession. I think this time each week is so important, so critical, so potentially powerful! I love it. For myself. And for our community. And yes, I know–I’m a little strange that way… But bear with me. I think there’s a chance you just might come to love it, too…

“I know we’re just a little ways into our worship this morning, but I’m going to do a quick review. So far I and we have said the following words:
‘Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus Christ!’
‘God is good, all the time!’
‘…with God on my side I’m fearless, afraid of no one and nothing.’
Whether it’s because we are in Lent, or because of what’s going on in the world, or because of other things that are stirring in my soul, I find myself asking myself (and not for the first time!), do those words –Grace…peace…God-is-good…fearless–really mean anything?

And then I answer myself, Of course they do.

But then I wonder, what? What do they really mean? How do they really affect my day-to-day life? Because they have to. They have to.

At the core of my identity is that I am a person of faith, a beloved child of God. Those words have to make a difference in the living of my life. Or they are just words….

And they are not just words—grace…peace…God-is-good…fearless—they are powerful truths about the Reality of God, the Kingdom of God, the Possibilities of God!

And as I, and we, live into the reality of these truths, as we live more and more out of these truths, I have to believe that the Kingdom of God will grow. Bit by tiny bit, moment by singular moment, interaction by individual interaction. But it will grow…

One part of that process of living into the reality of those truths–just one part—but it’s a significant part—is owning our sin. Yep, that’s another word that’s not just a word but a powerful truth—sin.

And unlike “grace” and “peace” and “Good-is-good!” it’s one we don’t like to think or talk about much.

But our not-thinking-or-talking-about-it-much—or at least the depth of the reality of it—is, I am convinced, part of what keeps us from living more deeply into God’s grace and peace and goodness!

Our reluctance to admit those things with which we struggle, those things around which we feel shame, those things for which we have either stepped deliberately off or fallen accidentally off the path of love and healing—all of those things that keep us distant from one another, from our true selves, from God—our reluctance to acknowledge, to admit, to confess those things is part of what keeps things like “grace” and “peace” and the goodness of God as simply nice words rather than deeply profound truths.

Our reluctance to consider the truth and power of our sin, both individually and corporately, is part of what keeps us from accessing and living into the truth and power of God’s grace and peace and goodness.

So(!)…now’s our chance. A chance. A chance to get real about our sin. In these moments, we have a chance to ‘fess up, to God and to ourselves—and in a few moments, to and with one another—our mistakes, our failings, our screw-ups. Our struggles, our secrets, our shame. Or even just one of those, if that’s where you need to begin. 

As we do that, God can begin remove the weight of all of that from us, look us in the eyes, and whisper to us, “I know. And I still love you. Now get up and try again.”

And in that, we will begin to experience the reality of God’s goodness and peace more deeply. And those words will become truths. And God’s Kingdom will grow, first within us and then in the world around us, bit by tiny bit, moment by singular moment, interaction by individual interaction.

There is real power available in the act of confessing our sin.

I invite you now, as beloved children of God, to join me for a few moments of silent confession.

Let us pray…

And of course, a time of confession is not complete without what I like to call an Assurance of Belovedness. So know, dear one, that even in the face of full admission of your sin (or as “full” as you can muster at the moment), you are deeply and utterly loved. Always. Forever. No matter what. Know that in the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven! Get up and get living!

—————————–
So–what do you think? Do you love it?? If not yet, keep trying. Keep returning to it. You just might surprise yourself one day…and love it. 

Or maybe I’m just a little strange that way… 🙂
Deb

If It Dies, It Produces Many Seeds

by Rev. Victoria Ubben

Scripture: Jesus said, “Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” (John 12:24)

Two things become unmistakably clear from John’s Gospel lesson. One is that transformation is difficult. And transformation is glorious. So, the question is “What needs to be transformed (or die) in you during this season of Lent so that something new can be born?”

Just about three years ago, I represented our United Church of Christ on an agricultural mission trip to visit three indigenous communities in Guatemala. Six years prior to this, Growing Hope Globally had worked with several mission partners to teach women to farm in their communities (as many of the men had migrated, leaving women and children behind in these three villages). With an absence of men, plus obvious effects of climate change in the region, people were malnourished and starving. The purpose of our trip was to follow-up on the progress (and success) of these new farming techniques.

A brief (and simplified) history: The Guatemalan Civil War ran from 1960 to 1996. It was fought between the government of Guatemala and the rural poor (many of whom are ethnic Maya indigenous people and ladino peasants). After the Guatemalan conflict, when the natives came out of the jungle where they had been hiding, they began to look for their lost friends and loved ones. Of course, most of them were nowhere to be found. 

One man we met, Cristobel, told us (through a translator) that when he was only seven years old, almost his entire village had been massacred on one dark night. Cristobel, and his five-year old sister, Catarina, hid silently under the lice-infested straw in order to survive until the coast was clear. Since that time, he has made it his mission to search on the mountainside for unmarked mass graves. He found them and unearthed the decomposing bodies. Years later, he set up a memorial for the 87 people in his small village who had been killed in just one night.

Someone like Cristobel said, “They tried to kill us and bury us; they did not know that we were seeds.” Now Cristobel’s community has risen from the earth. They are no longer malnourished and now they have what we call “food sovereignty”…which means that these people are not dependent on anyone else for their food. They can focus on local resources and local markets. The campesinos (peasant farmers) have risen… children have risen out from under the lice-infested straw…the spirits (I suppose) of 87 bodies also have risen from a mass grave.

If we die…like a seed…we produce more of what this world needs.

  • So, what if we loved our neighbors as ourselves? Then we would not be as segregated in our communities as we are.
  • What if we lived out God’s word and did not spend time trying to defend it? Then more people would be drawn to Christ.
  • What if we were simply faithful Christians being the light that sits upon the hill? Then others would see our good works and glorify God.
  • What if we really believed that all people are created with unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Then we will not see some as aliens and threats, but as brothers and sisters in Christ.

What if …

They tried to kill us and bury us; but they did not know that we were seeds? Then, like Jesus, we will rise up out of the grave and sprout into new life!

Closing Prayer:

Dear God, shine your light of conviction and truth upon our hearts. We offer our feelings to you that are heavy and burdensome, and those feelings that are yet hopeful of your good work among us. We surrender all to you, trusting that you are producing good fruit within each of us. Amen.

  • To learn more about the mission of Growing Hope Globally, check out: growinghopeglobally.org
  • Some of these ideas in this blog post are drawn loosely from An American Lent – Repentance Project, 2019.

photo credits: Alex Morse and Max Finberg