Wadi al Natroun

Somehow it seems right
that rooms built for Jesus
and to honor his Mother
are rank with body oder
They feel well worn, like
a milk farmer’s old barn
built as a sturdy shelter

The edge of every old relic
is worn to a smoothness
by the faithful fingers of
a million traveling pilgrims
They move about the tight
rooms like ants at a picnic
Touching, praying, hoping

We took shoes off outside
The carpets in here are thick
with the dust of two million
feet and the shuffle of many
centuries of pedestrian piety
They are not taking pictures
They are investing in power

Olfactory speaking, I swing
between strong impressions
In one corner, I feel a gravity
of millennia, lingering saints
But in a whiff the room sours
Hints of gym socks and fetor

My house shall be a house
of prayer, he said. Never did
he say his buildings would or
should smell of lavender and
sophistication. The Boy and
his Mother seem to welcome
all who come. My house will

be
a house
of perspiration

Corn Row Christians

My regular drive from my home in New Wilmington to the presbytery office on Route 18 brings me by several Amish farms with large planting fields adjacent to their homes.  I love catching a glimpse of Amish families working hard in their fields, always an inter-generational affair and often making use of interesting horse-drawn equipment.  Nothing says "work" like an Amish draft horse.  Amish cultivation efforts throughout the year are lately yielding row upon row of sturdy-looking corn.  As we are now well past the Fourth of July, so also their corn is now well beyond knee high.  The harvest soon cometh.  Go find your butter and salt.

Earlier this summer, I offered you a few articles outlining my own sense of call to maintain the best of what Shenango Presbytery has been about in recent years.  Some of our sturdy draft horses that continue to serve us well include our pastor retreats, LeaderFest, cross-cultural partnership visits, Partnership for the Missional Church training, digital communication, and our excellent presbytery office staff and resources.  My earlier writings indicated my gratitude that none of these workhorses need put out to pasture anytime soon.  But we must remember: Farm fields do not exist so that horses have work to do.  Rather, horses (tools) are kept in good shape so that the land might better produce its offering.  Let us measure the effectiveness of our efforts and events, not merely by how many attend, but by what worship, fellowship, and ministry blooms in the seasons that follow.  After all, our Lord has said, "each tree is known by its own fruit."  (Luke 6:44)

To that end, as summer begins to give way to fall, I want to turn out attention from horses to harvest, from maintenance to cultivation.  Both matter dearly, and indeed you likely wont' have the latter without the sturdiness of the former.  Cultivation (noun): the action of cultivating land, or the state of being cultivated, the act of preparing and using land for crops or gardening.  All farmers know, in the case of corn as much as with any crop: the harvest does not produce itself automatically, nor can the cultivation be unduly rushed.  Fruitfulness calls for attentiveness and patience, not to mention great trust in the Lord of the harvest.  (Matthew 9:38)

I believe the last 30 years of Presbyterian congregational life has reminded us of two important lessons:  First, our congregations will no longer replenish themselves automatically.  There was an era when decent American neighbors sought out churches like ours because there was a widely-shared notion that good citizenship included Sunday morning worship at your local (usually Protestant) church.  Presbyterians benefited from that cultural arrangement.  Offer Sunday School, call a halfway decent preacher/chaplain, maintain a bearable choir, and, by and large, folks came.  This is not to disparage fields of bygone eras, but rather it is to appreciate the reality that such soil no longer produces in the same way.  Expecting a flock of the faithful to grow, simply by existing, can now be better understood to be like expecting corn to grow from ground that has not been tilled or seeded.  Seeding is a burden, yes.  But anyone hungry for the outcome will find cultivation a great privilege.  And besides, the Holy Spirit does much of the work ahead of us.

Second, we now have enough hindsight on the 1980s and 90s to see that there are no quick-action fertilizers for forcing overnight congregational blooming in tired soil.   There is planting and tending, even fertilizing ... but there is also waiting.  Efforts and events drive up some numbers for a time (and nothing is ever wasted by the Holy Spirit), but a harvest calls for a long-range view.   Corn takes time, and so does Christian community.  Packages of programs and procedures may help to activate the ground, but -- as it has been observed -- disciples of Jesus are made, not born.  That takes time; most worthwhile matters do.  For example, nothing warms the heart like a gaggle of children down front for a children' sermon.  But that's a seed moment, not a harvest moment.  Wise congregations understand this.  In the case of our small children, the harvest of discipleship will only be known 15, 20, maybe 25 years down the row.  We adults ought not trade the short-term sweetness of childhood church moments for the lasting starch of forming mature disciples.   It is the same now with most of our neighbors:  We cannot expect to welcome into our worship only those folk who already "get church."  (Besides, if they have left other flocks, most nomadic worshippers will likely also leave yours.)  Instead, we can cultivate our willingness to walk with uninitiated neighbors long enough for them to get a taste of the generous gospel meal most of us have now known most of our lives.  (Luke 14)

And so, at our spring pastors retreat, friend of our presbytery Dr. Jannie Swart could talk to our pastors about understanding the ministry of the Teaching Elder (pastor) as one of -- Can you guess? -- cultivation.  Elders and Deacons and plenty of others play their farming part, too.  Tilling, planting, and watering turns out to be akin to preaching, practicing, and providing for the gospel.  This perspective of cultivation assumes that our congregations are not merely businesses to be run, or stores to be minded, or services to be offered, but rather living communions where the seeds of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection are given space and support to bloom and grow into fruit for one another and for the neighborhoods all around us.  In this vision, even worn-out, tired, aging pastures can be tended back to life -- assuming there is a sincere openness to bearing new tastes and an pliable imagination for new flavors of fruit, all as the Spirit directs.  (Ezekiel 37)

My commitment as your Executive Presbyter is to continue the work of others before me -- and not by myself but with Deacons, Pastors, and Ruling Elders alongside -- to cultivate our presbytery to be more and more a communion of farmers and field hands, tending the soil of discipleship in and around -- and if necessary, beyond -- our congregations.  Cultivation is both our great burden and our greater blessing, and the Holy Spirit turns out to be both Provoker and Comforter along the way.  May it be, year after year, that there are blooming followers of Jesus, of all ages, sprinkled across our congregations, who are, by the measurement of the gospel, spiritually knee high by every fourth of July.  Corn row churches, anyone?

Next week: the first of several specific areas of cultivation for Shenango's next 5-10 years.

Credo

I entrust my life to Jesus, the Christ of God,

and love him as both my Savior and Sender.

I confess him Lord of all, Head of his church,

my eldest Brother and the true firstborn Son

in an ever-widening covenant family of God,

into which I have been so graciously adopted.

Through him I have come to worship one God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Through the broad witness of the scriptures,

God is worshipped as Speaker, Word, Breath:

a living communion both sublime and simple.

In Jesus’ birth, Eternity stepped into our time.

By his death, our sins have been sequestered.

Since his rising, our humanity sits in Divinity.

With saints of every era, I sing the gospel song—“Christ is risen. He has risen indeed!”

I believe that the atonement of Jesus with us is the clue by which all other matters, divine and human, are to be interpreted. I can say no more about “God” than what we have seen and heard in the incarnation of Jesus: his birth, ministry, crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, and assured reappearance. Yet I give thanks that no more need be known for salvation or service. I believe that the same triune God who saves us from sin also sends us into ministry, and as such, the church dare not separate blessing from burden, promise from perspiration. I believe that the Holy Spirit is always and everywhere provoking the church, in all its forms, toward a continuing conversion of its common life: deeper shared discipleship and wider apostolic witness. I trust that the New Testament was providentially sanctified for that sacred purpose, and that with the Old Testament, the canon is the unique, inspired, and authoritative witness to Jesus as the one true Word of God. I gratefully receive baptism once and the communion meal again and again as signs and seals of our belonging and our vocation. I understand ordination to be a holy demotion within the universal Christian ministry, given for the equipping of Jesus’ people for his purposes in the world. I welcome the great themes of the Reformed tradition – transcendence, covenant, election, providence, stewardship, etc. – as reliable wisdom for interpreting scripture, providing for worship, equipping the saints, and living Christian hope. I believe the gathered church is not an end unto itself, but exists to serve the Servant of all and to be a witness to and worker for the reign of God in this life and in the life of the world to come. I am confident that the Holy Spirit uses the authority of scripture’s witness, the best of our theological heritage, and the trials of the global church to call disciples of Jesus in our own time and place to a more faithful witness in the personal, ecclesiastical, familial, vocational, political, cultural, and social relationships of life. At its best, the visible church is a provisional demonstration of what the living God intends for the whole world. At its worst, the church is a reminder to the world that all is not yet as God will have it be. Even so, the triune God remains faithful: creating, redeeming, sustaining. How do I know? Jesus is alive—present to the Father, present in the Holy Spirit. That is the strange and wonderful news I have heard, and it has made all the difference in my broken, wayward life.

In the weakness of my fallen old flesh, I am but a sinner and an orphan.

Yet in the strength of Jesus’ risen new life, we are saints, children of God.

This is my story. 

This is our song.

None

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Recently, I had the privilege of reading that singular sentence from the New Testament aloud in a room full of men who are struggling to put their lives back together. I was immediately reminded what a difference context makes in the hearing of scripture. When you've been down and out, have made a mess of things, or have had your life turned inside-out by the messy living of others, you simply recognize good news when you hear it. In these contexts, there is little interest in interpretation and counter-interpretation, no desire for point and counterpoint, no time for a "hermeneutic of suspicion." Good news simply reverberates within lives that are ready to hear it.

And these thirteen words from the 8th chapter of Romans do indeed combine to offer good news. The whole chapter moves along these lines: The death of Jesus has covered over all that deadliness that lurks around the edges of our lives. The new life of Jesus replaces fear with gladness as an engine for getting up in the morning and doing good. That Jesus is a brother, sharing our flesh, his status sequesters all condemnation and changes the sign over our door from "sinner" to "child of God." I appreciate the Message interpretation with Romans 8:1 -- "With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved."

Imagine the worst thing you have ever done.
Or imagine the worst matter ever done unto you.

Now imagine said action having no more power of your life.

None.

These days, many are arguing that it is time for the church to move on from the personal salvation themes that defined the Protestant Reformation. I tend to agree. The gospel is more about "we" than "me," and more about a world that God loves than a church that hopes to survive. Even so, standing in a room full of struggling saints, I was reminded how much there is still a place for that first-person singular gospel song: It is okay now between you and God. Really, it is.

That's good news. Does it reverberate within your life?

Shutting Down the Strong

More than once in the last fourteen days, I’ve thought about the curious juxtaposition of the Lord’s table and our government’s shutdown. The federal closure is all over the news, so that spectacle is hard to miss. Between our inter-generational module on “the Eucharist” and our recent Sunday morning sermons on the same, our communion around the Lord’s generous meal has also been in the foreground of our fellowship.

I suppose that juxtaposition offers at least this good news: Amid the boneheadedness of a stalled legislature, not to mention the crippling complexities of ordering our overly-complicated national financial house, I find myself grateful for space and time around a table that is neither bankrupt or impenetrable. At this table, there is always enough for all who are hungry for a new world. At this meal, no one is turned away who discerns his living body in the faces all around them. That’s good news. Fling open the doors.

Not so in the District. It would seem that there is not enough to go around these days, at least not enough to do everything our elected voices want done. With scarcity in the air, actual or perceived, everything is log jammed. And no one dare flinch in compromise, lest someone think them weak. Weakness costs votes come booth time.

All the while, back at home, we are an odd community made up of odd persons who are led by an odd kind of political figure: one that comes to our proud times in the weakness of our injured flesh and who makes power known in the shame of government execution. This leader forms a new party by, of all things, transforming a routine religious meal into a feast for a new community with a new commandment. His simple supper humbles the strong and raises up the weak. It is a dinner that celebrates God’s once-and-for-all election, not our various re-election schemes. So while National Park rangers and federal meat inspectors spent Sunday morning counting on two hands the unwanted days off from work, students of Jesus all around the world broke sweet bread and gave thanks for an underlying human unity marked by Pittsburgh’s own “World Communion Sunday.”

Yellowstone remains closed. For all we know, Old Faithful is turned off at the spigot. And down in D.C. they are trying to figure out how to tame a spending geyser that tops a stunning $3,600,000,000,000 a year.

Meanwhile, the table of a risen Jew remains open.
Let us give thanks for such a fount of New Faithfulness.

The Ethics of Ceasing

“More water?”

As I slid my glass toward the table’s edge, for a refill from “Julie,” I was reminded of the many subtle ways persons serve us in a given week. With this sabbath series still on my mind, I began thinking about what it might look like to take a once-a-week break from being served by others, in any form. Recently, one of our members shared with me a simple sabbath practice of her own: no shopping on the Lord’s Day. It is not a showy thing; she only brought it up because of our recent sermons. That discipline put me in mind of a wise saint in a previous congregation who chose not to eat out at restaurants on Saturdays. Somehow, both seem fitting as sabbath practices: a day, once a week, not to be waited on by others; a day to allow others to rest from working for me.

But the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns.

Notice how in the Exodus tradition, the commandment to rest is not merely a privatized prohibition. There is a wide social implication with resting. Children, slaves (ubiquitous in antiquity), domestic animals, and even those “outsiders” that hang around the community – they all get a weekly break. All should sabbath. Keeping the rest day holy is personal, yes, but not a private affair.

Now, I know what you are thinking. “Even if I stop going to Applebees after worship, or to Aldi’s on a Saturday sabbath, that won’t stop the entire county from eating out or shopping on those days.” So true. Drinks will still be poured and groceries still bagged, even on “holy” days. It is a reminder that we no longer enjoy (are cursed with?) the cultural scaffolding to hoist up sabbath rest days. We disciples now have to find a path for holy rest despite the fact that we live, work, and play in a 24/7, always-on world.

Even so, the commandment remains before us.

So I challenge you to experiment with taking a sabbath from being served, a day a week, in whatever form seems appropriate to your weekly living. Restaurants and grocery stores are but two of many possibilities. It is not a judgment upon those who do the serving. The focus of our renewed discipline should be inward, not outward. It is, rather, a step toward creating new space for reflection upon our needs vs. wants, upon the bounty of the Trinity’s provision for our lives and for the world (as opposed to living out of the anxiety of scarcity), and upon those persons with whom we interact in our daily living. Sabbath grants us permission to perceive them as “neighbor” (Jesus’ word) and not merely “server.”

If nothing else, at least witness to God’s bountiful grace by leaving a ridiculously large tip.

A Holy Stop

The Bible calls it sabbath. What’s in a name?

It’s a terrific little Hebrew word, pronounced something like shaw-bath, possessing of several interesting shades of meaning. It can mean repose, especially implying an abstention from exertion. At a basic level, sabbath calls for a weekly work interruption. For the ancient Hebrews, a day set apart during which one ceased from all labor was a bold critique of their own shared history. Their ancient forebears had been forced to work endlessly under Pharaoh’s slavery in Egypt. A day for ceasing was, among other meanings, a day of protest against the inhumanity of endless labor. Work is good (Genesis 2:15), but work can turn evil when it lacks rest.

The little word also has a shade of cessation. It calls for a stop. Such stoppage hearkens right back to our poetic beginnings, in the creation story. For six days, God summons the world we know and love into being. But on the seventh, God stops doing this. Presumably, God did not lay down in exhaustion and take a long nap. The stoppage was for enjoyment, for celebrating the deep gladness of something being finished, made complete. So a sabbath day is for stopping one kind of effort (creating) and for taking up another (blessing). Over the years, I’ve attended a number of Habitat for Humanity house dedications. There is always palpable joy in the air when those who have labored, including the homeowners, stand back and survey what has been accomplished over time. This kind of gladness is surely a shade of sabbath.

Finally, there is a sliver of meaning in sabbath that suggests “putting something away, to rid, to take away.” In this way, a weekly sabbath rest is perhaps conceived as a kind of regular recalibration. Whatever bad habits or inflicted harm or unholy allegiances are taken on during a week of labor, these are to be cast off on the last day, the holy day. Someone once described our weekly worship to me as a time to “find True North again.” This is one spirit of sabbath, I suspect. Jesus picks up on this theme in his ministry when he regularly heals on the sabbath day (Matthew 12:1–37). This drives his older, stringent brothers in the faith nuts. Healing seems like blatant work to them, and therefore is inappropriate. Yet Jesus’ healing echoes the old Hebrew root in view here: he takes away the deadly patterns of the world, he rids the body of deadly forces, he puts down evil spirits. His is a holy stoppage. Jesus argues that this is exactly what sabbath is for. “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath.” (Mark 2)

A break from labor
A time for blessing
A day for putting matters right

How might the Holy Spirit be calling you and your household to a fresh practice of sabbath rest and sabbath reorientation?