“One Candle, then two, and some empty shoes—BOOM!”

Today is St. Nicholas Day.  Famed day for commemorating a story that begins with a “Nicholas” wanting to help save some daughters from prostitution by means of a pregnant possibility—depositing some gold in some stockings or shoes and making NEW LIFE possible. 

Remembering that story as we try and celebrate it as a family, I woke up this morning with another—remembering especially that it was thereabouts nine months ago that I was standing in the sanctuary of First Presbyterian Church in Atlanta, Georgia—at the NEXT Church conference.  We had seen a visual depictions of “where we are” in the Church and the world, with pictures of broken people and places—especially churches.  And as a response to confession and forgiveness we sang together Philip Phillips’ rendition of “Home.” 

Hold on, to me as we go As we roll down this unfamiliar road And although this wave is stringing us along Just know you’re not alone 'Cause I’m going to make this place your homeSettle down, it'll all be clear Don't pay no mind to the demons They fill you with fear The trouble it might drag you down If you get lost, you can always be foundJust know you’re not alone 'Cause I’m going to make this place your homeSettle down, it'll all be clear Don't pay no mind to the demons They fill you with fear The trouble it might drag you down If you get lost, you can always be foundJust know you’re not alone 'Cause I’m going to make this place your home Written by Andrew Pearson, Greg Holden • Copyright © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc, Cypmp

This became a prophetic text for me, personally.  An anthem to be sung again and again, remembering and appreciating the goosebumps I felt in those moments—being reminded of God’s promises, and in particular that as unseemly as things were and still are in the world, and that God has given us a kind of residential scholarship.  We, like Jesus, are called to live in broken places among broken people—and be at home with the promises of God’s love. 

These Advent days, so many have lamented “post-election” about how dark, how horrible, how dangerous, difficult, perhaps even un-redeemable things are or seem. 

It is worth being reminded liturgically and otherwise that our God is the God who says, “let there be light,” in the chaos; and still, yet before it’s over, “God saw that it was good.”  More light has come into the world; we have actually experienced that “the light shines in the darkness,” and that “the darkness does not overcome it.” 

There is a lot of fear, anger, resentment, and anxiety about these days and the coming days.  It’s ADVENT all over again!  But I’m grateful for the light and even more-so for the promise that we are not left here to toil for ourselves.  Rather that God can and still does make such unseemly places our “home.” 

I’m looking back at nine months ago wondering what happened that day in Atlanta, because in some ways, it feels like it’s given itself over to new birth in my life.  Today I’m in a new pastoral position with my sense of call renewed and with great hope.  I’m literally in a “new place,” I have a “new home,” and I’m feeling God’s promises each day holding me up!  It just happens to be Advent; the light is literally and spiritually shining in the darkness!  At least for me. 

But then—BOOM—and maybe some light for others!  News broke this past Sunday afternoon that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was going to deny the Dakota Pipeline project the right of way to build beneath the Missouri River near a Native American burial ground. 

I am grateful minds and hearts changed. 

I am grateful, because the media coverage of events at the site has been extraordinarily poor.  There were reports of peaceful protests and brutality—including water cannons being used against protestors in sub-freezing weather.  I know a number of my colleagues, including friends, visited the protest camps, trying to both raise awareness and to support and participate those working to protect the rights of Native American peoples and water rights. 

I am grateful that minds and hearts changed—after months of discussion, dialogue, and eventually protests.  This turn of events came as unexpected news and people were gearing up for the worst!  The news was a little bit of light amidst otherwise dark news and anxiety about the future—even with uncertainty about what a new administration may decide to do come spring. 

But this news came while we in the Church are amidst Advent; where there was the light of one candle, but now two as the Advent days stretch toward Christmas—the promises of God’s love held out to us as we prepare to celebrate again God’s incarnation in Jesus! 

To be sure, if you’re on the front lines of the dispute—whether at Standing Rock, or in Flint, Michigan (where the polluted water is yet to be resolved, STILL!), or in South Carolina (after another acquittal in a black man’s death by a while police officer where all the world could see otherwise)—I’m still a privileged white man saying something akin to “don’t worry, be happy; God’s got this.” 

Really, I don’t mean to say any more than, “Hang on.  We’re not alone.  God has given us Jesus.  And the joy and light is realized every day.  And sometimes, especially in these Advent days.” 

Rather than holding out and up all the reasons why the darkness is what it is, perhaps we can also contemplate in THIS Advent, what God has already begun in us, that we might become something new ourselves! 

I am grateful that minds and hearts can be changed.  In fact, I am hopeful that my mind and heart will be changed enough so I can let go of my own fears and anxieties long enough to feel the joy of this season.  And maybe I, too, ought to be more intentional about filling shoes and planting seeds that will change someone else’s life for the better. 

© Rev. David Stipp-Bethune; Teaching Elder and Pastor, The First Presbyterian Church of El Dorado, Arkansas

One Candle-Power

While my family and I were relocating from Havertown, PA to El Dorado, AR we received word that our moving truck had broken down and that our delivery date that had been “pre-planned” and “scheduled” got put-off and rescheduled.  Imagine the scrambling if Christmas were actually put back a couple of days to the 27^th and there was going to be one more week of Advent this year! 

We greeted this news about our move with a sigh and a shrug saying, “it was bound to happen.”  But more than that was the opportunity to take advantage of the extra time to “see some sights.” 

In the Shenandoah valley of Virginia we stopped at one of the famous “caverns” and did an underground tour.  Turns out we ended up at the place were tours have been going on for about 200 years.  And it was in the midst of being underground, with no outside light, that our tour guide turned off all the electric lights and then lit a single candle. 

I was reminded that "one candle-power"—amidst total darkness—is incredibly powerful! 

Our Christian season of Advent begins every year with one-candle-power.  I was thinking of this recent experience as I anticipated the lighting our Church’s advent wreath this past Sunday.  One candle-power.  That’s all. 

Advent begins with the flick of a bic, or a click of the lighter, or the strike of the match, and the flame is touched to the candle wick.  And for a week, that single candle burns by itself. 

One candle power. 

Is that what it was like when God said, “Let there be light?” 

And for those first few moments, the light burning away the darkness revealing chaos! 

I’m almost afraid to ask what that one candle power reveals in our world as that light chases away the darkness!  What’s been lurking in the shadows that we haven’t seen?  What new things are revealed to us about our world that the light suddenly reveals?  A light that seems so fragile amidst the darkness. 

Sometimes it seems that the darkness is always more powerful than the light.  One candle power hardly seems enough to hold back the darkness—at least not for long.  I suppose this is why we light a second candle, and then a third, and a fourth after that. 

And this year, the congregation I’m serving has a tree that stands at least two stories tall, adorned by light and chrismons.  The light of one candle, easily dwarfed by the light blazing in the corner of the sanctuary, full of the reminders of Christ!  A reminder in light that we are not alone.  That we walk with Christ among us.  That one candle power now only chases the darkness to the corners, but that one candle has backup! 

This Advent, I’m trying to think of the one candle power not revealing the darkness of the world, but exposing Christ in the world.  One candle is enough to reveal Christ at work, or Christ’s work.  And that is another light.  Now there are two lights, revealing a third and a forth.  Now for lights, spreading to six more. 

If each of us had a light….  Oh wait.  We do! 

I was reminded online last week of this quote attributed to Karl Barth: 

“The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand.  We must hear this in the same way we hear the news of the daily headlines.” 

For those of you who call the world dark, or who keep revealing the darknesses, the dark places, or the power of the “dark side”—I raise you one candle-power. 

How can we greet these days with the grace with which they are given?  An opportunity to bask in promises that are real—rather than as unwanted setbacks? 

© Rev. David Stipp-Bethune; Teaching Elder and Pastor, The First Presbyterian Church of El Dorado, Arkansas

Newer Images of Sacrifice

There was this line in yesterday’s sermon: “Sacrifice must be met with sacrifice.”  I’m not sure where it came from, exactly, but it came out of my contemplating a newly-revealed story from September 11, 2001—about Lieutenant Heather Penney of the U. S. Air Force, who—in the wake of the planes hitting the World Trade Center Towers in New York—alongside her commanding officer screamed into the sky in a pair of F-16’s fully prepared to take on hijacked planes.  In the moments after lighting off, they each realized their planes had been prepared for training missions scheduled to fly that day.  They had no bombs, no missiles, and no guns—not even a rock.  Yet these were the only planes in position to take down United flight #93, that appeared to be on course to the U.S. Capitol.  Penney realized hers had just become a suicide mission as she thought through what was necessary to ensure United 93 was taken out. 

The iconic images and stories from 9-11 that we all witnessed in some way or other remind us of the many people who gave up their lives for real.  They were more than victims.  They were “survivors” who made it out of burning buildings alive—but who went back in to lead others to safety.  They were those aboard United flight #93—without orders—who fought for control of the plane and wrestled it to the ground over an unpopulated area.  They were those in uniform and those who weren’t; those who knew instinctively what to do and those who responded as they’d been trained. 

When people talk about 9-11, I remember a former colleague who stridently explained how he’d be using his sermon that Sunday, to declare for his congregation what it meant that in their city, there had been a months-long battle over tax increases to fund the city’s first-responders.  His line, that’s always stuck with me, was his disdain for the people who dared to call the firefighters, police officers, and first-responders “heroes,” but who were so unwilling to provide for their basic needs.  “These are the people we expect and require to come and save us, and yet we don’t pay them enough to provide for their families should they make the ultimate sacrifice.” 

It sounded brash.  His tone, less than 24 hours before he would deliver the message and the gospel for his congregation—and that afternoon among only colleagues—sounded somewhat disrespectful, even un-pastoral.  We knew he was trying a line, still thinking about the right tone to carry what he believed.  Maybe he was looking for the line not to cross. 

But I found his challenge strangely healing.  I began my own sermon that Sunday, asking the congregation to think about how we might support those who so bravely gave of themselves for others—including making sure that we paid people fairly.  It brought tears to the eyes of the mayor of our small town.  Being reminded that there was someone willing to take up and support those tasked with responding, seeing and hearing that support and love proclaimed in church, he left worship resolved to support and love, and to strengthen the support personnel of our community.  It’s one thing, of course, to support those who bravely sacrifice and die—after a tragedy.  It’s another, to begin to see those needs beforehand, too. 

15 years after September 11, 2001, it’s still not all clean and neat and tidy.  To some extent, we don’t know how deep the chaos was felt—or how near we were to the brink of even worse disaster.  And we still have a lot of people who bear real wounds—and most we’ve never heard about. 

I think about Air Traffic Controllers who had to watch helplessly, who tried to engage the military and others to help, but failed to connect all the dots before it happened. 

I think about other pilots and flight crews. 

I think about those on the other end of the phone calls, whose help was needed, but who couldn’t respond. 

I think about those who blame themselves for not spotting the hijackers in the airport. 

I think about those who know they made mistakes as they tried to make the right calls and do the right things. 

I think about those, for whom the long string of events on 9-11 was just the beginning; the thousands who’ve gone off to war, sent to faraway places to “defend us” whose lives have been lost or those who have returned with wounds and PTSD.  I think about the long war that started that day, but isn’t yet over.  That while some of us have prospered, graduated from college, started whirlwind careers making good money, many continue to make unimaginable sacrifices—and often, sacrifices remain unnoticed. 

Sacrifice must be met with sacrifice.  Too often we take sacrifice for granted, make it “expected,” and rely on the sacrifices of others.  Too often we are blinded, somehow unable to recognize how our lives depend on others.  These “other stories” help make it more clear. 

The joy and justice of the Kingdom of God in the gospels can be ours if we’re willing.  But it’s not supposed to be hoarded for a day or time of trial.  God’s intention is that we live out the joy and justice of the Kingdom of God each and every day.  It means paying attention to what’s less obvious.  Or, being willing to declare the blatantly obvious! 

If sacrifice must be met with sacrifice, what’s MY sacrifice?  How can I be help, support, and LOVE, today?—and to whom? 

© Rev. David Stipp-Bethune; Teaching Elder and Pastor, The Presbyterian Church of Llanerch, Havertown, Pennsylvania

A Prayer for the Haverford Township Board of Commissioners Meeting, July 11th, 2016

[In Haverford Township, the Board of Commissioners still ask our Havertown Ministerium to provide pray-ers for Commissioner's Meetings.  My turn usually comes in July, since our Session meeting doesn't conflict in July.  In the wake of the horrific loss of life in Baton Rouge, outside St. Paul, and in Dallas--this is what I shared:]  

Commissioners, it’s always a privilege and an honor to be with you and to offer an opening prayer for your meeting. 

The last time I was here was back in October, and I asked you to indulge me in a moment of silence because there had been a number of incidents of violence at schools. 

It took my breath away that 9 months later, after another week of horrific violence, I might need to do it again. 

But, silence hasn’t helped, or gotten us to where we’ve really wanted to go. 

So, if you’ll indulge me again, in the wake of Baton Rouge, St. Paul, and Dallas—take a moment, not to look down or to look away, but instead, I ask you to look around the room and look into the faces of those next to you and those across the room. 

Look into the faces….  Christians believe that we are all of us as human beings, made in the image of God.  We all have a little bit of God in our faces; we need each other, we are essential to each other—in all of our beautiful diversity. 

Rather than silence, when we’re looking for answers, we might try asking each other! 

I invite you to join me in asking for God’s Blessing: 

Holy God:

We again we have experienced that living is hard, that policing is hard, that governing is hard. 

We are polarized by politics, name-calling, finger-pointing, hand-wringing, blaming, pointing of guns, systemic failures, constantly having to pull ourselves up after another injustice another unfairness. 

We wish that killing were just as hard; but it seems it comes all too easily. 

May we be reminded, O God, that we each share your image; that we need one another. 

May we be reminded that ALL life is all too precious, and far too fleeting. 

May we be reminded that we are all human, that we all make mistakes, but that we are unsatisfied to just let them go, and that we will do all that is in our power to make them right. 

May we disagree, in love. 

May we challenge each other, in love. 

May we work for reasonable solutions—even unreasonable solutions—in love. 

So in this meeting, may our commissioners meet civility and kindness and charity in each other. 

And may those who come with business, meet kindness and charity, and know that we are all doing the best we can. 

May we bless each other with smiles, being grateful for those who give of themselves so that our lives are easier—for those who pick up trash and yard waste; for those who run to the firehouse at the sound of a siren and check out smoke alarms and smoking pots on stove, and unattended barbecue grills; for those who patrol the streets stand in harm’s way, and rescue lost cats; and yes, for those that must vote to make it happen by paying the Township bills and the payroll! 

All of this is hard, but we can do it well.  Smile on us, O God. 

AMEN.  

April 2017 Would Be a Very Good Month for Babies

Way, way, way back when times were tough for God’s people—in bondage, in Egypt, under the threat of death, not because of unfair labor practices but the threat of death because Pharaoh declared a war on male Hebrew babies—stories not often retold these days reveal that Hebrew leaders actually banned having children.  The image of Egyptian soldiers or agents killing infants was too much for them to bear.  So to avoid infant deaths, as this surely was not what God wanted or intended, they chose not having babies.  Seeing themselves as unable to change the system, they admitted their powerlessness and made themselves complicit with the Egyptian edict. 

Husbands and wives refrained from relations.  The Hebrew population ceased to grow.  And the lack of resistance kept a good people down. 

I’m grateful to John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg, whose book entitled The First Christmas introduced me to some of this tradition. 

Where the turning of the story began, they suppose, was when a young Hebrew man and his wife chose resistance.  They resisted Pharaoh, they resisted their own leadership, they stood in the face of infants being killed and chose life—intentionally.  They made a baby and named him Moses—and dared Pharaoh to snuff out what God had inspired. 

I write this, horrified by the violence that erupted in the United States from African-American men dying at the hands of white police officers and innocent white police officers gunned down as they protected what was widely reported as a peaceful protest in Dallas, Texas. 

I don’t condone the violence.  I don’t condemn police officers.  I don’t blame #blacklivesmatter.  I recognize every day that the violence we abhor is violence we have helped create ourselves.  It’s the violence of not loving our neighbors as ourselves.  It’s the justification of privilege, somehow thinking we’ve “earned it.”  And it’s only a matter of time before the violence explodes in so many different directions.  We are all at risk.  Not just because of the color of our skin, but our refusal to love one another as Jesus teaches us as Christians.  We are also dying because of the color of our skin or the color of our politics or the color of our religious affiliation or the color of our sexual orientation and lifestyle. 

There is many a good reason to give up hope that we can end this cycle of violence.  For us to give in to the idea that this will go on and on and on—much like we have said that the peoples of the Middle East will always be fighting, that the poor will always be with us, that there can be no real peace for human beings.  That someone, somewhere, will always take up arms. 

I’ve spent a lot of today reading online, trying to find out exactly what happened in Baton Rouge, in Minneapolis, in Dallas.  I’ve read facebook posts and tweets, news stories, reflections from friends and colleagues. 

I was moved by a woman who hoped that her son would not have to see her die, like the 4-year-old daughter of the girlfriend riding in Philando Castile’s car watched him die. 

I was moved by a colleague whose eldest child, having gone off to college in Minnesota was going to participate in rallies in the Twin Cities; how words from her dad encouraged her to speak loudly and feel free to get arrested. 

I have spent hours this week thinking about my own children, and in particular, a friend of my eldest son, they both enter 6^th grade this fall, the friend who is African-American, whose mother is white and greatly fearful (and for so many good reasons) of what awaits him in this world.  I, too, am fearful about what that will mean for my son and our families, knowing their years of innocence will likely be impacted now by things they won’t be equal in sharing in because of the color of their skin. 

I have one of those experiences myself.  I remember my own experience in college.  My roommate was African-American, also a Presbyterian preacher’s kid, but adopted.  I was there the day my roommate was arrested for robbing a baseball card store.  My roommate and I both had been on a college-sponsored mission trip to Eastern Kentucky over spring break, the time the robbery had taken place in Arkansas while we were in Kentucky.  When the white police officers asked me if there was any way my roommate could have committed the crime I laughed and said how preposterous it was, “No.  He can’t time-travel, or be in two places at once.  He was with us all night.”  But to my dismay, they believed otherwise. 

In this world where people seem to have no honest chance and hope is fleeting, …I hope a bright young couple is thinking this is the perfect time to have a baby! 

Because it will mean hope is not dead, and life is not in doubt; that someones would be choosing life, and witness, and resistance.  

#makelovenotwar

#killemwithkindness

#loveyourneighborasyourself

#thegoldenrule

#teachthemtoyourchildren

© Rev. David Stipp-Bethune; Teaching Elder and Pastor, The Presbyterian Church of Llanerch, Havertown, Pennsylvania

I Disdain WASPS and WASPiness; and I’m Part of the Problem

A few weeks back, a colleague of mine posted this on her Facebook timeline:  “There was a wasp in the house and I sucked it up in the vacuum cleaner but now I have to take the vacuum to the dump to be incinerated.” 

I really don’t like wasps, and I have a lot of affinity with her assessment.  But when someone

posted a graphic-language-containing-meme about wasps and bees in the comments to the original post, I found myself thinking about WASPs.  The meme suggested that wasps exist only to (and this is the sanitized version) “mess stuff up.”  But whether it involved the insects for W.A.S.P.y people and ideas—the meme was still right! 

I’m hoping there’s a better solution to the problem of wasps or WASPs than incinerating the vacuum cleaners of the world! 

So yesterday, after worship—I was horrified when I realized it—I came face to face with my W.A.S.P. male privilege. 

I was introducing the newly elected co-Moderators of the 222^nd General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)—as I do each time the Assembly meets, introducing the congregation I serve to the Assembly’s elected leadership and the ambassadors of the Assembly’s work for the next 104 weeks.  Unlike other years, this year—because there were only 2 co-Moderator teams to choose from, because I was somewhat familiar with all 4 co-Moderator candidates, because one candidate was from my own Presbytery, and 2 of the others I had either met, heard in person, or share regularly in blog posts, I felt confident enough to introduce the newly elected co-moderators without notes, a stat-sheet, or the official General Assembly press release in hand. 

Here’s what I said: 

“…Denise Anderson, who is a teaching elder and an African-American woman from National Capitol Presbytery, the other is Jan Edmiston, a teaching elder and the Associate Presbytery Executive for the Presbytery of Chicago.” 

See what I did there? 

I remember feeling the need to tell the congregation that Denise was African-American—sort of like a radio-broadcaster, having to describe the scene—“oh, and you need or want to know that Denise is black.” 

Well…, she is.  But maybe that shouldn’t be the main point! 

I wanted the congregation to know that we had elected a co-Moderator team, a beautifully diverse team.  I could have said that, but I didn’t.  From my privileged place—I was taught (?), I am want—to not have to describe everyone racially.  I’d prefer that “people were people,” and even then, I could have just left off that Denise is African-American. 

But by naming Denise as an African-American but then not naming Jan as white—I left people to “assume” that everyone should understand Jan was white, implying, of course, that somehow Jan is OK, that she’s ‘like us,’ that she’s ‘not-different.”  In fact, such an introduction could subtly imply that somehow Jan is more of a moderator than Denise.  I’m horrified because that’s what we privileged people do—we even unconsciously offer subtle hints about whom to trust and follow, treating people differently in just the right ways. 

Yet this was explicitly NOT what I thought, think, or believe. 

And I must do this in any number of ways. 

And therein lies the problem.  I am blinded by what has been usual and customary for me, believing I can see a world without color or distinction because I don’t have to think about it every day.  Privilege.  I have it.  Others don’t.  It’s unfair.  It’s unequal.  It stinks.  It more than stinks. 

I didn’t mean to suggest anything other than describing Denise by my comment, well, other than being sinfully proud that my denomination had the courage, insight, and giftedness to call a wonderfully gifted and diverse co-Moderator team.  It matters for important reasons that Denise is African-American and Jan is white.  It is a blessing and gift to have called two women to serve as the first co-Moderators of the General Assembly, and that it was not two white women (that would match the overwhelming lack of diversity our denomination possesses) but that it was a woman of color and a woman of privilege who if nothing else can model for us and encourage us to continue to have the conversation about race and privilege! 

And I hope I’d be right and saying that as a denomination we’re mostly ready, even if some of us don’t always act like it! 

And maybe the election of Co-Moderators of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) isn’t such an earth-shattering accomplishment in the greater scheme of things.  But this time, it’s offered me the chance of reflection and repentance in my own way of being.  The whole world might not yet be changed, but my world can be different.  And it’s a blessing and a gift. 

I believe the door to freedom is standing open.  We just have to have the courage and conviction to walk through it. 

© Rev. David Stipp-Bethune; Teaching Elder and Pastor, The Presbyterian Church of Llanerch, Havertown, Pennsylvania

Treating Worship Like the Beach

With the arrival of summer—which despite the local school schedule actually arrives Memorial Day weekend rather than the equinox—worship attendance numbers for the suburban, Philadelphia-area-congregation I serve really plummet.  The culprit is the reality that here so many people spend summer weekends “down to shore.”  For those of us NOT at the shore, it’s immediately noticed in a significant reduction in traffic and gridlock (unless you’re going or coming from said shore on Fridays or Sundays, respectively).  But it’s really, really noticeable at Church. 

Sure, in most congregations Sunday worship attendance patterns change during the summer vacation season.  But this is like people moving away for part of the year.  Programming—outside of worship, stops.  And worship itself is so sparsely attended you think something’s gone terribly wrong. 

I’ve tried to not be overly panicked when summer attendance tanks.  I’m a strong proponent of biblical sabbath; it’s just that people here more than other places seem to save it up all year and spend it over the summer.  And I know people have to be away; they should be away—family trips, and visiting extended family, and other things are really, important, I get it—and I really do hope people aren’t so glued to their Sunday pews that they get chances to enjoy trips and family time and God’s creation. 

But I also think this isn’t just a summertime issue anymore.  The Church has lots of Sunday competition—and this isn’t the old “woe is us” argument about youth sports and grocery stores being open on Sundays.  This spring, church members I’m familiar with faced a gauntlet of events and activities from weddings of family and friends, to participating in fundraisers for organizations they cared about, to family funerals, to continuing education conferences and retreats, to 10k races in the community, family reunions, and family health crises.  “Sleeping in,” “baseball and lacrosse games,” and “grocery shopping,” didn’t keep people out of worship!  This year, the number one worship-attendance-killer for the congregation I serve was probably people getting married.  There’s lots of shouting about marriage these days, but no one’s arguing against it because it hurts Sunday worship attendance. 

So I’ve been reflecting a lot about many of the things David Lose puts forth in his recent book, Preaching at the Crossroads.  Lose reminds us that we’re not only preaching to a different culture than in years past, but that worship needs to have a different role in our lives.  Gone are the days when people wander into church looking for expert advice on biblical or even cultural topics.  Any person with an iphone can easily peruse biblical and theological scholarship on any given passage or topic.  This doesn’t diminish the role or importance of the preacher; but it does give witness to worship that’s being cultivated and used by younger generations and people who are newer to the faith differently than those who have been long-term, mainline worship attendees. 

Lose also describes a kind of “disconnect” between Church (worship) and the everyday world in which most of us live and move and have our being.  He and others he’s talked to feel as if our lives are divided like Church and State—except it’s Church and World, where we touch so much more of the world, and so little Church.  In part, Lose is able to describe how our choices and insistence about how we worship has hardened the disconnect. 

People come on Sundays, we sit in pews facing the same direction as if we all agree, we expect someone to simply tell us what’s important so we don’t have to do the work, we sing some hymns together, we say some prayers, we often share some refreshments—we’re in, out, no one gets hurt in about an hour or so and we’re left to go on with our lives. 

People still regularly tell me that “Church” is so important for the rest of their week.  But a significantly greater number of people, while they might say that—or even believe it—easily make other choices. 

I don’t have any answers that are going to “fix” this problem.  I’m in it with the congregation and we’re constantly asking how we might do things differently or gain an impact that translates into better attendance. 

Lose suggests we should start to think of worship as a kind of “practice” for what we will do in our lives in the rest of the week.  That we should practice connection with one another and with God, hoping to replicate it later in the week.  That we should ask questions, and seek answers and then use what we discover together.  So that worship and liturgy is less of a performance and more of a warm-up. 

It sounds like a question of integration—how do we integrate worship into the rest of our lives?  Or, how do we get worship to play like a soundtrack in our hearts and lives for the whole week? 

I know Church isn’t really going to compete with “down to shore.”  But I think there are ways we can build a worship experience people can appreciate with more necessity.  I don’t think it will be based on music styles or contemporary verses traditional.  I think it will be measured by church-related folks by how useful worship is to them in their lives. 

Useful. 

It’s not one of the questions I’ve thought about in relationship to worship. 

I think people want something useful.  Perhaps, more useful than it’s been for a while in worship.  That’s part of what I’m thinking about as we begin the summer worship season. 

© Rev. David Stipp-Bethune; Teaching Elder and Pastor, The Presbyterian Church of Llanerch, Havertown, Pennsylvania

Memorial Day Cometh!

Memorial Day is not a liturgical holiday. Earlier this month many of my clergy colleagues posted their copious opinions about their preferred separation of liturgical and cultural observances particularly when it came to Mother’s Day. For me, Memorial Day has always fallen into that kind of category. And more recently, as it becomes more and more of a “catch-all” observance for those who have served in the military, it’s become more discomforting for me. Sometimes Memorial Day is celebrated as the necessary and tacit approval of violence and war—viewed as recognition shared participation in the brave and violent service to our nation’s military.

I’m not always sure what the Church is called to celebrate in worship on this weekend when many inside and outside of Church seek to honor military service and those who have died in it. For me, the gospels offer the backdrop of Jesus’ clear injunctions to “love your enemies and do good to those who hate you.” In particular, I don’t know what this means in our world where “military service” can now come in the form of un-occupied drones operated from Anwhere, U.S.A. to bomb “enemies” half-a-world away with the reprisals being the release of videos of captured journalists and others being beheaded.

For many people, Memorial Day is still synonymous with “Decoration Day”—originally a day set aside to decorate the graves of those who died in military service, with roots in the 1880’s where “decoration” referenced the placing of flower on the graves of soldiers who had been killed in the Civil War. Such observance of the death toll of violence and war strikes me NOT as a day for espousing the necessity and bravery of those who would give up their lives, and “remembering those who serve,” but as an honest response meant to count the “cost” readily apparent in the lives rubbed out, still lying in freshly used graves. Memorials not of heroism in service, but the terribly, bloody, ultimate cost.

I have a hard time on Memorial Day Weekend because I believe the Church has a response that is worthy of our observance, but it’s mostly perceived to be uniformly unpopular by many. I believe that violence is the wage of sin; and the a response to sinfulness is confession. Yet culturally, civically, we almost always prefer looking at our war dead as heroes and not as the cost of our sin. This, too, is discomforting because I don’t readily have a good answer for what we are called to do when persons are called into harm’s way as a part of military service; or are called to do harm to others in that service. I don’t want to give in to terrorists, or thugs, or allow violence to be used to harm or hurt, or to take advantage of others any more than the next person. I believe fervently that God seeks us not to resort to violent means in order to resolve our differences. And too often, we resort to violent means in either fear or the blind hope of something to gain by it.

Yet I believe the Church has some important roles this coming Memorial Day weekend.

Maybe the Church, when other institutions won’t, or can’t see their way clear to, can offer a brave witness of confession and lament in worship. We can be clear that our lament is not a denigration or repudiation of those who participate and endure violence on our behalf. The issue isn’t military service but our penchant as human beings to trust the use of force and violence more, and as a means of protection rather than trusting God.

As Christ-followers and believers we’re called to give witness to Jesus Christ who asks us to “love our enemies and to do good to those who hate us.” This means recognizing and owning that violence and violent means are the wages of human sin; that while we struggle with their seeming necessity in the world of which we are a part, we openly admit they have no place in the kingdom of God. As Christ-followers we can confess our willingness and complicity to go along with violence, and ask God to reveal new paths of righteousness.

And maybe the Church is called to be present for and is called to participate with other community institutions and our communities at large, giving witness to those who lost their lives in military service by remaining resolute that these sacrifices will not be forgotten, or allowed to be bereft of meaning. We can participate in sharing remorse and loss, acknowledging the inherent hurt for our communities and the world. This would be a more public role of intentionally gathering as representatives of communities of faith being present in courthouse squares, VFW posts, cemeteries, and other places where Memorial Day observances are held, asking God to be present with us as we remember and seek relief from the wages of violence. It is also for us as believers to offer Jesus’ words of grace and hope that all is not lost, but that we are recalled toward God’s vision again and again of a world made safe in God’s image.

Memorial Day might not be a liturgical holiday; but it’s one of the observances when I hope the Church is helping to carry a kind of liturgy out into the world. So that we give witness to the value of communities of Christ-followers and non-believers being united in the common acts of remembering sacrifice and hoping for a different way—and being encouraged together to see a different way.

There’s plenty of that work to go around.

© Rev. David Stipp-Bethune; Teaching Elder and Pastor, The Presbyterian Church of Llanerch, Havertown, Pennsylvania

CHURCH: and how the enemy of my enemy is not always my friend.

My family finally joined “the club” this spring.  Our 9-year-old middle son wanted to play baseball.  It turns out, it’s a lot like Church!  It comes with a financial investment to participate, then all the equipment, and of course—the schedules!  [We’ve recently been in the throes of a 6-day, 5-game nightmare where wind and snow-outs meant games “jumped randomly” into our previously well-arranged plans with reckless abandon.]  Before we knew it, baseball owned us, interrupting meals and displacing weekly traditions by demanding junk-food binges and ice cream suppers because “we had to eat something quickly.” 

Yes.  This is literally our “first sports rodeo.”  We observe more experienced families regularly bemoaning, “When will it end,” as the season is just beginning.  We notice some families—like ours—have religious commitments; but while I was sure to make Sunday worship, I must admit, I skipped out on some other things that I would have otherwise been present for because I now have a sports league in my life!  I’ve even heard “gratitude” that our league isn’t so intense, so that if you miss a practice or a game you aren’t demoted—because some of my son’s teammates have multiple sports; one of his teammates is Jewish and can’t practice or play Friday nights or Saturdays; and tonight, we’re choosing our son not skip his religious education class to play in a baseball game.  There are definitely trade-offs and choices. 

My wife noticed several weeks ago—“this must be the new community”—because between cub scouts’ pack meetings, pinewood derby, and den meetings, and now baseball, we see a lot of the same people.  And “our people” know “other people” because it’s a steady diet of baseball, lacrosse, football, traveling softball, basketball, …[name your commitments here], and for many of them it’s in multiples! 

So I’m reflecting on a conversation from Easter Sunday in which a nice family that was worshipping with our congregation for Easter was chatting with me before worship began, and pretty well identified this kind of cultural sports-a-thon existence as “bad” and “wrong”—in addition to Muslims purchasing church buildings and Jewish neighborhoods were literally expanding.  Maybe they thought I needed to hear them lament how fewer and fewer Christians seemed to be going to church these days,” so they named as shameful the reasons why some people don’t attend church, even as they were admitting they were worshiping just because it was Easter. 

I get it.  The Church, frightened by the merciless talk of “decline,” comes to see the threats to it as any “competition” that has arisen to its dominance.  But we’ve been talking about this ever since the first stores started opening on Sundays—and that’s been 50 years or more ago, now!  Frankly, I think the world’s moved on.  And we should, too.  I think this is one of the ways that the world has changed.  And it doesn’t make us “bad people” or failed Christians. 

If we focus on worship attendance as self-interested Church goers, we will entirely miss a creative and important opportunity, here.  There is a new community which needs the faithful witness of faith-filled Christian people that is more than just worship attendance. 

For our part, the Church could ably reframe this new world in more helpful ways.  We could, for example, disconnect worship from “sabbath” as Walter Brueggemann observes: 

“Sabbath, in the first instance, is not about worship.  It is about work stoppage.  It is about withdrawal from the anxiety-system of Pharaoh, the refusal to let one’s life be defined by production and consumption and the endless pursuit of private well-being.” 

In this view, churches might even consider cancelling worship to allow people to experience a broader Sabbath experience.  Ours was a beautiful weekend—weather-wise.  There is much to be said for sitting in the bleachers at the ballfields, basking in God’s glory in a bright, sunshine-filled sky and comfortable temperatures and a whole community “playing ball.” 

I know!  Preachers aren’t supposed to advocate for playing hooky from worship—people might get the idea that it’s OK.  And it’s true, we might have more people in worship if we could summarily dismiss or dismantle the regular and routine conflicts from grocery shopping to weekend swap-meets to little league sporting events and practices.  We can name these things as “bad,” and warn people about the “conflicts” and berate them for missing “worship.”  But for me, these would be reasons why people might just choose to stay away from Church more often! 

I have handfuls of people who are regular participants in our congregation who routinely seem to find it necessary to “confess” to me their Sunday “indiscretions” (choosing other activities over worship).  Maybe they think this is what I want to hear—or need to hear—that such contrition is or should be required to remain in good standing, or something.  I smile, because I actually know how it is.  Missing worship doesn’t make us bad people.  Especially if we’re:

• Taking a vacation weekend with our spouse who works for a bank and this has been a grueling tax season.  
• Participating in a 5k race that raises money for cancer research. 
• Attending the wedding of a family friend out of town. 
• Taking time away with family to relax; 5 baseball games in 6 days certainly eats up family time. 
• Completing 3 weeks of endless overtime.  
• Helping a family member move. 
• Sitting with a friend in the hospital. 
• Spent after a Saturday cutting the grass, working in the yard, helping a neighbor put up a fence, and need a spur-of-the-moment windows-down-drive-through Amish country on Sunday. 

These things may obliterate our worship attendance numbers; but they don’t make us bad people or failed Christians.  They don’t cause us to lose “Christian market-share,” and perhaps, if people knew this was really permissible, would improve our standing in the community and our attendance! 

The Church can cope in this new world, because we’re invested in people and Sabbath and not just worship.  Attendance is helpful, but it’s not the only measureable goal.  The day was once that the Church actually sought to care for the oppressed and persecuted and the suffering.  And this might be easier and more attractive than ever!  It might simply be a word of grace when people can’t be present; and offering to hear their stories when they can. 

Because we believe God is present with us in everything.  Even in community sports leagues and walking a golf course chasing a ball.  Maybe not every Sunday—but at least some of them. 

If we actually stopped calling people “bad” for missing Church, or the things they do as “bad,” and sought instead to instill in them Christian values they could demonstrate wherever they were—we could actually be ahead of the game. 

Slowing Down to go Fast; or making one step forward by taking two steps back (or, the value of listening)

I’m a NASCAR fan, and on Sunday’s in the religion of left turns and second place is just the first loser, commentator Darrel Waltrip is fond of preaching two counter-intuitive formulas for success.  #1—“Loose is fast.”  It’s his way of telling that if you want the fastest car, you have to have a set-up that keeps you uncomfortable.  “You’re driving it,” he says, “but it feels like your wrecking it on every lap.”  #2—“You have to slow down in order to go fast.” 

Last Sunday I preached the divergence of two scripture stories describing the disciples after Jesus’ resurrection.  One story from Acts 5 (a story that you may have attended Church all your life but never heard of), describes disciples breaking the rules, being chased by police, enduring jail time, sprung in a jail-break orchestrated by an angel and re-sent to defiantly preach Jesus crucified and risen.  Another story from John 20 (that we tell in Church almost every year), in its most-popular form describes fearful and doubting disciples hiding behind closed, locked doors. 

I think in spite or because of our best efforts, too many churches have ministry and mission models that mimic “hiding out.”  We’ve developed building-centered identities where our “witness” is safely showing the world our faithfulness in gathering for weekly, hour-long meetings; and, it “appears” the rest of our lives can be disconnected (like Church and State) from our church attendance and religious beliefs. 

It’s no wonder we choose John’s story, though.  If we followed the example from Acts 5, we’d surely feel the uncomfortableness of feeling like we were wrecking on every lap!  So to ensure crash avoidance, we over-adjust our car’s set-up so it always feels like we aren’t wrecking.  Yet we end up being so safe we can’t keep up in the race!  While we’re dramatically under-performing, “inside our buildings and practices” where we breathe the air of deeply held beliefs and tried and true practices, we errantly insist that “not crashing” IS winning. 

But most people know better. 

So, with disappointing results—too many empty pews, unfunded budget line items, and dreams of former glory—we ask ourselves questions like:  What can help people come to Church— or (at least) come to worship?  How can we go from under-performing to over-performing?  But often, these questions give rise to MUCH speculation from INSIDE—where we breathe the air of tradition and success-that-once-was-ours.  In response, mostly internal speculation that scrambles for what appears to be working in other churches gives way to “quick-fix” or populist ministry based on attraction.  In order to try and replicate the programmatic successes we covet, we narrow our first move down to picking tried and true programs to duplicate. 

Sometimes, you just have to slow down in order to go fast. 

Waltrip, as strange as it sounds, preaches a NASCAR wisdom of carefully “backing off”—slowly rolling out of the gas and not working the brake so hard—to let the car negotiate a turn without the driver aggressively over-driving the corner.  The result generally is that you go faster, except that it feels like you’re slowing down. 

As congregations consider how to create new ministries, conventional wisdom is to avoid “re-inventing the wheel” by choosing something that’s been tried and tested.  But a few months ago, I was impressed with a presentation at a NEXT Church event by a couple of pastors from Baltimore.  They described work that “looked a lot like” those disciples in Acts 5.  But they labeled the start of this Acts-mimicking-ministry with a process where LISTENING was the first step.  It sounded easy.  You just ask people what they wanted or needed, and then built a program around that need.  Piece of cake, right? 

Not so fast.  Literally! 

The kind of LISTENING they advocated wasn’t the simple survey kind—“here, fill out this form, we’ll collate the data and get back to you when we have a solution you might like.”  Rather, it was a form of deep listening that required a kind of incarnational community involvement that necessarily reverses some of our evangelistic thinking.  We have to stop looking into the community and asking, “How can the Church get some more members out of here?”; and instead, recognize the essential nature of the Church supporting, enhancing, and growing the community as a whole.  We have to begin to see and understand that, “The community doesn’t exist for the Church; rather, the Church exists for Jesus Christ AND for the sake of the community on Christ’s behalf.”  Can we discern what the community needs that the Church can participate in fashioning?  It might even require that a church have partners in the community! 

In Baltimore, the experience of listening paid off only when the listening was followed by a season of wrestling and discernment within the Church.  Leaders described a circular pattern where listening was followed by discerning or wrestling, followed by choosing an action, followed by evaluating the outcome.  “Wins” didn’t just describe successes, but were the natural result of carefully studied failures and learnings.  In fact, failures (opportunities to learn and grow from actions that underperformed expectations) were required before almost every “successful outcome.” 

The journey starts not with a conversation around, “What can we do?” or by borrowing someone else’s set-up.  Rather, we must start with a conversation about “How can we listen—to those around us?”  Followed by a conversation about “How can we serve—those around us?”  Followed by a conversation about “How can we act—in response to those around us?” 

I’m convinced this is model that will ramp up our ministry and really make it hum along. 

The problem?  It feels like we’re slowing down.  Avoiding self-interest and especially self-promotion goes against every conventional wisdom of increasing BIPs (butts in pews).  And it feels like we’re going to crash long before we get someplace meaningful. 

© Rev. David Stipp-Bethune; Teaching Elder and Pastor, The Presbyterian Church of Llanerch, Havertown, Pennsylvania

...and so it begins, again!

It’s on Good Friday in the congregation I’m serving, that all of our attention turns toward Easter morning.  The Lilies and tulips get delivered on Thursday—when it’s actually hard to find a hiding-place in the Church building that won’t make it smell like Easter morning for Maundy Thursday worship, or Good Friday observances in the years we’ve hosted the community service. 

And lo!  This year, before Jesus was ever entombed at sundown on Friday (to beat Sabbath observance), we were hard at work shifting our liturgical gears and worship space from Lent to Easter.  It happened as some of us returned from the Community Good Friday Service—because it’s the last chance to get things in order at church before the “weekend” so everything is set for when we arrive on Sunday morning.  By 5pm this Good Friday our sanctuary was already Easter-perfect! 

So if you walked into our sanctuary this Friday evening, you’d have been amazed at what you say—just as the gospel story describes Peter at the tomb on Easter morning!  It smells like Easter in the Church!  There’s absolutely no stench of death or any reminders.  There’s “no waiting.”  You can now fast-forward past the tomb.  We’ve gotten rid of the evidence of any pre-Easter parties; and with a deep breath and a hush falling on Havertown for the long Easter weekend…, we’re ready!  Way ahead of schedule! 

Maybe it’s like this where you are, too. 

Actually, no one really knows “when…” it happens.  “It” being God raising Jesus from the dead.  Tradition and the Bible say it was Sunday morning that Jesus was suddenly raised; but that’s only and because that’s when the empty tomb was discovered.  The Bible reminds us, Jesus says, “in three days” he would rise again.  But three days—wouldn’t that push us on toward Monday, rather than Sunday?  As three-days-worth of time has always been 72 hours, hasn’t it? 

Alas, before I get caught up with Dr. Who in the minutia of time, we remember that it’s “sometime”—between the tomb being closed and when the women arrive to the tomb on the first day—post Sabbath—a Sunday.  “Sometime” in there—could be anytime in there--God pulls the best Star Trek “beam me up” moment and yanks Jesus miraculously from the jaws of death, pulling him out of the tomb and releasing the world from the rule of death, and sin—and a host of other things. 

And because that “sometime” could be “anytime” between Jesus dying and rising, YES—even on Good Friday—for me it begins, again!  I start looking for the world for which Jesus gave his life! 

On this Good Friday, it was the gift of a moving community Good Friday service that included prayers of solidarity with Middle Eastern Christians, and prayers for faithful people around the world, hosted by the Armenian UCC congregation in our community. 

On this Good Friday, it was seeing the woman who earlier in the week had stopped me in the grocery store to ask if I was a local clergyperson, wanting to know the details about today’s service.  

On this Good Friday, it was an unusual number of Philly drivers who were kind and unusually courteous toward me and other pedestrians as I walked home from the community Good Friday service. 

On this Good Friday, it was thinking excitedly about an Easter-world to which Jesus and we are working to give birth—in ourselves, and the people around us. 

On this Good Friday, it was the Facebook post of a colleague who was bemoaning the usual reference to “C & E Christians” (those who attend regularly but only at Christmas services and Easter services) inviting Church leaders to be brave and consider that maybe it’s not what we do in Sunday morning worship that inspires people, but that they find hope and help in the stories of incarnation and resurrection.  Hmmm.   

On this Good Friday, it was gratitude—for God so loved the world—and for God still loving the world.  And maybe I and the people I know and love can still make a difference in the world—in which we must live with the realities of terrorism manifested in violent attacks, armed conflict, and a destructive political process.  But what a world in which to witness the love of God in Jesus Christ! 

So on Good Friday it always seems to happen to me that I witness glimpses of Easter-come-early—the gifts of a world Jesus gave his life to save. 

So…, what are you doing this weekend to prepare yourself to give birth to a world that Jesus gave his life to save? 

What must you make ready, so that come Easter Sunday morning, you’re busting out of church to raise up the world Jesus gave his life to save? 

© Rev. David Stipp-Bethune; Teaching Elder and Pastor, The Presbyterian Church of Llanerch, Havertown, Pennsylvania