Setting the Table of God

This past Sunday, through one of those situations that happens from time to time, my congregation found ourselves without our usual communion bread for worship. We have a wonderful team of volunteers who make homemade bread for us every week, but last week, none showed up. Thankfully, we keep a box of wafers around just in case and we pulled them out for the holy meal this day.

For anyone who isn't familiar with communion wafers, they are thin, tasteless discs about an inch in diameter that are engineered to dissolve quickly on the tongue and have a shelf life of about one hundred years. I jokingly refer to them as "crispy Christs," but for many people who grew up in the church in the twentieth century, these wafers were the norm for years.

For kids at Martin Luther Church, though, they are not.

This fact became clear during communion. Several appeared puzzled. One young person audibly said, "ugh" when I handed him the body of Christ. Another looked at it with a confused expression and then handed it to his mother.

At the time, I chuckled to myself over their honest reactions. As I thought about it later, though, I realized there was more than a "kids will be kids" truth to their reaction. They came expecting good food at communion -- and why shouldn't they? If "this is the Lord's table" (which I say every week), and our Lord is generous and loving, why shouldn't we expect good food at God's table? If the Lord's Supper is meant to be a "foretaste of the feast to come," I think fresh bread and a decent cabernet is a better representation of that feast than stale wafers and Manischewitz.

Going beyond the quality of communion, I think the same could be said about other aspects of church as well. Do we participate half-heartedly in worship? Do we allow clutter and disfunction to persist in our church? Do we serve weak coffee and stale cookies? (Seriously, why can't more churches make a decent cup of coffee?) Or do we offer our best as a community to both regulars and guests as a reflection of the great gift we've received in Christ?

Now, giving our best isn't the same as being perfect, but I believe we should act as though what we are doing matters to us and furthermore, we want it to matter to those around us, too. How do we set the table of our church on Sunday and our lives during the week so that people come to expect the best of God when they gather there?

From the Gray,

Pastor Ari

“I know you’re supposed to be my steering wheel, not just my spare tire.” -Arrested Development, “Tennessee”

Getting Uncomfortable Can Be Good

Last Christmas, my family had the opportunity to join in a tradition outside our own experience. My daughter is in a dual-language program at her school that combines students who are native speakers of both Spanish and English so they can learn from and with each other. One of her friend's family is from Mexico and they invited us to come to their Las Posadas celebration.

Las Posadas is a religious tradition for Mexican Catholics recalling the pilgrimage of Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem and their search for housing along the way. That's about all I knew when we arrived at their house for the celebration and crammed into their crowded living room. We were handed a sheet of paper full of Spanish songs and prayers and without much warning the event began. Various people took the lead with songs and prayers, a young girl and boy dressed as Mary and Joseph moved around the room at certain times, my wife and daughter jumped in easily as they are both fluent in Spanish, and it was clear that for everyone outside my family, the happenings were familiar and meaningful.

But I was lost.

I know enough Spanish to mumble my way through something written on the page and I felt honored to have been invited to what was clearly an important family event, but I spent most of the evening confused, and maybe even uncomfortable.

Oops, Pope Francis did it again...

The world has once again been abuzz this week with word that Pope Francis is rocking the boat in Rome. The news this time is that a conference of bishops called by the pope to have frank discussions around "family matters" has discussed creating a more welcoming message toward LGBT and divorced people and unmarried couples who are living together.

It's important to note that doctrine and policy are not being changed, but the tone and emphasis are being changed. As one Vatican spokesperson I heard discussing the conference noted, the church has always stated that every person is a child of God, but now "that's the first thing we will say."

(It should also be noted that this is pretty much in keeping with Francis's M.O. up to this point. He hasn't actually changed any Catholic doctrine; he's just changed the conversation to emphasize portions of doctrine that have often been lost in the noise. [God's love for all people, the need to act with humility, presenting an attitude of servanthood to the world, etc.])

In the days since the document was released, there has been some strong pushback and attempts to clarify what is being said, especially from more traditional bishops. At this point, it's not clear what the final word or actions may be, but I'm still excited to see Francis making the effort to have the conversation.

I don't agree with the Catholic Church on everything that constitutes a "sin," but if we spend too much time telling those outside the church about sin, then that's all they hear and any word of welcome or grace (the most important part of the message) sounds false. The message shifts to one of "you need to get your life together before you're welcome in a church" and starts to include "faults" that go beyond sin like doubts or depression. Where else in our society do we have this kind of backwards expectation? We don't say, "get yourself healthy before you go to the hospital" or "become an expert in your preferred field of study before you apply for college."

This whole topic deserves more time and nuance than I'm going to give it in this blog, but please allow me to oversimplify by saying: the message from the church should always emphasize that sin (however we define it), doubts, or personal shortcomings should never stand in the way of being welcomed in church because we are all -- Christian and non-Christian -- imperfect and we are all -- Christian and non-Christian -- still loved desperately by God.

We don't need to get our life together to come to church because being in church--or better put, being in regular relationship with God and God's community--is how we are meant to get our life together. Francis has been showing through his words and actions that if we want to be effective at changing lives, it helps to first have a genuine relationship with a person. Jesus himself demonstrated this in his ministry (see John 8 as an example). If we start with loving people as they are and seek to serve rather than preach, I think we're far more likely to see the growth of God in them (and ourselves) that we hope for.

“Change has been; change will be.” -Collective Soul, “Reunion”

Good News or No News?

Note: This post was originally written for my church's newsletter. 

“There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus.” -Galatians 3:28

As I sit to write this column, the church-wide assembly of our national church body, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), has elected a new presiding bishop: Bishop Elizabeth Eaton. Bishop Eaton has the distinction of being the first woman presiding bishop for the ELCA (or any of the denominations that merged into the ELCA).  Roughly two months ago, the Southwest California Synod of the ELCA elected Rev. R. Guy Erwin to be their local bishop, making him the first openly gay and first Native American bishop in the ELCA. 

Much has been made of both of these “firsts” in the media, but what strikes me is that the “history making” aspects of both elections were only side notes to those who voted and were elected. After all, neither was elected because of their “minority” status, but because they are qualified and wise spiritual leaders who speak eloquently and passionately about God’s church. As one person said simply of Bishop Erwin’s election, “He was the best candidate.” 

On one hand, these elections should not be news because of course there are qualified candidates for this ministry who happen to be women or LGBT just as some happen to be straight, white men. On the other hand, they show that we as the church are still struggling to live out Paul’s words in Galatians above that it is Christ’s claim to us that matters more than our claim to a gender, ethnic, or other identity. We are Christians first and foremost. 

This is not a new struggle. In Paul’s day, there were heated arguments about whether uncircumcised Greeks could be Christian (Galatians 2), whether wealthy socialites were more Christian than slaves (1 Corinthians 11-13), and even whether a Christian who sins could still be part of the church (1 John 2). Given the chance, humans will always look for ways to create hierarchy, while God continues to practice radical welcome and grace.

As the church and the world continues to struggle with our sinful tendency to divide and focus on differences, the fact that our congregation has chosen to declare that we are welcoming to all people is a powerful witness. We should be proud of the fact that we have chosen to take a stand for inclusion. We feel convicted by the Spirit to say that being a diverse church strengthens our faith as we all learn and grow together.

Until the day where these elections are not newsworthy, we should be proud to say, “Yes, my church elects woman bishops and gay bishops, because we believe that God calls all people to new life and God uses every person God calls to do God’s work -- even me and you.”

“We are the beautiful letdown, the painfully uncool; the church of the dropouts, the losers, the sinners, the failures, and the fools.” -Switchfoot, “The Beautiful Letdown”