 October 29, 2018
Beloved: Love one another, Jesus said. It’s everything. It begins at home and then it goes next door. I pray much love and peace for our precious neighbors at Congregation Beth Shalom in the wake of this weekend’s terror attack at the synagogue in Pittsburgh. My idea is to hang this banner on the bridge between our parking lots and fill it with notes of sympathy and love. If you can’t get by to write a note yourself, email one to me and I’ll write it on the banner for you. There are sharpies in the porch mailbox. Like you, my heart is broken for our neighbors and how they must be suffering. How do they explain such terror to their children, alongside such empty promises and lies from leadership too compromised to lead? A banner seems slightly absurd in the shadow of such atrocity. But friendship isn’t. Neighborliness and hospitality aren’t. Solidarity, kindness and partnership in the work of justice are not. These tiny acts of human decency are all we have for debilitating hate. In the meantime, do not fail to pray for peace with each and every breath. ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette
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Everything important takes practice. And the best at anything are people willing to fail and learn from their mistakes. Being awesome isn’t the same life goal as doing something well, any more than following Jesus is the same as being like him. Following Jesus is a daily choice to live each day a certain way, less an accomplishment than a direction and a pace, a willful pulling of one’s focus to the holy in each and every moment.
I wish it were more profound than this, than simply practice, practice, practice; that in the practice of this faith, this faith’s gifts are found. ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette  October 16, 2018
Beloved: A man named Dave is coming to my house today to measure for new window blinds. I’m also waiting for word on a child’s funeral arrangements later in the week. That such triviality and tragedy share space in my brain appalls me. To live deliberately in such space is the constant work of faith. To receive both the trivial and the terrible without explanation. To give space to pain while living through the ordinary. To sit without an answer to the screaming WHY? To remember that life is all one thing . . . . Joy and heartbreak flow in the one and only stream. Eternity. We don’t get one without the other And God is God is God is God is God. No matter how we feel right now. God will be God, today. ~peace & prayers, pastor annette October 9, 2018
Beloved: This week's devotional comes from Reverend Anthony Pompa, Dean and Rector of Cathedral Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. I’m grateful to Susan Harrington for sharing it at the very moment I needed this exact word. peace & prayers, pastor annette Burden or Blessing I am mindful that if you are fortunate enough to belong to a church community, you may be unaware of just how powerful you are. I say this in complete mindfulness of the great divide that has arisen in our secular lives. I feel if we are not careful, we may find ourselves giving our power over to the evil and sinfulness that our Baptismal Covenant calls us to resist and repent from. What evil? The evil of a tribalism that is calculated and strategic to separate us from one another by ideology, opinion, race, class, and economics. This same strategic use of tribalism invites us not to see one another innocently as different, but as a shameful enemy who must be defeated. Why sinful? It is sinful in that when we fall into the patterns of seeing one another as an enemy over the opinions and ideology we may hold, we fail to see one another the way God would have us, as children of God sharing a future of hope and goodness that has literally been born out of sacrifice. Be careful folk. Be careful. I said earlier that we are fortunate if we belong to a community of faith because we will, I pray, hold our bond together as children of God over and against the evils of tribalism our society is now seduced by. It means we can be together in love, in life, in mission, in hope, in service defined by Christ and not primarily driven by ideology or political persuasion. It does not mean we are without our convictions, but it does mean we put the way of love first, and live together as holy people, even in the midst of our differences. It means when we bump into one another’s sensibilities we can walk the extra mile to reach out in love to one another to dialogue, to pray, and to gain understanding, and to be open to being convicted by our faith and transformed by it. It means we can even change our minds and more importantly our hearts. It takes every ounce of power to live this way. The way of Love. It is in our current climate a swim against the stream. It takes power! . . . . . In a Celtic worldview, we are invited to see ourselves as part of a carefully woven pattern of relationships that breathe with all of God’s creation. (All of it). Carefully woven with the stars in the sky, the air that moves, the trees in the fields, the streams as they flow. Carefully woven with the sun that warms us, the moon that lights our dark nights, the animals in the field, our brothers and sisters of this race we call human. Together we are knit and together we breathe the life air that is the gift of our very existence. We, the human ones, have a choice in our place in the weave. We can bring with us Burden or we can bring with us Blessing. Let us bring blessing. The phrase civic duty has been rolling around in my head for a few days and I realized I don’t have a precise definition attached to it. So I looked it up and, turns out, I’ve mentally mingled civic duty and civic responsibility. They are close but not the same. Duties are legally enforceable and vary with each state. Paying taxes and obeying laws are civic duties. Responsibilities are necessary for civil society, but not legally enforceable. Serving on juries, voting, volunteering in the community, helping our neighbors are civic responsibilities.  Which naturally got me to thinking about Christian duties and responsibilities and the slightly jolting thought that neither word necessarily applies. Kingdom citizenship is chosen, not inborn. Jesus chose us, one and all, but we choose him back in becoming his disciples. The daily choice to do as Christ is freely accepted or declined. The grace of God persists when we are true to him, and when we are not. It’s not grace but justice hanging in the balance.
Insofar as life in Christ includes either duty or responsibility, I’ve no doubt it has to do with justice. Like two margins on a page, bringing the contours of life this side of heaven into line with the kingdom life Jesus described over and over again. A life where people live at peace not through strength of law, but by the law of love. By the law of love, all people are regarded fairly and with kindness. For the sake of love, all people are helped to live in safety and in peace. By the law of love, enough to eat and a decent place to live are simply human rights. And so much more, of course. Human dignity and safety . . . equality and respect . . . . We might call them duty and responsibility or, simply, the ordinary ways of life among those who choose to follow Christ. ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette |
I write a Tuesday morning devotional to members and friends of UBC. It is also posted here.
Enjoy! Pastor Annette Copyright
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