Restoration

Restoration. Apparently, that is God’s intention, according to the collect we heard in church yesterday, a prayer included above. It suggests a return to the goodness God spoke into being at creation. Please note: Not just goodness, but very goodness. The book of Genesis reports that as God finished the holy creative work on the sixth day, God noted that it was not simply good. God said it was very good.

What has happened to that very goodness? The prayer says that the peoples of the earth have become divided and enslaved. We’re talking about a loss of community and a loss of freedom.

Division is easy to see, whether you look at the border of Ukraine and Russia, the border of Israel and Gaza, the aisles in the House of Representatives, the aisles of many churches, or the political conversation when families sit around a table for a holiday meal. The outward and visible signs of division can be seen in barbed wire, border walls, and gated communities. We see it in societal systems. We see it in individual relationships.

Enslavement is also a fact of our time, its most egregious expressions found in human trafficking, mass incarceration, crippling poverty and rising authoritarianism. But dehumanizing confinement can be seen in patterns of addiction or refusal to offer forgiveness. (Nelson Mandela said upon release from 27 years in prison that if he didn’t forgive his captors, they still had him in prison.) We see it in the habits of our hearts, where we may feel that we can’t help ourselves from hurting ourselves and others.

Yesterday’s collect says that Jesus can address the loss of community and loss of freedom. How does he do that?

To see how he begins to restore community in the face of division, we eavesdrop on his words to his disciples at the last supper, as recorded in the Gospel of John. As he was preparing to leave them, he stopped calling them servants and began to call them friends. He gave them a new commandment, which was to love one another. That love in action would be the way that outsiders would recognize their discipleship. He brought into being a new community, a movement where dividing walls could come down (see Ephesians 2:14). St. Paul captured that notion when he said that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, a vision that the church has yet to fully realize.

To see how Jesus comes to restore freedom, we turn again to words offered in John’s gospel. Jesus said that everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. He goes on to say that if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed. (John 8:34, 36) Again, St. Paul spoke of this freedom in his letter to the Galatians, when he said that it was for freedom that Christ has set us free.

Newsflash: We’re not there yet. We continue to grapple with division and enslavement on a global and systemic level, and within our own hearts. Sometimes it seems that we’re not making progress at all. But we keep at it.

As we come to the end of a church year, we begin again, with another trip around the sun. We’re presented with more opportunities to participate in the intention of the Holy One to restore community and freedom. With a new year starting (in the church calendar), make a resolution to participate in the holy work of restoration, working for community and freedom. What will that look like in your life this week?

-Jay Sidebotham

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RenewalWorks: Helping churches focus on spiritual growth

RenewalWorks is about re-orienting your parish around spiritual growth. And by spiritual growth – we mean growing in love of God and neighbor.

Churches can launch as part of a fall or spring cohort or go on their own schedule.  Sign up now!!

Learn more in our digital brochure.

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Bible believer

A word from the newly elected Speaker of the House: “I am a Bible-believing Christian. Someone asked me today in the media, they said, ‘… People are curious. What does Mike Johnson think about any issue under the sun?’ I said, well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it – that’s my worldview. That’s what I believe and so I make no apologies for it. That’s my personal worldview.”

I don’t expect I’ll ever have the opportunity to sit down with Speaker Johnson and talk about how he understands what it means to be Bible-believing. I’m guessing we would mean different things by that, but I nevertheless count myself as a Bible-believer, serving in a denomination that is Bible-believing.

That might not be people’s first impression of the Episcopal Church, but the words of scripture are woven into the fabric of our church culture. I get a chuckle when Episcopalians begin to explore the Bible and marvel at how much of it was swiped from the Book of Common Prayer.

Our Sunday worship involves the reading of lots of scripture. Similarly, the Daily Office (Morning, Noonday, Evening Prayer) all include big chunks of the Bible. When a priest is ordained, at the beginning of that grand liturgy, that person commits to an understanding of scripture as the word of God, containing all things necessary for salvation.

Thoughts about the Bible are prompted not only by the new Speaker of the House, but also by the collect heard yesterday in church (see above), which is focused on scripture. As we say in our tradition that our praying shapes our believing, consider what this prayer says about us as Bible-believers.

It says first of all that God caused the scriptures to be written for our learning. It doesn’t say that it’s got science nailed, or that it provides a map for political party. It does say that it’s there for our learning. And since another word for learner is disciple, we as disciples take this mosaic of texts and see what they have to teach us. We think about how they help us grow.

We take scripture seriously, if not literally. A measure of that seriousness is reflected in the process outlined in the collect. We hear, read, learn, mark and inwardly digest the words of scripture. In other words, we work them through and take them in, so they become part of us. I’ll be the first to admit that many of these passages are hard to swallow. We grapple with them anyway, and as we do, we discover that they begin to shape us.

And why do we go to all that trouble? Because scripture will enable us to embrace and hold on to hope. Lord knows, we all could use more hope. It’s the hope that comes through the story of creation, when we read that God saw what God had made and declared it to be very good. It’s the hope we share with the children of Israel wandering in the wilderness. We all know something about wilderness and we all have the hope of being led to a promised land. It’s the hope we share with exiles who were eventually brought back home. It’s the hope we share with the women who went to the tomb on Easter morning and found their grief turned to amazed joy, their dead end into a threshold.

Jurgen Moltmann, great theologian, posed the question this way: Where would we stand if we did not take our stand on hope? The premise, the promise of our faith is that we make that stand as we take the words of scripture to heart and find in them a guide into a life marked by hope, a life marked by confidence in the God who is in the business of making things new. Think this week about the rewards and challenges you have experienced in encounter with scripture. What might you do to go deeper, for the sake of embracing a deeper hope?

-Jay Sidebotham

Interested in RenewalWorks for your parish? Learn more about how RenewalWorks works!

RenewalWorks: Helping churches focus on spiritual growth

RenewalWorks is about re-orienting your parish around spiritual growth. And by spiritual growth – we mean growing in love of God and neighbor.

Churches can launch as part of a fall or spring cohort or go on their own schedule.  Sign up now!!

Learn more in our digital brochure.

RenewalWorks – Digital Catalog

Running the race

Yesterday was one of my favorite days in New York City. The marathon took place with thousands of runners gathered from all over the world, participating in a great parade through all five boroughs. Many if not all runners had folks standing on the sidelines cheering them on, a great cloud of witnesses.

I don’t know how often it is the case that the NYC marathon coincides with observance of the feast of All Saints. I suspect given the calendar it’s more often than not. I am struck with the overlap between the two.

Our scriptures, as they reflect on the ministry of saints in the world, often frame that ministry in terms of running a race. St. Paul, at the end of his life, writes as mentor to Timothy and says “I have run the race. I have kept the faith.” The letter to the Hebrews speaks of Jesus running the race that was set before him. It invites us to do the same.

Our liturgy picks up the theme. In one of the prayers as part of the eucharistic celebration of all saints, we speak of saints as lights in their generation who have run the race. And the collect which may or may not have been read yesterday in church, printed above, asks for the grace to run without stumbling to obtain God’s heavenly promises. (Note: no extra charge this week to get the collect for yesterday, as well as the collect for All Saints observance. A two-fer this Monday morning!)

The spiritual journey is definitely more of a marathon than a sprint. It calls for training, for discipline, for practice. Unless you are the spiritual equivalent of Rosie Ruiz (a generational reference) or George Santos (a more contemporary reference), there is no faking participation. It calls for practice. It is not a matter of circling a track dozens of times. It is a movement from here to there. Perhaps we can describe that destination as becoming more and more like Christ in the words of our mouth, the meditations of our hearts, and maybe most of all, in the ways we act. How would you describe the aim of your spiritual journey?

This spiritual marathon involves challenges like heartbreak hills. There may be moments when the runner hits the wall, even if we feel like we’re in good spiritual shape. That has happened to the best of the saints. If you want to get a vision of what the marathon looks like for people of faith, read the letter to the Hebrews, chapter 11. And while it is in many ways an individual pursuit, there is also great encouragement that one does not run alone.

The Feast of All Saints makes sure we recognize that, as we not only join with saints around the world, we claim to be part of the great communion of time linking us with those we love but see no longer, linking us with great heroes of the faith who have gone before. Think of them like the crowds lining the streets of the city, cheering the runners on, saying things like: “You’ve got this!”

All Saints observance invites us to think about the race we are running. Where is it headed? Where do we find energy? How have we trained for it? What’s the prize at the end of the race? St. Paul, spiritual marathon runner, described the prize in his letter to the Philippians. He said he was pressing on toward the high calling of God in Jesus Christ. Maybe we can claim that same goal this week. What would that mean for you?

-Jay Sidebotham

Interested in RenewalWorks for your parish? Learn more about how RenewalWorks works!

RenewalWorks: Helping churches focus on spiritual growth

RenewalWorks is about re-orienting your parish around spiritual growth. And by spiritual growth – we mean growing in love of God and neighbor.

Churches can launch as part of a fall or spring cohort or go on their own schedule.  Sign up now!!

Learn more in our digital brochure.

RenewalWorks – Digital Catalog