Christians are those who remember the story of Jesus within the community of the church, in and for their own time and in their own lives. — Nicola Slee
Join us on Holy Thursday for our own remembering of Jesus and Jesus’ victory, even in death. We will share a potluck meal together, and theologically enact the events of that night. We will gather for worship in the dining room at 6:00, share a ritual meal together and witness a play, reenacting that night.
When Jesus gathered his disciples together to celebrate the feast of the Passover in Jerusalem on the fateful weekend of his arrest and execution, he did so following a tradition that has had Jews remembering, around a ritual meal, their deliverance out of Egypt. It is hard for us moderns to understand what this means exactly, but the gathering of family around the Seder meal was not just a remembering but an actual participation in, the exodus. As the family recited the passages from the Haggadah, they spoke with urgency in their voices because they were actually preparing to leave. When the ate bread, they ate unleavened bread because they had no time. What is interesting, then, about these seder meals is that the time/space continuum is somehow collapsed and the events of the past are now witnessed firsthand. In a second century liturgical handbook, the families were instructed: “In each generation, you shall regard yourself as if you personally had been taken out of Egypt.”
When Jesus gathered his disciples together in that upper room, he implied that they should continue doing this, but that now they should understand their gathering to be an expression of the victory of Jesus against imperial forces — forces that would act in unjust ways in an attempt to protect and perpetuate their power. Those forces, he had already testified in word and deed, would be impotent to the power of love and their unjust actions would be met with a continued confidence in a life lived with God.
Our play this night ends with this line from Mary Magdalene: “I will never betray his truth. Maybe that’s what love is.”
Please join us for a evening of fellowship and worship in a new key.
Category: Newsletter
Habitat for Humanity Land Purchased!
It is an exciting moment for those of us who have been slogging through board meetings for the past year with no land in sight to all of a sudden have an offer accepted. This Duxbury land is both affordable and appropriate to our mission and needs. We will begin work immediately spreading the news that we have found land and starting the groundwork that will allow the many, many people who have indicated they would help when we found land, to actually be put to work. We will be starting the search for homeowners who meet the criteria and begin preparing the land located on Morse Road, just off of Crossett Brook Road.
As excited as I am about the prospect of work ahead building a house and settling a family, I am intrigued by theologian Laura Stivers brave critique of Habitat. It must be said before I quote her that she and I both recognize the power and the beauty of Millard Fuller’s dream being realized. Hers is a larger concern that we not forget, even while we build habitat houses, that a systemic change is still required and that the enormous size of that change is most adequately suited to big government.
In some ways, Habitat helps well-off volunteers feel good about themselves by assisting the poor, but it fails to break down the we/them divide. . . The charitable response of Habitat is the kind of charitable response that will always be needed, but doesn’t help the poorest of the poor. It’s not really addressing homelessness. [1]
Her point is very well taken and not taken as a criticism of Habitat for Humanity nor of the thousands of volunteers who contribute so much time. Stivers asks instead whether we also ought to be prophetically addressing the “capitalist structures” that perpetuate huge income inequalities in our country and in our world. She worries whether the families being “served” by the Habitat program are in fact playing into a role (the “deserving poor”) instead of breaking out of poverty.
These are real and important criticisms to be aware of as we select a family and build a house together. If these thoughts and this process can spur us to hear in the prophet Isaiah’s words as words addressed to us Habitat volunteers then we come close to Millard Fuller’s dream:
And now, inhabitants of Jerusalem and people of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it? When I expected it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes? And now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will remove its hedge, and it shall be devoured; I will break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down. I will make it a waste; it shall not be pruned or hoed, and it shall be overgrown with briers and thorns; I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the people of Judah are his pleasant planting; he expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry! Ah, you who join house to house, who add field to field, until there is room for no one but you . . . Isaiah 5:3-8
Join us, won’t you, on this journey into discovery and service, of change and grace amidst change. And may the words of the prophets calls us to proper accounting.
1. Vital Theology, “Causes of Homelessness Left Untouched,” Laura Stivers, March 2009.
Brave New Worship World
Without an organist or a choir director, we find ourselves in a position that some might consider unenviable. The question that I want to consider in the next few weeks and months, is less the specific question “Who shall we have at the helm of our music program?” And instead the more general one, “What do we want our music program to accomplish so that the person or persons we hire might be able to lead us where we think we should be going?” I hope that our unique position can be viewed by all of us as an opportunity to take the time we need to be reflective and patient as we consider these important questions. In other words, if all we need is a musician or two, this is not so difficult and we could be moving to hire shortly.
Above all, the question I pose to us requires some serious thinking about what worship is. I think that while most of you recognize that that is my training, and my job, you also recognize that it is your community and your life. We do not subscribe to the kind of church that says, “Take it or leave it.” Because our theological sense is much more emergent, much more dialogical, or disputational (see my sermon for March 22) our worship patterns are not set in stone even while they are rooted in a rich tradition. I like what Jazz musician and worship leader, Bradley Sowash, thinks worship is. He borrows from the only instance of worship in the Gospels of which Jesus seems to approve and thinks worthy of repeating.
Now while Jesus was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment, and she poured it on his head as he sat at the table. But when the disciples saw it, they were angry and said, “Why this waste? For this ointment could have been sold for a large sum, and the money given to the poor.” But Jesus, aware of this, said to them, “Why do you trouble the woman? She has performed a good service for me. For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me. By pouring this ointment on my body she has prepared me for burial. Truly I tell you, wherever this good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.” –Matthew 26:6-13
About this passage, Mr. Sowash writes,
This woman’s singular act of adoration demonstrates that effective worship integrates creativity, extravagance, understanding, originality, and spontaneity in a manner that is both personal and participatory as well as community enhancing. [1]
In the remainder of his article Sowash expands on the seven points in the sentence quoted above. His is not an attempt to make worship memorable, or funny, or entertaining. Instead, he understands worship to be the expression of the power of God for us. The reason that I have recommended this article is that his idea of God is neither pop-cultural nor fadish which so much ‘new worship’ implies, nor does he view God as otiose as so much traditional worship implies. God cannot be the substance of our passing fancies, just as God cannot be some heavenly being content to watch the world like a plaything, from on high. The one we would worship we do because God is the one categorically worth worshiping. And this means worth interacting with around matters of life and death, creativity and destruction, hope and despair, love and hate. Worship must be as creative and important as these great things warrant.
John Coltrane, the late, great jazz saxophonist once said about his musical expression that he did not so much compose as search. He investigated to see what else might be in the offing, what else might evolve, or emerge. Worship is not just another entertainment venue or place to hear a sermon, but a place to let religion find its own tune with us, personally and communally, after a hard week of improvising. Music which is attuned to this creativity and a worship team that is creatively in conversation with each other about the world and about religion’s new story in it, can move us to the kind of flourishing in right relation that I continue to put forth as our church’s motto.
We have, in the past few weeks, had different congregational experiences with music, from a capella congregational singing, to beautiful clarinet music accompanied by a CD (thanks Joni McCraw) to our choir singing Be Thou our Guide. What do you think? What kind of musical experiences reveal the sacred for you? Are there artistic genres you think we should explore in the coming weeks, months, years? Let us not look back on this time and wish we could have talked more, but share with each other in love and patience.
1. Where Two or More Are Gathered: Exploring Alternate Worship Strategies by Bradley Sowash