“Midwinter Metanoia”
Mark 1.1-8 The Rev. Hal Chorpenning, Plymouth Congregational UCC Fort Collins, Colorado 10 December 2023 Every year on the second Sunday of Advent, we get a special guest appearance in the Lectionary from John the Baptizer, he who survived by eating locusts and wild honey and wore rough clothing made of camel hair. We tend to think of John as an offbeat character, and that’s probably about right. One of the things I noticed in studying images of John is that he seems so much more human than most of the other subjects. He has the look of world-weariness about him. Perhaps that happens when you find yourself in the wilderness shouting, “Repent! For the Kingdom of God has come near.” In the Gospel According to Matthew, and he adds insult to injury, calling the Sadducees and Pharisees a “brood of vipers,” a nest of poisonous reptilian offspring. Not generally a good way to win friends and influence people. Most of us probably don’t think of Advent as a penitential season, when we stop and enumerate our sins and make a plan to change course. But on this second Sunday of Advent, that is what John the Baptizer calls us to do. However, that language takes some serious unpacking, because for many of us the language of sin and repentance sounds more televangelist than we’re used to. And what’s more, it has caused injury to people who are not able to believe that God’s goodness lies within them. Still, it is important for 21st century liberal Christians not to dismiss traditional language out of hand; if we do that, we lose some of the richness and depth of our faith tradition and the wisdom it holds. Instead, we need to re-examine and redefine some of the language. Let’s start with sin. You may think of sin as wrongdoing, and sometimes it is. For the great 20th century theologian, Paul Tillich, sin is more about estrangement and separation. Adam and Eve become estranged from God, living east of Eden. We are living as exiles, cut off from our true home. And our true home is God. Marcus Borg writes, “Our estrangement can become hardened by how we live; we indulge our self-centeredness…. Estrangement, the birth of the separated self, is the natural result of growing up; it cannot be avoided. For the same reason, we develop closed hearts, a shell around the self. There is a sense in which we are blinded by the imprinting of culture on our psyches and perception.”[1] It happens to all of us. Let’s look at an Advent example of someone who has been “hardened by how he lives” and who “indulges in self-centeredness,” but who has a profound change of heart. [“How the Grinch Stole Christmas” clip.] Maybe you never thought about John the Baptizer when you watched “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” but it is as if there, on the crest of Mount Crumpet, the Grinch sees his estrangement from the Whos down in Whoville, and his hardened heart breaks open and grow three times its size. You never heard the word “repent” in the clip, but what you saw was a beautiful example of what repentance really means. “The biblical meaning of ‘repent’ is not primarily contrition, but resolve. In the Hebrew Bible, to repent means primarily to return to God. Its metaphorical home is the exile. To repent means to return from exile, to reconnect with God, to walk the way in the wilderness that leads from Babylon to God.”[2] As the Grinch returns to find community and love and meaning with the Whos down in Whoville, it is a homecoming that I’d imagine makes God smile. Repent is a scary word, especially because we usually think of it coming from the mouth of a fiery evangelist like Elmer Gantry, and it sure seems holier-than-thou in our context. But in biblical Greek, it’s actually a lovely, beautiful word that has a surplus of meaning. The word metanoia has two roots that connote going beyond the mind you currently have. And I would add that for me it means going beyond the mind and the HEART you currently have. Go beyond the mind and heart that have been shaped by self-interest. Go beyond the mind and heart that have been molded by American consumerism and greed. Go beyond and embrace the heart and mind of Jesus’ compassion and subversive wisdom. When John the Baptizer offers a “baptism of metanoia,” he is inviting people into the embodied process of transformed lives, going beyond the things that keep them in exile or in bondage. You know what that looks like…it isn’t easy. It certainly wasn’t for Ebenezer Scrooge! [Clip from “A Christmas Carol.”] I didn’t show you the visitations of the three spirits, because metanoia can be scary if you really embrace it. But you can use your memory to imagine the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and yet to come. What would those spirits show you from your past, present, and future? Charles Dickens described Scrooge as a “miserable old sinner,” and that isn’t what you saw in Patrick Stewart’s portrayal of the miser after his moment of metanoia. Scrooge has been separated not just from his family and the Cratchits, he has cut himself off from the whole human family and from God. But it isn’t too late for him, is it? Metanoia is a real possibility for each of us in our alienation and exile. Perhaps Advent is more preparing the way and tending to the rebirth of the spirit of Christ within each of us and in our church, rather than waiting for the birth of Jesus 2,000 years ago, or for the second coming. Who knows what new life may spring up afresh within any of us? And maybe the people sitting around you will be the midwives who encourage and help you in that rebirth. Where in your life are you feeling perhaps a bit estranged, cut off, or bound up? Simply acknowledging those pieces of your current mindset is the first step in rebirth or finding your way back home from exile. God is waiting for each of us to accept the invitation to renewal, rebirth, transformation, and wholeness. In our full humanity and our imperfection, God bids us come toward the light of the world and to midwinter metanoia. May it be so. Amen. © 2023 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact hal@plymouthucc.org for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses. [1] Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity. (SF: HarperSanFrancisco, 2003), p. 168. [2] Ibid., p. 180.
“The Roots of Righteousness”
Matthew 25.31-46 The Rev. Hal Chorpenning, Plymouth Congregational UCC Fort Collins, Colorado 26 November 2023 This section of scripture is a favorite among us UCC types and for other mainline Protestants who practice an engaged form of spirituality. And even among UCC congregations, I think that this congregation has a unique charism or gift in putting our faith into action. I could list any number of ways we together have gone about the business of feeding, clothing, sheltering people. The Homelessness Prevention Initiative, now part of Neighbor-to-Neighbor, had its beginnings at Plymouth when Sister Mary Alice Murphy approached us 20 years ago with the idea. We’ve built interfaith bridges and publicly advocated for those Jesus called “the least of these, who are members of my family.” What is even more important in the long run is the ways we are trying to affect social change so that charity isn’t needed. And there is a long, long way to go. In the meantime, we wind up doing both things: providing a hand up and also trying to change systems of oppression and injustice. Someone asked recently why we are sending money to the Our Church’s Wider Mission, which is the way we fund not only the conference and national setting of the United Church of Christ, but also where we fund international outreach and mission. From what I understood, the person asking the question suggested that we should be taking care of our own local community, rather than people whom we will never see, let alone meet. As a people who worship an invisible God, I think we should understand that seeing with our eyes isn’t everything. Just because you don’t SEE it happening doesn’t mean that it ISN’T happening. Globalization and technology move us beyond borders and boundaries. If you don’t have kids and you earn $60,000 a year, your income is in the top one percent globally. So, even if you don’t see kids at a preschool in Ethiopia or a girls’ school in Angola or a primary school in East Jerusalem, they are there and being supported by this congregation. Access to education changes lives and it changes systems. “Blessed are they who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” Part of what I want to say this morning is “thank you.” The people who comprise this congregation have big hearts for mission and outreach. And much of what we do as a congregation doesn’t show up the ledger sheet of our budget, whether it is in the form of Share the Plate, the Mission Marketplace, preventing homelessness, or giving to a Special Offering of the UCC. The reading from Matthew’s gospel has an eschatological tone, which is a highfalutin theological term that relates to final things at the end of the age. Whenever you hear Matthew talk about “the Son of Man,” it denotes a piece of Jesus’ character related to the final chapter of human existence, the end of the age. If you believe in the Last Judgment or Hell, this passage might be motivating for you to act in a moral way in this life so that you will be rewarded in the next. Yet, I don’t see God or Jesus as a divine accountant, putting our deeds on one side of some “Eternal Ledger” or another, and allowing those who end life in the black to enter eternal life (they would be the sheep) and those in the red to be consigned to eternal torment (they would be the goats). If you interpret this piece of scripture more literally, that’s fine. As a pastor, I prefer not to use fear as a motivator to encourage leading a moral life. Orthopraxis is the twin sister of orthodoxy. You know that orthodoxy means holding the right opinion. And we don’t insist on uniformity of belief as a test of faithfulness in this congregation. Orthopraxis means right practice, especially in terms of religious faith. Depending on your religious tradition, orthopraxis might mean lighting candles at dinner on Friday evening and observing the sabbath on Saturday. Or it might mean making a pilgrimage to Mecca and abstaining from pork and alcohol. Or it might mean giving the hungry something to eat or the thirsty something to drink or the naked something to wear or visiting the sick or imprisoned or welcoming the stranger. I think we do have a fairly high bar of orthopraxis in our congregation around social justice issues. My only concern with that is that we don’t fall into the trap of thinking that our good works are all there is to leading a faithful life. We can get rather proud of taking action, and we sometimes set up an impossible standard of trying to save everyone everywhere. So, for the sake of argument, let’s say that you AREN’T going to be sent to hell in a handbasket because you have not been charitable in your actions. WHY are you engaging in those behaviors? If you don’t fear eternal punishment, why bother to meet the needs of your neighbor around the world or on your doorstep? Stop for a minute. Ask yourself WHY you are doing things like feeding, welcoming, visiting? Is it just because we are “good people” and that’s how “good people” behave? Is it because our politics drive us in the direction of ensuring the needs of the “least of these?” WHY are you doing something that is costly to you personally? Part of the reason I’m posing this question is because I have learned so much from people in this congregation about what it means to live a faithful life. This is a really small example, but a long time ago, maybe 18 years ago, I heard one of our members say that they parked further away from the door of the supermarket not so they would get in a few more steps to reach their 10,000-step goal, but because someone else might need a space closer to the door. WHY do people do such things that are inherently at odds with their self-interest? That’s countercultural. Here’s another example. A couple in our congregation retired and joined the Peace Corps, which is a cool thing in and of itself, and I was surprised that every year they were abroad, they still pledged their financial support of this congregation, even though they weren’t physical present to benefit from their membership. WHY did they do that? WHY were they acting in such a way that it diminished their financial self-interest? That’s countercultural. Here’s a third example. Last year, a young Palestinian man turned up on our doorstep needing help…with finding a home, with graduate enrollment at CSU, with his visa status, and more. The very first thing that happened when he walked into our doors on a Sunday morning is that Brooklyn and Mike McBride made him a nice, hot caffe latte, sat him down, and sought out Jane Anne to help. He had already been to the Islamic Center and four other Christian churches seeking help but was turned away. This being Plymouth, we found someone who has worked with international students at CSU, another who knew the social services offered in our community, and later a physician who provided immediate care and helped him navigate the US healthcare system. And they built bonds of friendship and relationship that are still intact. Later his wife and son joined him from Jordan, and as you heard last Sunday, Darwish and Aseel have a new daughter named Ayla. WHY are these Plymouth people doing these things? I also want to ask you to pose this question for yourself. I can’t answer that for you…that’s your job, and I hope you will grapple with it! I can answer it for myself. Part of my sense of faith and my orthopraxis is to try and follow the way of Jesus as best I can, even when I fail at it. To try and let the Holy Spirit guide me and have her way with me. To trust in the guidance of Jesus and to know that on a deeply physical and spiritual level that his way is the path toward fullness of life not just for me, but for others, too. I try not to do this – to engage orthopraxis – in a legalistic way. And I try not to judge others who may have a different way of expressing their faith than I do. My best guess in life is that if I know what was motivating Jesus – his WHY – I can use that to help motivate me, too. Marcus Borg claimed that Jesus overturned the systematized and ritualized purity practice of ancient Israel (which was a form of orthopraxis) and replaced it with a new value: compassion. Compassion is a form of deeply shared feeling and sympathy. It can be self-sacrificial. Compassion sometimes comes at the expense of our own narrow visions of purity, orthodoxy, and orthopraxis. Following Jesus is not always easy or comfortable, but it is the thing that continues to give my life meaning and purpose. I sense that the God that lures us toward wholeness and compassion also draws us toward unity and lovingkindness. WHY follow that path? Because the other trails don’t seem to lead toward God’s realm. What is your WHY? I see so many things you do; why are you compelled to act with compassion? WHY might it have been important to your parents or someone you admired as a young person? In considering why you act the way you do, may you be drawn even closer to the living God whom we worship, and in whose realm we live and work. Amen.
“Blessed”
Matthew 5.1-13 The Rev. Hal Chorpenning, Plymouth Congregational UCC Fort Collins, Colorado 19 November 2023 There is a particular small book that I have bought and given to more people than any other. And it seems to catch the soul of some people. It’s a book called To Bless the Space between Us, and it’s a book of blessings by the late Irish priest and philosopher, John O’Donohue. One person heard me use one of the blessings contained in this book at a graveside service and was so touched by it that he had it engraved on the stone at the entrance to our memorial garden. Here is what O’Donohue writes about blessing as an act: “In the parched deserts of postmodernity a blessing can be like the discovery of a fresh well. It would be lovely if we could rediscover our power to bless one another. I believe each of us can bless. When a blessing in invoked, it changes the atmosphere. Some of the plenitude flows into our hearts from the invisible neighborhood of loving kindness. In the light and reverence of a blessing, a person or situation becomes illuminated in a completely new way.” And so today, you have heard Jesus open the Sermon on the Mount with a cycle of blessings! Jesus “changes the atmosphere,” allows “light and reverence” to stream into the souls of his hearers, resulting in spiritual illumination. And this passage has continued to illuminate the followers of Jesus for the ensuing 2,000 years. In fact, many Christians consider the Beatitudes (or Blessings) as the very heart of the gospel, rendering what living life as a Christian entails. I read a funny-tragic blurb from NPR a few days back. Russell Moore, and Evangelical leader, reports that “Multiple pastors tell me, essentially, the same story about quoting Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount – having someone come up after to say, ‘Where did you get those liberal talking points?’ … And what is alarming to me is that in most of these scenarios, when the pastor would say, ‘I’m literally quoting Jesus Christ,’ the response would be, ‘Yes, but that doesn’t work anymore. That’s weak.’” Sometimes (perhaps even often) Jesus’ message tends to clash with some of what Americans have come to believe as “gospel truth.” And it isn’t just Christian Nationalists, it’s us, too. The Beatitudes are blessing the weaklings, the underdogs, the losers. That is who Jesus blesses! And it is probably who we should include as we bless others. And it is reassuring to know that when we find ourselves depressed, anxious, running on empty, that Jesus blesses us, too. It is hard in our day just to be. Just to exist. Just to find moments of inner peace. Mass shootings and violent responses to anyone who looks like the “other” are becoming de rigueur in the media. There is so much noise from the 24-hour news cycle, social media, the conflict-inducing voices on Fox News and MSNBC. American political discourse today is characterized by conflict that generates copious amounts of heat and almost no light. I was meeting with my therapist a few weeks ago, and she commented that “Anger is the new American drug of choice.” Think about that for a moment. Think how our culture has changed since before the pandemic. Think how you yourself have changed since before the pandemic. “Anger is the new American drug of choice.” Of course, anger doesn’t stop at our borders. The rise of neo-fascism at home and abroad has been clear for the last five years. And the explosive violence in Israel and Gaza is polarizing and hate-inducing far beyond the Middle East. Maybe the whole world needs a time out. But since that would be difficult to accomplish, I’m going to invite you into a brief moment of respite. I’ll read you my favorite blessing from John O’Donohue, and it contains an unfamiliar Irish word, currach, which is a small skin and wood-frame boat. I invite your close your eyes, relax you shoulder and neck muscles, feel the weight of your body in your seat and just breathe. On the day when the weight deadens on your shoulders and you stumble, may the clay dance to balance you.... Read poem here. [1] Blessing can be soul-restoring. I hope that you have a sense of that right now. And know that you can come back to that place of quietness and contemplation whenever you need to. As I was thinking about this sermon, I was rolling around the idea that we need a few new Beatitudes for the times we live in and the challenges we face today. I came up with a long list, but here are three blessings for our day. 1) Blessed are you when you refuse to use violence as a means of addressing another’s violence. Gandhi said that “An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.” And we can see where the Israeli-Gaza war is leading. Last week New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote about the myths that fuel the war: “The first myth is that in the conflict in the Middle East there is right on one side and wrong on the other (even if people disagree about which is which). “Life isn’t that neat. The tragedy of the Middle East is that this is a clash of right versus right. That does not excuse Hamas’s massacre and savagery or Israel’s leveling of entire neighborhoods in Gaza, but underlying the conflict are certain legitimate aspirations that deserve to be fulfilled.”[2] Nonviolence on the macro scale can also be used on a personal level. When we disagree with someone, we can discuss things in a calm, adult manner that doesn’t demonize anyone. We don’t have to be oppositional, passive-aggressive, or engage in name-calling. We can speak the truth in love. A second beatitude: Blessed are you when leave self-interest behind in order to serve others and build community. We don’t live in a vacuum; we live in a society. This comes as news to many Americans because we are raised to be self-reliant, self-assured, and self-centered. Our culture is diminished by lack of civic engagement and participation, by our unwillingness to look at the good of the whole, rather than our narrow self-interest. “No man is an island, Entire of itself, Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” John Donne wrote that in 1624, and we visualized it anew when astronauts took a photo of earth from space, and we saw the reality that we all share this small, blue marble. We are all in this together. Thinking more of “we” and less of “me” is a blessing we each can live by. A third beatitude: Blessed are you when you build bridges instead of erecting walls. This metaphor has become too close to literal truth on the southern border of the United States. If we say “build a wall” it may be on the border or it may be in a gated community or it may be a way of excluding those who are somehow different than you are. Interpersonally, stonewalling is a way of keeping progress from happening by cutting off improvement and communication. People who are more interested in finding solutions than harboring resentments build bridges, not walls. They engage with others in order to advance a solution, rather than simply withholding forward movement. Maybe you’ve seen that happen in a personal or a working relationship. It is poisonous to a culture and to the people who form it. Those are my three Beatitudes, and I offer them to you as a blessing. As you receive communion [share the offering] I invite you to think about what Beatitudes you might offer. What blessing do you have to offer the world? Amen. [1] “Beannacht” in To Bless the Space between Us, (NY: Convergent, 2008) p. 10 [2] Nicholas Kristof, “What We Get Wrong about Israel and Gaza,” NY Times, Nov. 25, 2023.
Revs. Erin Gilmore and Thandiwe Dale-Ferguson engage in a dialogue reflection on Acts 16:13-15 at the installation of the Rev. Dr. Marta Fioriti as Plymouth's Associate Minister.
“Semper Reformanda”
Psalm 46 The Rev. Hal Chorpenning, Plymouth Congregational UCC, Fort Collins, Colorado 29 October 2023 A story in today’s Washington Post caught my eye on this Reformation Sunday. It details the recent Synod of the Roman Catholic Church, which for the first time included women and lay delegates as voting members. Issues like the possibility of blessing unions (not marriage) of same-sex Catholic couples and possibly having women serve as deacons were at least talked about. In criticizing more progressive German clergy who are already blessing same-sex unions, one Polish archbishop said that they were advocating reforms that “draw profusely from Protestant theology and the language of modern politics.” As we weigh what our sisters and brothers struggled with during this Synod, it’s a good time for us, too, to be considering what it means to be church. It is important for us as a congregation to be aware of what sort of new reformation may be upon us, even today. When most of us think of the Reformation, we think of the Augustinian priest Martin Luther in 1517 nailing his 95 theses on the door of the church in Wittenburg, stating his objections to abuses of power by the church in Rome. And it was a momentous step. Do you think Luther knew what he was doing? Do you think he thought it would cause a schism in the western church? Did he know that it would spark a Counter-reformation in the Roman Catholic Church? Do you think he knew that it would result in the many wars of religion in Europe that would claim millions of lives and extend for nearly 200 years? I suspect that he did not. He certainly didn’t anticipate that the 1517 Reformation would spawn further reformations across Europe, with Calvinists, Anabaptists, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Unitarians, and others. The Reformation was not – is not – monolithic. It happened in different ways in different places and in different times. And it is difficult to overemphasize the critical importance of it as a hinge in European history. It essentially put the final nail in the coffin of the Late Middle Ages and ushered in the Early Modern period. Nothing in the church would ever be the same…except the things that are. You probably know some shifts in Protestant faith that come straight from Luther: two sacraments (baptism and communion) instead of seven. A different way of looking at communion: Transubstantiation (meaning that the communion elements literally became the body and blood of Christ) was disavowed. The reliance on scripture as wholly adequate source of authority, rather than papal pronouncement. Married clergy. Direct access to God, rather than needing the intermediary of a priest. And salvation that is a gift of grace based on faith alone, rather than relying on good works as a means of trying to earn merit. Luther paraphrased the psalm we heard this morning, such that “God is our refuge and our strength, a very present help in times of trouble” became “a might fortress is our God.” This psalm was important to the Reformers, as it became more obvious that their heterodox views meant not just risking their own lives but that they could be used to incite violence and civil war. Hear these words of the psalmist as you think of the war in Israel and Gaza: “He makes wars cease to the end of the earth; he breaks the bow, and shatters the spear; he burns the shields with fire. ‘Be still, and know that I am God! I am exalted among the nations, I am exalted in the earth.’ The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.” It is not the intention of our God or Jesus to use violence, but to secure peace, to break weapons, to call us to be still. One of the questions that someone in the congregation asked during the Instant Sermon over the summer concerned what the church of the future would look like. And since none of us received that crystal ball we were hoping for, the best we can do is rely of God’s grace and guidance going forward. Some things that we Protestants do go right back past 1517. Worship is still the central mission of every church, though of course it has morphed over time. We still baptize infants (though other Protestants don’t) and we celebrate communion. I suspect that the church of the future will continue to do those things, as well as to have potluck suppers. One of the great ideas from our tradition is that we are not only Reformed, but reforming. It rests on a Latin phrase, Ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda est. The church is reformed and is always reforming. Reformed and reforming. You do know what that implies, don’t you? It’s the C-word…change! Most of us think that change is fine and necessary, but when asked if WE want to change, it’s a different story. I want to acknowledge that change is incredibly difficult, especially when everything in your life seems to be changing and it can be embittering when the one thing you think is really stable – your church – starts to change. One of the things you may not be fully aware of is how dramatically the pandemic accelerated change in American Christianity. Because we invested in great livestreaming capability, a sizable portion of our congregation is worshiping from home. Last Sunday, more that 70 screens were viewed during our two services, so it’s likely that we had about 95 worshipers who aren’t physically in the sanctuary. (We’re glad you’re in the virtual balcony, but we are still adjusting to so many of our folks being online and not in the pews.) We’ve seen the closure of the American Baptist Church and Abyssinian Christian Church in Fort Collins. Our own denomination has seen a 50% membership decline since the 1980s. Fewer people are entering seminary to prepare for parish ministry, because there are fewer congregations who can afford even one full-time clergyperson. This year, 12 people comprised the incoming Master of Divinity class at Iliff. When I started at Iliff in 1996, the incoming class was 60: five times as large. One of my favorite Roman Catholic writers, Fr. Richard Rohr, reflects, “In North America and much of Europe, we are witnessing a dramatic increase in ‘nones,’ people who don’t identify with a particular faith tradition. While I ache for those who have been wounded by religion and no longer feel at home in church, the dissatisfaction within Christianity has sparked some necessary and healthy changes. Episcopal Bishop Mark Dyer…aptly called these recurring periods of upheaval giant ‘rummage sales’ in which the church rids itself of what is no longer needed and rediscovers treasures it had forgotten…. This is a difficult and frightening task, which is why we only seem to do it every 500 years or so! If we look at church history, we can see the pattern.” What Rohr is referring to is the great rummage sale of the Reformation in 1517, the great schism between the eastern and western branches of Christianity in 1054, and the rise of monasticism in the sixth century. And we’re in the midst of another 500-year rummage sale. So, today we find the church in Europe and North America in a stage of decline, ready for reformation. The funny thing about reformations is that nobody knows exactly where they will lead. Sometimes in the UCC, we seem to think that if we just work harder, if we just do one more social justice project, if we just expand our program offerings, it will turn things around. And to be honest, we’ve been pretty good at holding back the flood here at Plymouth. But even if, like Hans Brinker, we keep our finger in the dyke to hold back the torrent, the dam isn’t going to hold forever. American Christianity, mainline Protestantism, the UCC, and even Plymouth will look very different in 20 years, even if none of us knows quite how. The key to successful reformation is to get rid of the bathwater and have the wisdom to hold fast to the baby and not throw her out, too. The 1517 Reformation threw out plenty of bathwater, and there was some baby that got tossed out as well, and we’ve re-adopted some of those things. For instance, when I was growing up in a New England Congregational church, the only vestments clergy wore were academic robes, never a stole around their shoulders and certainly not a cassock alb, like I’m wearing right now. We adopted those gradually as an acknowledgement of our ecumenism. I never saw liturgical colors growing up. Today, I see gifts in monasticism. And I am deeply informed by mysticism and contemplative Christian spirituality, which also went by the wayside. Thankfully, we’ve retrieved some of that tradition. I’m not aware of anyone who can tell just what the future of Christianity is going to look like. That can be scary, because we know it will be different, yet we’re not quite sure how. Part of our task in the coming years is to identify the baby and preserve it carefully, even as we drain the bathwater and let it go. It’s a matter both of embracing change while also conserving the best pieces of our tradition that are central to who we are as Christians. Always reforming means that we have to embrace change and ride the wave. It also means that we need to spend time doing deep, thoughtful discernment with God about where we are being led to change and why. I pray that we have the grace to listen to the God who is still speaking and calling us to be the church. May it be so. Amen. |
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