Graceful Reflections

Back in 2014, we started this blog for Grace. It was mainly authored by Bob Lotz who filled it with thoughtful reflections.

I am going to try to revive it with thoughts about things that are going on at Grace or in the larger world, thoughts about lessons and seasons, and things that are too wordy to fit in the Grace Notes weekly email.

I want to write about how great it was to see over 90 people at our annual meeting. We had good budget news, having ended 2016 under budget (and thus not spending the whole 5% we take from our Savings/Endowment Fund. Our budget for 2017 is equally hopeful and we could use what we don’t spend for operations on our access project. Speaking of our access project, we learned that there is overwhelming support for going to the next step, thanks to the many survey meetings hosted by Jerry Mrowczynski last month.

This is the story you should hear when you think of the commandment not to have graven images. We think of those pagan stone heads carved on Easter Island, or the Golden Calf as in today’s reading, ancient and superstitious. But let’s suspend that for a moment. Like we did with the fourth commandment, let’s imagine we’re sitting around the fire in the evening with our people. We’re Hebrew slaves in Egypt, and it’s been a long, hot day of gathering straw in the fields and making bricks at the ovens. We have to do it because the king tells us to, and who is the king? He is the very image of their god, he is god’s human effigy, he has power like a god. He says who lives and who dies, who works, and who enjoys. Pharaoh is even called a living god!

But someone is telling a story at the fire tonight. It’s Genesis 1:

“Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’

So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.”

In this story, God created the first people. And created them all in the image of God! All these people, male and female, are created in the image of God! And humans were meant to rule the world, to have dominion, like kings have dominion, as rulers! In this story pharaoh is not the only image of god on earth – we all are! Can you believe it? It says, We Are Somebody! This is radical stuff for a bunch of slaves to hear. The point of the story is not to describe a science of creation. The point is justice, the equality of all.

But then, generations later, the slaves have come out of Egypt, now they are free. They are still sitting around a campfire, now out in the wilderness, because they don’t have their own country, they haven’t found a home yet. And some of them have forgotten the old stories, and start thinking, let’s be like people with a country, let’s have a god like all the other people do. And so they go to Moses’ brother and ask him to make them something they can worship.

This story is not about how God is so wrathful you have to tiptoe around and make sure you obey each and every one of his many rules. That’s not what’s wrong here. What’s wrong is that, way back in Genesis 1, at the very start of the Hebrew testament, we already learned that we are all made in the image of God. You don’t need a golden calf to see God. All the people around you – and all the people over the mountain, in the next country – all are made in the image of God, we can see God in these people. That’s where we are supposed to look for God, that’s why graven images are wrong. Because if god is a bunch of gold, then God is not in the face of my neighbor. So who cares about this rotten neighbor of mine? The golden calf’s priest says to go to war with my neighbor who doesn’t look right or worship right, or eat the right foods. Those neighbors who have different colored skin, or different sexual practices – the golden calf hates them!

But God calls us all to remember our Genesis birthright. All men and women are created equal! You think that’s Jefferson? That’s Genesis 1! We are all somebody! We all equally bear the image of God, so our religion calls us to cherish that God image, and love our neighbors as ourselves. That is some radical good news in the ancient near east…or anywhere, anytime.

If the story that we are all God’s image-bearers, all equal, and so all to be cherished by all, is not good news, I don’t know what is. And it’s way back in the beginning of the Hebrew Testament. The Scriptures call us to accept this great principle of equality

The 10 Commandments are in Exodus, chapter 20, early in the Hebrew scriptures. In the New Testament, in Matthew 22, Jesus is asked what is the greatest commandment, and replies, “Love God with all your heart and soul and mind, this is the greatest commandment. And a second is like it: love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” This isn’t a departure from the list of ten in Exodus 20. If we look at the ten, they are in groups: 1 to 3 are about loving God. 5 to ten are ways to show love for others. Number 4 is a sort of bridge, connecting the two threads. So the ten are elaborations from which are condensed the two greatest commandments from Jesus.

How do we understand the fourth, the bridge? It points us straight back to Genesis 1, to the creation story. What do we hear there? The Spirit hovered over the waters, it was evening and it was morning, and it was good. God did the work of creation in 6 days. But then, God didn’t decide, I’m done, it’s all good, let’s party! No, in Genesis 2, God was bushed: Whew, I’m beat, I need a day off. Even the Almighty finds creation to be hard work.

The Genesis story was not told to people like us, it doesn’t require that we sit home and not go shopping or work in the garden or build a deck on Saturday, the seventh day. Step back and think of the original listeners. This story would not have been told in the Pharaoh’s palace, or among the shopkeepers or in the homes of overseers in charge of the slaves. It was told at the Hebrews’ village fire in the evening, after a hard day in slavery for the Egyptians. Some had been gathering straw under the hot sun, some baked bricks at hot ovens, some had set the bricks to build the storehouses for Pharaoh’s ever-increasing treasure. Exodus 5 recalls the demands for more, and harder, work by the slaves.

As the Hebrew slaves sat at their meager meal, someone would retell the old story, that on the 7th day God rested. Rested! So, does the 4th commandment tell us not to pray on Saturday, because God’s not in the office? No, in my view Genesis is not a science text or description of God’s strengths and weaknesses. It is telling the oppressed how they should be able to live in this world, how life is meant to be. It is telling the slaves that God did not mean for them to be oppressed under the ceaseless work ordered by the Egyptian empire. It was hard to believe, that there should be a different rhythm to life. Did the Kingdom of God mean that we Hebrews, too, should have a day of rest, like a free people? Dare we hope for freedom?

Today we normally think of the New Testament, the Gospel, as the “Good News” of God. But here, in the very first chapters of the first book of the Old Testament, we find good news of how the Kingdom of God would be different from the empires of man.
Certainly the slaves did not yet have a Sabbath day of rest. Scholars believe that the incorporation of this Sabbath rule into daily life came several centuries later, after the sacking of Jerusalem and the taking of the Hebrew elites to exile in Babylon. Here the people who had been administrators and leaders among the Israelites found their abilities in demand in a growing empire, and many of them began to assimilate, to intermarry, to become part of the dominant imperial culture. Daniel 1 describes this.

At this time the prophets cried out for God’s holy people to keep themselves apart from the dominant, secular culture, and the Sabbath became a visible sign of the maintenance of the Hebrew’s way of life.

The Fourth Commandment asks us to recall how Genesis brought good news to the slaves of one empire, and how the descendants of these slaves were called to keep themselves separate from the dominant culture of another empire. This command doesn’t require us to be idle on Saturdays. Rather, it is a reminder that God aids the oppressed, and his people must not be drawn into the life of the secular empires.

This “bridge” commandment reminds us that if we are to love God and our neighbor, we must not be caught in the grip of the dominant culture, we must be “in, but not of” this world.

On July 12, the Cincinnati Opera performed “Silent Night”, a new opera based on the events of an impromptu truce on the front lines of World War I, 100 years ago.

On that Christmas eve in 1914, the first of WW I, the Scots, the French and the Germans stared over the trenches and managed to find the shared humanity to reach across no-man’s-land, first by song and then by foot. They carried whiskey, wine and beer, the sacramental offerings for a communion of conscripts. The very idea is profoundly anti-war and anti-nationalist.

Indeed, when the German operatic tenor (played, in Cincinnati, by a Belgian operatic tenor living in Germany, making his US debut) is congratulated by the German Crown Prince for serving the Fatherland, he replies bitterly that he was conscripted like all the rest. The prince has a little holiday shindig at his chalet — only some 30 km from the front! Generals come, and the tenor is yanked from the trenches for the evening. But he is back before the night is too far gone. This high-society artist, not some funky, dirty Marxist, warns the Germans soldiers that they are not serving the Fatherland or the “dear” Kaiser, but the rich Hindenburgs and Krupps… names they knew and hated. By the end of the evening he has used the cease-fire to cross over to the French side, as the only statement he can make against the folly and sheer evil of this war. But even in this rich, dramatic material, it is the German character (not an American ally) who is made to denounce his masters and defect. The librettist dares only so much.

How much different it is today! Already by Dec., 1914, just a few months into the war, the Europeans were building into Total War, harnessing their countries to the yoke of national conflict. Today, after more than a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US is not similarly engaged, the nation is not consumed with support for the war effort, the soldiers are not conscripted en masse. We have managed to create a kind of war that doesn’t distract us from everyday life. Even in our Vietnam days we had to watch images of death on TV every night. Now we have 500 channels to get us away from all that.

While the Germans knew their masters by name — Krupp — what names do we know? Exxon-Mobil? Citibank? Google? Wal-Mart? I bet we can only put a personal name to one of these, Wal-Mart. And the late Sam Walton just doesn’t conjure the top-hatted capitalist Scrooge image of a Hindenburg, or a Rockefeller. Our 21st century ruling class is composed of brand names, not personal names.

And today we still have patriotic themes! Nationalism is a good thing, we fly flags and sing anthems even in our most progressive churches, which mark us as part of the American team, and separate us from all those others — especially the Muslims. Even in Cincinnati, before this anti-war, anti-nationalist opera began, four US Marines in dress blues marched a flag onto the stage and led us in “our” national song. Really? Did the opera company not see a discordant note in that tune, on this night? Were Haley and I the only ones not singing?

We have not come very far from 1914. Two world wars and “lesser” conflicts in the blood-drenched 20th century did not teach us to hate war. It seems rather to have taught us to “clean up” our wars. Globalization has not taught us that we are all one people, but has kept all our nationalisms alive. We have just as much work ahead of us today as did anti-war and peace activists a century ago. It is not very encouraging. Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose: the more things change, the more they remain the same. I’m usually quite an optimist, but I wept a bit in the opera house on Saturday night.

As Holy Week began on Palm Sunday, a murderer attacked a Jewish community center in Kansas, killing a 69-yr-old grandfather and his 14-yr-old grandson. The killer stood next to their car as he fired. These hate killings brought home to us the horrible fact that violence, from such national-news crimes to the mundane dailiness of gangs, domestic abuse, and all kinds of societal violence and war, are a backdrop, if not foreground, to all our lives.

We participants in “Reclaiming the Gospel of Peace: An Episcopal National Gathering To Challenge the Epidemic of Violence” were barely home from two and a half days of meetings, workshops and worship that challenged us to help turn this bloody tide when we heard this news. It called us right back to the personal pledges we had been asked to make.

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts-Schori and Archbishop Justin Welby both spoke. The Archbishop said, “Violence is addictive, and corrosive of all other human values.” Bishop Eugene Sutton of Maryland noted that, “We have become intoxicated with violence as the only effective means to achieve our personal goals or national aspirations. We have worshipped for far too long at the altar of the gun to solve our problems.”

The Rev. Kathie Adams-Shepherd, Rector of Trinity Episcopal Church in Newtown, CT talked about the experience of the Sandy Hook Elementary School slaughter. Later, at the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum, Melissa Houston, a survivor of the 1995 Murrah Building bombing, told us her story. At St Paul’s Cathedral for service, we were asked to write two things we would do to involve ourselves in the struggle against violence. As we came forward to receive communion from Bishop Jefferts-Schori or Oklahoma Bishop Ed Konieczny, we put these sticky notes on a cross at the altar rail. Later, at dinner, Bishop Laura Ahrens of Connecticut challenged each of us to turn to the person next to us and commit to these personal goals.

My own pledges feel like they show the Spirit at work. Over the past year, I have mostly been involved with the soup kitchen and homeless shelter. But just before the Gathering, I was invited to join the Port Huron domestic violence/sexual assault council for Blue Water Safe Horizons, the local non-profit that operates shelters, a housing program, and the DV/SA crisis center; I’d also become involved with two local LGBTQ groups that now meet together at my church, Grace-Port Huron. So I found myself given two new ways to commit to working against violence. I would also like to see the Episcopal Peace Fellowship bloom in our diocese.

Holy Week is the busiest and most sacred time of the church year. Yet 220 people, including 34 bishops, took time to be at this gathering. We created new nodes in a network of Episcopalians committed to justice. It was energizing and exciting. There is so much to be done, so little we each can do alone. But together, we can do a lot.

I always recall the last of the “Fourfold Benedictine Blessing” when I am faced with so daunting a job as helping to end the epidemic of violence:

“May God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done.” Amen.

It was 5:45 AM and dark when Eve, the Americorps person, and I arrived at Pathway for the local iteration of the national homeless census, the Point in Time count. We were joined by 3 members of the Blue Water Safe Horizons Supportive Housing team, two from the Harbor teen shelter, and a Community Mental Health staff member. We divided into teams, with the Supportive Housing team heading to the area behind Wal-Mart in Ft Gratiot, the Harbor people going to the college, and David, Eve and I picking up the core downtown area.

I wore storm pants over my jeans, 3 top layers under my parka, a full-face, windproof balaclava and a “mad bomber” fur hat, with a headlamp. I carried some Mylar thermal rescue blankets. Somehow I thought I was ready.

First we checked the old RR tunnel under Military St.: no sign of anyone there. We went into Pine Grove Park. While the others checked under the trees of the pine grove, and at the waterfront, I walked around the water treatment plant. I found boot tracks, but not the person who made them. We drove around the city hall parking lot, as homeless with cars have been known to park there; all the police cars make it seem safe. Then we also went to the college. I checked between the campus and the Black River, and in some blind alleys between buildings. Then we headed out to the “wilderness” between K-Mart and Goodwill. Again, tracks, recent boot tracks, but no people.

While the others went back to get the CMH van, I walked to the woods north of K-Mart. I found no tracks in there, but I spotted a couple of people walking nearby. They were on their way to work at Community Enterprises, had homes.

As I walked toward 32nd St, I suddenly felt the cold making its way into my boots, creeping inside my balaclava, around my eyes. My lashes began to freeze. I wondered if I should head back to K-Mart and wait in the doorway, or check the last stretch of woods, and be close to that darn van, if it EVER shows up…. I continued along the edge of the woods. Still no people. But the van appeared!

Our BWSH colleagues reported tracks behind Wal-Mart and Meijer, but they didn’t find any people, either. They also checked behind Birchwood Mall, and at the 40th St pond. No one.

The sun was up, and we were done for the morning. Still to come: the soup kitchen needs to be canvassed. Eve will cover lunch, and I’ll be there for the evening meal. We also want to know about those who have no homes but find shelter on friends’ couches or in their cars.

Veni, Veni

 

Swarming sailors on the billowing wind,

Shadowed, sooty moon of smoky autumn.

The linden tree has shed its leaves.

Now Belgian lace of branch is stretched against a somber sky.

Lake and sky blend seamlessly

as the world winds down into the monochrome season.

Drowsy, we drift in dreadful dreams of doom and death.

Meanwhile, on the dark side of the moon several continents away,

three wise men bearing the wearying weight of worldly crowns

slog through desert sands,

faithfully following a star

to what strange, distant destination?

A manger suffused with reflected radiance from an infant King of Kings,

The joyful end to all earth’s wanderings.

 

 

Sylvia Bargiel

According to Matthew:

“I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was hungry and you gave me food, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.  Just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me. You are righteous and will enter into eternal life.”

I gave money to a homeless man, I gave clothing to the shelter, I gave food to the food bank, I visited someone in jail, I cared for a relative who was sick, and does that make me righteous?  Do these deeds guarantee me a ticket to heaven?  I think not.  Although it may help, it’s like chicken soup when you’re sick, it can’t hurt.  I think to be righteous you not only have to give these things, but give of yourself as well.

Kindness, generosity, love, patience, understanding, comfort, is just some of the things you can give others.  Will this make you righteous?  I don’t know, maybe you should just have a bowl of soup.  Anyway I guess the moral of this story is, don’t be afraid to give of yourself, give you time, talents, and treasure.

Granddaddy always said…  “Don’t give till it hurts, give till it feels good.”

 

Larry McNamara

 

Restore us, O God of hosts* Show us the light of your countenance and we shall be saved.                       Psalm 80:3b, 7b, 18b

 

You may have heard that darkness is “no-thing.” It has no substance in and of itself, but rather is simply the lack of light We are now in the darkest time of year – the winter solstice – when the sun is at the lowest angle as we experience the shortest days of the year. It can be a dark and gloomy time. But that is not the end of the story. Just as we know that the days will begin to lengthen, we also know that times of trial and sorrow will give way to the light of God. Just as we await the coming of  Spring, never doubting its eventual appearance, may we also expect the coming of God’s reign in the birth of an infant who brings us the light of God. If we stay open to this light, we can be instruments of this holy light. May we allow the light of God shining in and through us to banish the darkness around us. Three times in the appointed portions of Psalm 80, the psalmist cries out, “show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved.” Let the light of the new born babe shine through every dark spot in our lives.

 

 

Roger Wood

 

 

Over the last 2 months we Gracelings have been busy in our community, and as we end Advent and celebrate our Christ’s birth and the coming of the Kingdom of God, it’s a good time to take stock.

We cosponsored 2 food-truck giveaways, the first with Faith Christian Community Church at the end of October, the second just before Thanksgiving at Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church. A total of 490 people were served, who picked up food for 1600 members of their households. The second truck was served by 22 of us from Grace, almost 15% of our active worshipping membership. This was the second- largest volunteer event we had this year, after our involvement in the Blue Water Half Marathon.

We also hosted the Thanksgiving dinner at Pathway homeless shelter. 16 Shelter residents who had nowhere else to go had a complete turkey dinner served by 7 of us from Grace. We provided an extra table and chairs so that everyone could eat at once.

Grace parishioners donated warm clothes and toiletries for an Episcopal mission to Native Americans in South Dakota. We sent a dozen boxes to them.

We also completed our annual “Angel” project with families of kids at Woodrow Wilson School as well as clients of the Council on Aging. All the kids were adopted by our members in record time! We provided a toy and clothing for each of 44 children. Sixteen Wilson families received food parcels, including a ham; 19 seniors also received food and gifts.
We bought sheets and blankets for Pathway, donated knit caps made by seniors, and one of our congregants arranged for a local floor-covering firm to donate new carpet to them. In time for Christmas we’ll be providing pajamas to the 6 children now living in the homeless shelter.

After a fire destroyed the River District supermarket in the south end of town, a lot of people who had walked there to shop were left needing to use public transport to go elsewhere. In order to help some of these people, we purchased a few hundred bus tickets and sent them to the pastors at some of their local churches for distribution. These were Pastor Anthony at Metropolitan Missionary Baptist, Rev. Miller at Restoration Christian Community Church, Pastor Kevin at Christ Centered Community Church, and Elder Thornton at Shiloh Baptist.

We have developed a good working partnership with Blue Water Safe Horizons, parent organization to Pathway. Rather than simply contribute to their general budget, and beyond the other things we do with Pathway, we’ve told them that they can call to refer particular clients to us when we might be nimble enough to offer help in a hurry. So we received a call from a staffer at Carolyn’s Place, the domestic violence shelter, telling us they had a client ready to go into an apartment that their Supportive Housing agency had arranged, but the client had put all her belongings in a storage unit when she fled to the shelter – and couldn’t afford the payment to retrieve them. The contents were to be auctioned in less than a week! BWSH asked if we could help with half the cost, as time pressed. This is exactly the kind of client-specific donation we want! While Carolyn’s Place also initially wanted help moving the furniture from storage into the apartment, and this sort of direct work with clients is what we like, I secretly rejoiced that they found enough people from BWSH staff to handle her two couches, etc., without needing us. I’d rather help move feather-dusters or pillows.