Don’t flay the sheep.

RevGalBlogPals Friday Five: Festive Foods

I’m not doing much baking for Christmas. But I can dream…

So, in preparation for the holiday feeding frenzy:

1. My favorite candy/cookie/baked good without which it is not Christmas…

It’s got to be just about anything with almonds. Old dutch ladies buy almond paste by the pound for holiday cooking (I kid you not, there are adds in the Christian Reformed denominational magazine for mail-order almond paste by the pound!).

Presbyterians aren’t so into the almonds. I hadn’t really thought about is yet, but it seems very odd to me that among all the goodies being dropped off in the church office, not an almond-paste-confection among them. I guess I’ll have to start ordering my own almond paste.

2. Do you do a fancy dinner on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, both, or neither? (Optional: with whom will you gather around the table this year?)

I’m used to Christmas Eve being low-key and the Day being the big event. This comes from growing up in a pastor’s family. As if there was TIME for a big event on Christmas Eve!

This year, we’ll do Christmas dinner with my mother’s family. They are wonderful, nutty group. I am incredibly blessed to serve a church near to my extended family.

3. Evaluate one or more of the holiday beverage trifecta: hot chocolate, wassail, egg nog.

I am so glad that Christmas, and thus the Starbucks egg nog latte, only comes around once a year, or I would be much, much larger than I am.

4. Candy canes: do you like all the new-fangled flavors or are you a peppermint purist?

Peppermint. Those fruit ones are just gross.

5. Have you ever actually had figgy pudding? And is it really so good that people will refuse to leave until they are served it?

Yes. And no. When I spent a year in England during college, I had the pudding at Christmas dinner in the college dining hall (think Hogwarts without the floating candles).
It was not the highlight of dinner.

Except for this: the English pour straight cream on just about any dessert. And cream can make anything taste good.

And my thoughts on fruitcake?

I have none. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten it; received it; had to dispose of it…Somehow, I’ve avoided the stuff completely.

[ Filed under Journal | 3 Comments ]

Slapped Back into Proper Perspective

Coming down from the mountaintop that is a week off from church, I was starting to feel the weight of the world: junior high meeting to plan, high schoolers to get to know better, worship, giant list of things I really should do but keep putting off (find a spiritual director, run regularly, make more time to pray, make some friends who aren’t from church, sort through the piles of books in the basement, read the piles of books in the basement, actually create a good budget), think of something brilliant to say on the blog, Christmas knitting to complete, figure out how to balance my life as mom and as minister, pester the landlord about the leaky roof…

And then a few things happened:

I took a two hour walk with the baby, listening to sermons on my iPod (worrying the whole time that people would look and say, “What an irresponsible mother, walking with her baby but tuning her out with the iPod.”) And I heard a sermon on Solomon by Jack (one of the great undiscovered preachers, as far as I’m concerned). There was a lot in there about humility before God, what we ask for in prayer, and what is ultimately important to us. Slap.

Toward the end of the walk, some guy tried to turn left into the pedestrian lane where I (and my obvious baby stroller!!!) clearly had the right of way. I started thinking about what an entitled jerk this guy was. And, true confession here, how his self-entitled-suburban-self could possibly be so important that he couldn’t watch for ME-MYSELF-AND-ZORA in the pedestrian lane, we who were so righteously walking and not contributing to the destruction of the earth with our car, the urban-dwelling-enlightened folks that we are…Oh, wait a minute. We live in the suburbs, too. We drive our car. I left the lights on before we left home. Remember that stuff in the sermon about humility? Slap.  

My good friends from seminary had a baby two weeks after me: Samara, she’s 3 months old. Her name means, “watched by God”. The author who Zora is kind-of-named-after wrote a book called Their Eyes Were Watching God. I think our babies were meant to be buddies, and someday exchange stories about growing up with pastor-mamas. My dad called last night with this news: Samara’s in the hospital with cancer. Slap.

My friend Susan’s posts about her non-ministry work during a detour in her path to ministry reminded me that my vocational calling is no higher than anyone else’s. Slap.

And then the lectionary psalm for the day, 102, includes this dear, sweet, thought:

I am like an owl of the wilderness, like a little owl of the waste places.

A little owl, not big and mighty, out in the wastes, wailing on its own, completely reliant on God’s provision for what it needs.

How different from me: so concerned and overwhelmed with every little detail of life, so wrapped up in my own significance and self-worth, fluffing my feathers, too busy to wail to God for what I need, to eager to wait for what God will send my way.

So this is my prayer as I return to church on Sunday:

God, let me be a little owl.

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In my beginning is my end

• Luke 21:25-36
• Jeremiah 33:14-16
• Fox Valley Presbyterian Church
• December 3, 2006

Back in the Sunday school rooms, Marilyn Church and Charlotte Drew are sitting on the floor with a group of completely transfixed 4, 5 and 6 year olds. On each wall of the room, there are low shelves with boxes and baskets. And just about now, Marilyn is taking a box off of one of the shelves, and the children are waiting like it’s Christmas morning to find out what’s inside.

In each box or basket, there are little objects that tell a story, stories about God, and God’s people, and this journey we are on together. If you opened one of the flatter boxes, you would find a puzzle that looks like a giant clock, with 52 little colored blocks, one for each week of the year, that fit around the outside edges of a big circle.

Now, the puzzle is the truly impressive thing in the box, but also in that box is a gold string. And if Marilyn were telling that story this morning, she would first take out the string, lay it on the floor, and say these things to the children:

“Sometimes, it’s hard to tell what time it is. There are all kinds of time. I wonder how the church tells time? Some say time is a line. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. This could be the beginning, and this the end. Or this could be the beginning . . . and this could be the end. It’s hard to tell beginnings and endings when time is a in a line.I know: Let’s take the beginning that could be an ending and the ending that could be a beginning and tie them together.”

And she would make a circle with that string and place it on the floor and say: “Now the ending is a beginning and the beginning is an end. This is how the church tells time.” (From Young Children and Worship, by Sonja Stewart and Jerome Berryman)

If you’ve hung around church long enough, you’ll have heard this a few times: that today, the first Sunday of Advent, is the beginning of the church’s liturgical year. We begin the year with a few weeks to prepare for the story of Jesus; celebrate his birth and his life, journey through Lent; rejoice during Easter and then Pentecost, and swing through the summer until we come back around to do it all again.

You would think this Sunday would be about new beginnings, a hopeful celebration of all that is to come. And yet, on this Sunday, what we hear from the Bible are strange stories of the end:

Now the ending is a beginning and the beginning is an end. This is how the church tells time.

In Luke, Jesus talks about apocalypse, the end of time as we know it. This is nowhere near the warm-fuzzy baby Jesus we are looking forward to. This is Jesus preaching gloom and doom in a minor key. Not the way you expect to start the “holiday season.”

And our Jeremiah passage, while a bit more upbeat, is only upbeat amidst the gloom and doom of the people of Israel struggling in the midst of war after war as they live through a time when the powers that be struggle for control of the middle east. (Some things never change?)

The truth is that our Advent waiting and preparation for the beginning of the story, the birth of Jesus, is also our preparation and waiting for what we often hear referred to as the end…the second coming of Jesus.

We know that in God’s first coming, the coming of Jesus, God-in-the-flesh, living among us, we know that this story changes everything.

For each of us, we are called to change who we are, to join Jesus in dying to sin, and rising to new life.

And for the world, God begins to reconcile the whole world, person to person, nation to nation, the broken creation and our broken relationships, with God and with each other, patched back together.

None of this is easy. None of this patching and growing comes without some struggle and pain.

And it is a fearful process: as Jesus says, around us we see the changing heavens; the shaking earth; the roaring sea.

And then there is this idea of the second coming. During Advent, we are also watching and waiting for a second coming of Jesus.

For a complete fulfillment of everything that was promised in the first coming.

For a complete reconciliation of the world and its people.

For our complete reconciliation to God.

Sadly, when we hear about the second coming today, our understanding has been clouded by a popular conservative Christian culture that celebrates the cataclysmic terror of judgment rather than the climactic glory of God’s intentions for the world.

For many of us, our reaction to that portrayal of the second coming causes us to through the baby out with the bathwater: to discard or spiritualize passages like the one in Luke, to shy away from the narrative in the book of Revelation, to leave those parts of the Bible for other Christians.

But listen carefully to what Jesus says in Luke, because at the heart of what sounds awful are words of comfort:

Stand up, raise up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.

The world might be crumbling around you, but your redemption, your freedom, is on its way.

God does not abandon the creation: from the beginning, God has watered and nurtured it. And in the end, God will redeem and protect it, not destroy it.

What we are waiting for is a new beginning for the world, because God is breaking in with a new way of justice and peace.

What we are waiting for is a new beginning for our lives, a new beginning because God breaks into the world with the child Jesus, and brings us wholeness and righteousness.

This news of an ending is really news of a new beginning:

Stand up, raise up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.

Last week, sitting up here during the sermon, I was confronted by the connections between beginning and ending: After baptizing my daughter, I sat and listened as my father preached a sermon. He talked about identity, about his father and grandfather.

And I thought about Pastor Carl in Pennsylvania, the same morning, after his father died.

When we baptize our children, we think about beginnings: new birth, new life, the beginning of our life in the embrace of God.

But in our beginning is also our end: In the waters of baptism, where we begin, we are delivered into the eternal embrace of God.

And so while we wait for the coming of Christ, we have nothing to fear: not the shaking of the heavens or the roaring of the sea; not sorrow or sin or even death.

Now the beginning is an end and the end is a beginning. This is how the church tells time…

Thanks be to God.

[ Filed under Sermons | 1 Comment ]

RevGalBlogPals Friday Five:Adventually

1. Do you observe Advent in your church?

Yes, although not too strictly (a few Christmas things seem to creep in early). My Lutheran-raised-husband and the part of me that sang in the Episcopalian children’s choir are a bit perturbed.

2. How about at home?

My mama raised me to, but I haven’t done much yet. With the advent of Zora, it’s probably time to start, but I don’t really want her using matches yet.

3. Do you have a favorite advent hymn or text?

I pretty much love ‘em all, but I’ll give a special nod to the John Ferguson setting of Genevan Psalm 42 with the “Comfort, Comfort, now my people” text and the fantastic piccolo accompaniment. (Since I’m descended from continental Calvinists, sang in Ferg’s choir, and have been known to pick up a picc!)

4. Why is one of the candles in the advent wreath pink?

Product placement for Advent Barbie: Barbie in the role of the Virgin (no one’s getting through that plastic underwear!) Mary, complete with donkey, manger, and baby Jesus. Carpenter Joseph Ken & Little Drummer Girl Skipper sold separately.

5. What’s the funniest/kitschiest Advent calendar you’ve ever seen?

OK, I’ll admit I went searching the internet for this: the Birth Control Advent Calendar. Hey, it makes sense! Pill pack/advent calendar: virtually the same concept!

[ Filed under Journal | 3 Comments ]

Forced Sabbath

Friday is my day off, but when Thursday heated up to a fever pitch (sermon not done; crisis with the wreath forms for the Advent wreath brunch; a list of ten other things that had to get done), I was prepared to break the rules and head into work.

And then it snowed. But I was still going to bundle up the baby and go to work for a few hours. I had to–my sermon was at church, I needed to talk to the other associate pastor, there were people to call and plans to make…

This morning, I cleaned. At 2:30, Erik dug out our car and Zora and I headed to church. But no one else was there. And the snow was piled high on the sidewalks.

So I drove home, curled up to read a few books to Zora, and then she went to sleep.

I crawled into bed with a bowl of popcorn (with extra butter and a little chili powder) and a glass of chocolate milk and a good novel. Zora slept and slept. And I forgot about the sermon and the advent wreaths and the leaks in our roof and the confirmation class lesson plan for Sunday.

I’ve been beating myself up because I’m not Sabbathing well. If only I could put in more effort, work more efficiently during the week, and get myself into a better spiritual mindset, if only I could do those things…

And what I really needed was a reminder that the God who sends snowstorms also sends Sabbath.

Amen.

[ Filed under Journal | 1 Comment ]

Screaming Baby

Yesterday, my daughter learned that she can scream. At church. In my office. The administrative assistant paged me from the outer office to ask what was going on in there.

Lest you think I am torturing the dear girl, this was the good kind of screaming. I think she meant something to the effect of, “Hey, mom!! Pay attention to me. Stop working on that sermon!”

This morning, she spent 45 minutes amusing herself by screaming in her crib.

She’s really good at it.

Meanwhile, I’m struggling with that sermon. And I’m very tempted to switch the text to Psalm 8:2, “From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise,” and then just let Zora do her thing for 10 minutes.

 

[ Filed under Journal | 2 Comments ]

Child of God

Zora Jean,
for you Jesus Christ has come,
has lived, has suffered,
for you, he has endured the darkness of Calvary;
For you, he has triumphed over death;
for you, he prays at God’s right hand;
all for you, little Zora,
even though you do not know it.
And so in baptism,
the word of the Gospel is fulfilled:
‘We love, because God first loved us.’

[ Filed under Journal | 2 Comments ]

Partners

A New York Times Magazine article today dicsusses the phenomenon of people marrying their educational, professional, and earning-potential equals.

And, of course, we all know there are more and moer clergy couples. I’m not one of them, but this got me thinking: for those of us clergy who are not following the trend and marrying someone in the same calling/career, what does our partner’s vocation say about us, and our view of ministry?

I’ve noticed there are a number of clergy women like me with academic husbands. My guess (if I’m honest) is that I think of my calling as pretty academic in nature. I love the writing, the teaching, the reading, and the thinking that go along with ministry. Sounds like the things my husband loves about being a literature scholar.

So then, what about clergy who are partnered with: lawyers; piano tuners; counselors; nurses; teachers; engineers; musicians; administrators; plumbers; artisans . . . ?

[ Filed under Journal | 3 Comments ]

Kids in worship

This morning, the cherub choir and the youth choir sang. The singing was wonderful but my favorite part was the view I had from up front of the first pew full of cherubs. The cherubs are almost all pre-school and under this year.

A few observations about little kids worshiping:

1. You know how there’s a stereotype that men are less invovled in worship (i.e. they don’t sing as much and they aren’t expressive?). Yep, that’s a learned behavior. Even the boys who I’m sure will grow up to be teenaged football players and such were into the service.

2. Let your kids play with the hymnals and Bible. One little guy was paging through the hymnal, which was bigger than his whole lap, with the most intense concentration for someone who can’t read yet. I know that maybe someday everything will be projected in church. I know that you might be worried kids will rumple or tear a page. I know they can’t read it anyway. But the kids with the hymnals were learning to be part of what was going on around them.

3. Let your kids sit in the front sometimes to see the worship leaders. During the choral introit, several squirmers were completely still, mouths hanging open, entranced by the choir. Sitting in the front helps them imagine that they could sing in the choir, play the organ, preach the sermon, lead the liturgy.

4. Confession: I forgot to do this this morning. But, after the service, tell kids who help to lead that you appreciate their leading worship. Don’t just tell they’re cute (and they sure are!!), or that they sang pretty. Tell them their song helped you worship God, understand the sermon, pray, whatever.

[ Filed under Journal | 4 Comments ]

What to read…

I’m about to go on a short vacation (after getting through this weekend, and two days of presbytery next week).

I need to read on this vacation.

But what to read? My reading habits have been totally out of whack since I got pregnant about this time last year. When I found out I was pregnant, I read baby and parenting books obsessively. (I remember an interview with a nominating committee when I was asked what I was currently reading and I had to  fib quite a bit since the committee didn’t yet know I was pregnant.) Then, the week before Zora was born (she was late and I had on-and-off pre-labor for about a week), I read a novel or two to keep myself occupied. But since she’s been born, I honestly have not read much.

I have this debate then: there’s a pile of theology and ministry related things that I really need to get through. But should I do that on my vacation?

Thoughts and suggestions appreciated!

[ Filed under Journal | 4 Comments ]