Love and Pain

Like many of my friends and colleagues in ministry today, I am somewhat at a loss for words.

It was a hard, hard weekend at the Covenant Annual Meeting. In what is becoming something of a pattern, heartbreakingly so, the gathered assembly voted this weekend to expel another church for its policies of inclusion toward the LGBTQ community.

That alone is plenty.

But on top of it, the Supreme Court also handed down their slate of decisions for this session before going onto summer recess, among them the repeal of affirmative action policies, or “race-conscious admissions” for institutions of higher education, and another allowing a web designer to refuse services to LGBTQ couples.

Oh, and if that weren’t enough, we’re heading into the July 4th holiday. A time that, historically, I could jump into with full abandon: fireworks! Hamburgers and hot dogs! Strawberry shortcake and flag t-shirts! But now I’m left a little lukewarm, recognizing that the America which has treated me so, so well as an upper-middle class, heterosexual, Christian, white woman, does not exist for many others.

So I’m sitting on my porch, enjoying the first really beautiful (smoke-free, blue-sky, not-terribly-humid) morning we’ve had in days near Chicago, and ruminating.

I’m thinking about institutions, which as someone pointed out this weekend, were never meant to love us. And yet I have – we have – looked to them for so much: for reflecting our values, for implementing policies that reflect them, and that pursue justice and wholeness. We have trusted in them. We have supported them. Some of them, even, (like the church), we have loved.

But they have failed us, in ways. They have broken some of our hearts.

Perhaps because we know and recognize what they could be. What they have been. What they are capable of.

Like watching a loved one squander their talents or go down an unhealthy path, it pains us to see these institutions do the same.

It was reported this weekend that, after the vote to expel Awaken Church from the Covenant, a member of the denominational executive board called it “a victory for Jesus.”

I cannot think of any words less true.

Instead, the words that I keep returning to this morning are those of Father Gregory Boyle, who said, “You know you’ve created God in your own image when you discover God hates all the same people that you do.”

Boyle talks and writes extensively about this, about our human propensity to draw lines and circles and decide who is in and who out. And he is abundantly clear on this: that is not the way of Jesus. In an interview given to The Work of the People, Boyle said, “Our God is so huge and so welcoming, and Jesus was only about dismantling the barriers that excluded, he was only about expanding the circle of compassion, hopeful that no one would stand outside of it.”

Hopeful that no one would stand outside of it.

I wish I had a solution for us this morning. I wish I knew the exact way forward. Or could offer words of certainty and hope.

But perhaps these thoughts of Father Boyle are enough, for now.

The reminder that God is always bigger, and greater, than us and our ideas.

The encouragement not to fall into the trap of making God in our image.

And the call to find ways of expanding the circle of compassion ever wider. Hopefully, some of that work can take place within the institutions we support. But it must never be limited to those, either.

That’s all for now. But just for now.

-Pastor Jen

A Word and a Prayer

My heart here in Chicago is focused on Gather (The Covenant Annual Meeting) about to convene in Anaheim California. As always, there are stresses and strains, and decisions to be made. At its heart a vote will be taken to dismiss a church over theological matters. We are more aware of those challenges in recent years than ever we have been.

I simply want to share a word and a prayer from two of our past sages, as if to remind us who we are, or at least who we were in our formed life and spirit. May their thought and spirit prevail this week.

First a bidding word from the itinerant and traveling preacher C.J. Nyvall (1829-1904), who said:

“I would like to say a few words, beloved friends, regarding the strife which at present persists among us: about the right conception of the gospel on the one hand and the common church life on the other, or rather about our own attitudes toward each other when we are unable to think alike on these matters. Oh, how important it is to heed the Lord’s admonition and see to it “that we are not mutually devoured!”

Beloved friends, you who have had your eyes opened to the dear gospel somewhat more than others, remember that even those who do not see things exactly as you do may yet live the life in Christ. Watch out that you do not judge as slaves of the law those whom God counts as his children. It would be a truly evangelical conduct and it fits in poorly with your confession…No, my dear friends, the life of grace in others is a condition which we cannot always evaluate, partly because of our own inadequacy and partly because of varying circumstances among the children of grace. This ought to make us not only cautious but thankful to the Lord that he has not set us as judges over others. May we instead judge ourselves, test ourselves, and see if we ourselves are in the faith.

Therefore the real children of God have peace among themselves, something that is so highly necessary that without it everything else is a sham, and we, with all our zeal for the kingdom of God, disgrace the gospel of peace and bring condemnation upon ourselves…. Peace within the group does not mean that all think alike and interpret all things alike, each wishing to see, as it were, his (sic) own self in another, but it does mean that each one recognizes his brother in Christ, whatever else the condition may be. It is not identity in thought and comprehension of all possible particulars that constitutes the perfect bond by which we love one another; that bond, rather, is the mutual filial condition to which we are born from above.

May the Lord open our eyes to this blessedness on the one hand and not to the deceit of the devil on the other so that we be not caught in the snare. Cease to bear arms against brethren and thank God for the dear gospel which he in great mercy and faithfulness has committed to us, and use your war energy to the end that many more may become partakers of the same gospel and be blessed. (89-90)

Second, a prayer offered by my late uncle Zenos Hawkinson at the Covenant Ministerium meeting in 1978:

Our Father, we give you glad thanks for this unbelievable, imperishable, unmerited fellowship. help us to continue to enjoy each other as we pasture in your meadows, in places that have been made available to us through your grace, because you love us– not because we earned it, but because you love us, because you are who you are. And help us thus to love each other even when we disagree, even when we see things differently, but understanding that we are sheep of the same shepherd, even our Lord Jesus Christ. Help that whatever is said or understood among us may suffer the winnowing of your good sense, that what is good seed may fall into good ground, and what is nonsense may dry up quickly, blow away, and be forgotten. For we pray it in Jesus’ name. Amen. (595)

(quotes from Glad Hearts: the Joys of Believing and the Challenges of Belonging, compiled and edited by James R. Hawkinson, Covenant Publications, 2003)

A Word and a Prayer

My heart here in Chicago is focused on Gather (The Covenant Annual Meeting) about to convene in Anaheim California. As always, there are stresses and strains, and decisions to be made. At its heart a vote will be taken to dismiss a church over theological matters. We are more aware of those challenges in recent years than ever we have been.

I simply want to share a word and a prayer from two of our past sages, as if to remind us who we are, or at least who we were in our formed life and spirit. May their thought and spirit prevail this week.

First a bidding word from the itinerant and traveling preacher C.J. Nyvall (1829-1904), who said:

“I would like to say a few words, beloved friends, regarding the strife which at present persists among us: about the right conception of the gospel on the one hand and the common church life on the other, or rather about our own attitudes toward each other when we are unable to think alike on these matters. Oh, how important it is to heed the Lord’s admonition and see to it “that we are not mutually devoured!”

Beloved friends, you who have had your eyes opened to the dear gospel somewhat more than others, remember that even those who do not see things exactly as you do may yet live the life in Christ. Watch out that you do not judge as slaves of the law those whom God counts as his children. It would be a truly evangelical conduct and it fits in poorly with your confession…No, my dear friends, the life of grace in others is a condition which we cannot always evaluate, partly because of our own inadequacy and partly because of varying circumstances among the children of grace. This ought to make us not only cautious but thankful to the Lord that he has not set us as judges over others. May we instead judge ourselves, test ourselves, and see if we ourselves are in the faith.

Therefore the real children of God have peace among themselves, something that is so highly necessary that without it everything else is a sham, and we, with all our zeal for the kingdom of God, disgrace the gospel of peace and bring condemnation upon ourselves…. Peace within the group does not mean that all think alike and interpret all things alike, each wishing to see, as it were, his (sic) own self in another, but it does mean that each one recognizes his brother in Christ, whatever else the condition may be. It is not identity in thought and comprehension of all possible particulars that constitutes the perfect bond by which we love one another; that bond, rather, is the mutual filial condition to which we are born from above.

May the Lord open our eyes to this blessedness on the one hand and not to the deceit of the devil on the other so that we be not caught in the snare. Cease to bear arms against brethren and thank God for the dear gospel which he in great mercy and faithfulness has committed to us, and use your war energy to the end that many more may become partakers of the same gospel and be blessed. (89-90)

Second, a prayer offered by my late uncle Zenos Hawkinson at the Covenant Ministerium meeting in 1978:

Our Father, we give you glad thanks for this unbelievable, imperishable, unmerited fellowship. help us to continue to enjoy each other as we pasture in your meadows, in places that have been made available to us through your grace, because you love us– not because we earned it, but because you love us, because you are who you are. And help us thus to love each other even when we disagree, even when we see things differently, but understanding that we are sheep of the same shepherd, even our Lord Jesus Christ. Help that whatever is said or understood among us may suffer the winnowing of your good sense, that what is good seed may fall into good ground, and what is nonsense may dry up quickly, blow away, and be forgotten. For we pray it in Jesus’ name. Amen. (595)

(quotes from Glad Hearts: the Joys of Believing and the Challenges of Belonging, compiled and edited by James R. Hawkinson, Covenant Publications, 2003)