...perhaps it's time to reaffirm that "we" are the
Church? Kind of like REMEMBERING that WE ARE THE
PEOPLE?
Rev. Dr. Elaine Heath writes a letter to the church
today:
Dear church, God’s one holy, catholic, and apostolic
church: …
Let’s get on with our work. You know the parable of the
wineskins [see Luke 5:37–38]. For goodness’ sake, you
taught that parable to me! We are in a time of wineskin
change. Let’s celebrate that instead of wringing our
hands. Let’s thank God for the old wineskin and the
grace it carried to us. And let’s celebrate the new
wineskin with its expansive fermentation. Let’s do
both. We don’t have to choose.
So what if we are losing our privileged place in
society? We never did our best work there anyway. We’re
always our best on the bottom or the edge. This is a
great time to remember the saints and mystics who
founded our traditions, the ones who did their work
from the margins.
Because—and I say this with more love than I can name—
we can’t afford to keep squabbling about things like
buildings, budgets, pews, stoles, handbells, praise
bands, and carpet…. We must stop that at once. God
needs all hands on deck. We cannot continue operating
as if we are a private club with members, dues, and
privileges. Why? Because Jesus never acts like that.
Our neighbors need us. God needs us. We need us too.
I know it’s hard to play and be creative when we feel
fearful. Anxiety takes the spring out of our step…. We
don’t have to be afraid. That is the wonderful news.
God’s love casts out fear. God is with us. With us! God
orchestrates systems change. Change happens all the
time so that every generation, every community, every
person can experience God in their world, their
context, their time.
Heath imagines the possibilities on the other side of
our anxiety:
Beloved church, can we agree to let God have our
anxiety? God knows how hard it is for us to let go. We
simply have to be willing to be made willing. Just a
tiny degree of openness allows God to work with us—like
dandelion seeds. They blow on the wind, fall into every
crack … and before you know it a parking lot is in full
bloom. Church, do you realize we are on the cusp of a
new Great Awakening? And it looks like a spiritual
dandelion explosion as far as the eye can see. God’s
new thing is networked, exponential, Spirit-breathed,
decentralized, a vast planting of small communities of
faith…. It is very much the work of laypeople, and it
is emerging as a natural progression out of the church
that used to be….
I know if we will say yes to God, we can rely on God’s
already having said yes to us. So let’s go together,
all of us, in the direction that God leads. When that
happens, the world will know that Jesus spoke the
truth, that God’s love is for everyone. People will
encounter the real tradition, the tradition behind the
tradition, because they will experience it in us.
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AMEN Lee! Being baptized was for me a Very special moment. It was so
personal. And still is. What I hold in my soul with God is personal. I
express to do His will everyday.
We live in a tight community and help each other out, sometimes w/ o
them asking. Mike has a leaf vacuum so we cleaned up 4- yards of leaves
in one day. 2- Ladies live alone, & the one next door has compressed
disks, brother lives w/ her but he’s had open heart surgery. One wanted
to pay, one said ,’oh you don’t have todo that’.
Barb Nextdoor simply said 🙏 thank you. We took no $$ from anyone. It
was a good feeling to help out…we had political signs on our lawns, yes
they were different, elections are over that’s where it stayed.
That is God’s will working at its best IMO
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