I wrote my own to be a little more inclusive and reflect what I feel more…
Please, oh please let this be a good year for my child.
Please let our teachers’ classroom be structured, but not rigidly so.
Please let all the teachers have patience and humor, but be firm enough to set boundaries.
That we communicate clearly when things go wrong and when things go right!
Help me to hear when my child tells me what is going on, to listen when others offer opinions and options and to remember that no decision is final and that we are all learning who my child is and what that means together.
That the best of my child that I get to see all the time is witnessed by other students, peers and friends.
So…the thing about drunkenness is that its abundance, right?
Its too much…
15 Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, 16making the most of the time, because the days are evil. 17So do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. 18Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery; but be filled with the Spirit, 19as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts, 20giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.–Eph 5:18 (for a little bit about how we want to fill ourselves with other things note This Everyday Holydiscussion I participated in)
Holy Spirit
My congregation had a very Holy Spirit moment one yr at a Chicken BBQ, I can’t remember what number it was, but we ordered only about 200 chickens and they were gone, in like an hr flat. And there was much panic about how few were left at the end, and how were we going to keep track and how we were going to send ppl away.
And many, many ppl who wanted to get chicken went home sad.
And we were sad for them.
And I think this is how it feels to be filled with the Holy Spirit, when the good of the situation is COMPLETELY out of control. Like, you know, in Acts when all the disciples were speaking in tongues and suddenly everyone wanted to convert. I imagine Chicken and the Bible still resulted in CRAZY GOODNESS.
I am sensing this conflict rising now, its hard not to take on “too much” in the congregation. The question has changed from “What if we fail?” to “What if we succeed”
That’s right, we are literally afraid that we will be overwelmed, that we will have too much of a good thing.
I guess that trusting in God is trusting that there will be enough room for all the people who want to come to your Farmer’s Market/exercise class/back to school celebration thing that some people crazily wants to do. (that’s me, I’m definitely in the crazy corner).
I never thought of it before but there are too reasons not to do something, bc it might succeed, or it might fail.
But we take on too much, we are overflowing, thats when we grow.
Poor Holy Spirit, no one wants to drink of you, because when we do we change, it is by far the most bombastic member of the Trinity. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes you blurt out the truth in sticky situations, to cheer out loud whether its appropriate or not, to make you offer something of yourself that your weren’t planning/didn’t even know you had to offer.
But that’s what makes her so good.
Now imagine that we got drunk on that!
(Ps I recommend Mann’s Book The In-Between Church for congregations that are subconsciously dealing with fears of growth)
My guest this week was the Rev. Katy Stenta and we talked about John 6 and a little bit of Ephesians 6. We talked about everything from eating food too loud to understanding the need for fulfillment and satisfaction to Korean culture to vocation. And the kids are really present throughout this episode – mine and the snippets from Katy’s home life. Mine are really obnoxious – sorry – and I think that Anna is drinking her sippy cup insanely loud. It sounds weird.
Eating as an act is interesting, it is something every human has to do to stay alive.
Ever have a really good meal. The kind where you sit around afterwards and dissect what it was you loved about it? Almost reliving the meal and sharing with one another.
If I were God I probably would have made all food the same, to fit our needs. Here humans is grass, eat it and be nourished. Boom! Done! You are full, but Jesus promises not to just fill us up with some kind of food, but to nourish us in a new way.
But our God instead creates a myriad of flavors for us to try. In fact there are so many that eating a meal with another person creates a special kind of fellowship.
So, we all eat together, and then afterwards we can dissect the meal together. Talking about what was good, and sharing in that experience. We are in essence eating one another’s experiences and sharing into it.
What fills me up, and what I need is probably different than what you need (for instance I am a vegetarian and have been since the womb, meat made my mother feel ill). My husband would state that meat is necessary to meet his needs. What Jesus offers us is not just sufficency, not just enough to feed the whole world, but the right kind of food for you and for me. The food is different, but the experience is uniting. This is why our God is the God of justice because She meets us where we are and leads us to where we need to go.
Jesus is a prime example of that in his ministry, meeting people wherever they are: being stoned, up a tree, by a well even on a cross (if you are a follower of my blog you may notice this as one of my themes). Jesus meets us where we are.
But if you think about it, meal time is the epitome of what it is to experience church. It is to experience the Holy Spirit moving, each in our own way, and then sharing that experience. Ideally, Worship would be like a GREAT meal, where each of us imbibe in worship and then sit down together and talk about which instance of experiencing God–reliving it for others and inviting them to consume that experience with us. We, in that instant, become the Body of Christ. Thus making us cannibles: Eating Christ and Each Other over and over again.
Only God could set up Worship so that shared experiences and differential understandings of scripture and worship could actually DEEPEN our understanding of God.
Thanks for following me! As I prep for vacation I notice that my followers have slowly risen to over 500, I hope to continue my #failedsermontitles series which are thoughts towards my sermon for the week, upon my return. And perhaps even review some of the books I read over vacation 😉
I have not posted in a while. Usually, my posts are based off of things that I have been thinking about for some time. In fact, I spend most of my nights processing through things that truly make me think. I have thought a lot about this post. I have had plenty of time to process and to come to the conclusions that I have.
At the beginning of the year, I worked at a small coffee shop at my alumna mater. It was a wonderful job and I got to see all my friends that were still taking classes and such. That job, however, did not have great hours during the summer time. So, I started looking for other jobs. And I found one being a salesperson at a shoe store.
I had not worked retail before this job. I was quite terrified when I went into the interview because…
**Originally preached for the 4:00 Jazz Service at Fourth Presbyterian Church Chicago on August 2, 2015.**
Ephesians 4:1-16
I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling,one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.
But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift.Therefore it is said, ‘When he ascended on high he made captivity itself a captive; he gave gifts to his people.’ (When it says, ‘He ascended’, what does it…
Humans have created time, like lines in the sand, to help us to keep track of things. This makes sense because we are namers, our job is to name things, explore them and understand them.
We are human, we compartmentalize. Time is human lines in the sand, just like countries, they are human ways of dealing and understanding the world. Tools that are useful, but do not tell the entire story.
But have you ever tried to make time for something, or to spend time on just one thing? Its difficult to do.
If I were God, I would have made life easier, just one human being going from point A->B no complications. Or perhaps stick to 2 humans, Adam and Eve, only having to concentrate upon one relationship only.
But God is timeless. God has allowed us to have complex feelings and complex relationships. the eye is not satisfied with seeing, or the ear filled with hearing. We can be at different places and do different things. We are made into complex beings, because God can step back and free us from time, to be more complicated. We have many relationships at different stages with many different types of people, and we feel complex emotions about all of these relationship and our relationships effect our other relationships.
Timey Wimey Dr Who
God allows time to be different. Nowhere in the Bible does it have the timeline or steps to being a Christian. Different people come in different ways. Because God frees us from time and cultures and checklists.
Church is one of the few places where you come, wherever you are to experience God.
Again, we may wish that you are baptized before you take communion, but the reality is sometimes you take communion to get baptized. God is timeless, God is beyond time. Working on all the relationships that influence our experience of God, digging deep into the emotions which are so often mixed. Never are we just sad, we are sad with a touch of anger, or depression that comes from feeling bereft. We are happy, but nervous. We are full of joy and yet miss those we love.
Church is where we gather to practice experiencing God together, and wherever we are, we meet together. What’s more, we open our congregation to invite anyone in…
we know that our own experience of God is enriched by the different places that we all come from
Church is not a social club, or a volunteer group or a corporation. Its not a checklist, its a practice of the experience of God together, its a place to find companionship on the spiritual journey. Church is unique.
Because, God is timeless. Experience of time is as mixed and nonsensical as Ecclesiastes says. God experiences happen throughout the week, in fact we practice God’s presence on Sunday to help to interweave worship throughout our time.
We are practicing it here, every week, God’s presence together. Not because time is a constant stream, but because God is timeless, entering into our lives in different and complex ways–supporting us as complex beings.
katyandtheword 