News

As a friend and I traveled in Europe last fall, we did what any former divinity school students would do, we visited (just a few) churches. One thing that really bothered me was the number of them that required a paid ticket for entry. Yes, maintenance is a huge consideration, but it just felt icky thinking about paying for the opportunity to dance and delight in a house made to honor and glorify God. To me, it’s putting up a barrier where one doesn’t really need to be. 

I share this story because it’s what I thought about as I read our texts earlier this month. The Canaanite woman, marked by her exclusion of the nation, is deemed unworthy of approaching Jesus. In one of his less than prophetic moments, even Jesus calls her a dog! Nevertheless, she persisted. She demanded to be seen, heard, and treated like any other person seeking mercy and healing. In doing so, she not only challenged assumptions about inclusion and belonging, but she also illustrated a kind of collaborative ministry that we should all look more closely at. Seriously. She wasn’t arrogant, or rude, or disrespectful. She simply looked at Jesus and dared him to imagine that maybe he and his disciples were wrong. And Jesus was transformed by that. 

I wasn’t there, so I don’t really know what that moment looked or felt like to those who witnessed it. But a part of me feels rather confident that Jesus’ ministry was forever changed by this encounter, this holy confrontation. I think that because this story is an illustration of the inclusive dimensions of Jesus’ ministry. And it’s an invitation for us to consider what exclusionary ideas or practices we hold, perhaps unwittingly, that make it difficult for everyone, everyone, everyone to flourish. 

On Sunday, we’ll consider that and more during our time together. We’re springing forward this weekend, and I have to remind myself to be positive about that. We’re exchanging one hour of sleep for a season of more sunlight. 

If you haven’t been to church in a while, our Sundays are bustling with activity. Read below to check out our Sunday School hour groups before worship and opportunities for connection that follow worship. 

Finally, there is a secret to entering those old churches for free:  tell them you’re there to receive communion. And that’s the beginning of the story of how I ended up on my knees in Westminster Abbey, drinking from a common cup that was brought to each of our lips… 

See you Sunday,

Thomas

P.S. 

Now, a few weeks ago, I mentioned that the church has a “power problem” that we need to deal with. And then I promptly said “nobody wants to talk about this!! And I’m not going to today either.” I saw a few frowns and watched a few faces express disappointment. Fear not… we will get there by Easter. 

Dear Members, Friends, Siblings, All,

Why do you imagine the theme “Disruptive Blessings” so appeals to me? This is the theme given to us for Lent TWO in our resource from Illustrated Ministry. – If you have not claimed The Work of Imagination devotional booklet, it’s not too late. Look for it online and for printed copies at the back of the sanctuary. —

Where was I? Oh, yes. What do you suppose makes the notion of “disruptive blessings” so attractive to me? Because I was a contrary child and still bear the vestiges? Because I like to work in change spaces, especially congregations that are in transition?  Probably all those things and a few others.

I often wonder why “reversals” make me almost giddy. Reversals are what we called them in the Judeo-Christian Tradition (JCT) class I taught to ninth- and tenth-graders that was not (could not be) a Sunday School class. As we did our survey of the writings of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, we looked for patterns and themes, one of which was reversals. You know, where the narratives “flip the script” so that mothers of great men are of questionable repute, a warrior king is discovered keeping sheep, and barren and/or virgin women bear children. My favorite, of course, is Eve who has the imagination to push the envelope that sets us all free to make choices (in the image of God).

If you have ever taken a good look at me, you will notice that I am an African-American, clergy woman of a certain age and very little height, at least two diagnosed disabilities, a couple of personality flaws (that need not be mentioned), who struggles with discipline of every kind, and has an unnatural love of shoes (contemporary art; I am a collector). My favorite numbers are the odd ones. I often feel like I am looking at the world from someplace just outside the circle.

Why do I like disruptive blessings? Because in the “upside down way of love” Jesus invites us to imagine in Luke 6:17-29, the Sermon on Plain, I might find a place that includes me fully, just as I am. Because when we let our imaginations loose to practice mercy and generosity and welcome without condition, the kin-dom of God comes near. If God and those who follow in the way of Jesus work to flip the dehumanizing script we somehow cling to, there’s hope for me and others like me. Hope is born of imagination. And, to quote Toni Morrison again, “if you cannot imagine it, you cannot have it.”

Our text for Sunday finds Jesus early in his ministry and teaching. The crowd that gathers includes the disciples who will carry on the ministry, as well as others who want to hear more about this healer/teacher. In my JCT class, we called this the “Jesus Playbook” brought out at the beginning of the season so the team can begin to memorize and practice how they’re going to do this new thing. New team, new season, new playing rules.

Note, also, that his preaching is sub-versive. Walter Brueggemann* posits that “preaching is sub-version…never dominant version, never has been. It is always a sub-version, always a version, a rendering of reality that lives under [below] the dominant version…a sub-version of dominant imagination.” As one who has not been well served by that dominant version, this sounds like Good News.

The question for Sunday—my question for Sunday—is how to preach sub-version in Central Church. Rev. Thomas reminded us that we take part in the power of empire. Do we have a taste for disruption?

Join us for worship on Sunday “online or in the house” and we will explore this sub-version a bit more. We also will gather at the Communion Table, so please ready your elements (bread and beverage). And I am looking forward to Sunday afternoon’s Concert of Music by Howard Niblock beginning at 2:00 pm, and I know just the place to grab a bite between worship and the musical. Howard is one of Central’s newest members and is kind enough to share this gift with us.

Love and hugs,

Rev. Liz 

*Walter Brueggemann was a member of Central UCC up until his death last year. Many of you knew him years ago and went through a painful time with him and Mary B. That was a very difficult time for me as her friend. For years, I struggled to forgive the man whose genius is so important to me. I still struggle, but grace and mercy follow me—they chase me!

Dear Members, Friends, Siblings, All,

Remember this? Do you see a young woman or a more wizened woman? (Yes, I chose that more appropriate adjectival construction.) Can you see both? What do you see?

Our gospel reading in Matthew 17:1-9 is that writer’s telling of the Transfiguration, a moment when his (new) followers see the face and figure of Jesus in all the glory of God. It is a moment that today’s special effects, AI and computer generated graphics could have a field day with. Alas, those disciples had only the transfigured face of Jesus, in the glorious company of Moses and Elijah. Not bad for a carpenter’s kid of ambiguous parentage.

As it happens, that blinding, mountain top moment was only part of the challenge. Peter, James and John are instructed not to speak of it until after the Resurrection. Bummer, yes? What did they see that they weren’t to talk about or  make sense of (somehow) together? Perhaps Jesus was insisting that they “just be with that for a while,” as my friend Paul used to say. Hence, Lent?

Of course, I have a few thoughts about this which you will hear about when we gather for worship on Sunday.

Transfiguration Sunday is always the last Sunday in Epiphany, the Sunday before Ash Wednesday, February 18, beginning the Season of Lent. Which, of course, is the road we take to Easter or Resurrection Sunday. In Matthew’s gospel, Chapter 17 comes just after Jesus foretells his death and the trials in Jerusalem where he must go, and “(f)rom that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples” what he could about how his followers [us] bring the kin-dom and glory of God into our world (Matthew 16:21). 

Come be with us on Sunday, extend your Valentine’s Day celebration to the LOVE of God we know in Christ Jesus and the congregation of God’s people for one more day. (This is our celebration, not inspired by or dependent upon commercial interests.) We will sing and pray and praise and give thanks in the ways we hope will give us the courage and imagination to love and serve fearlessly. 

And we will be prepared afresh to do the business of Central Church in a congregation meeting just after worship. Please make your plans to stay. Copies of the documents needed are in the Enews and in print as you enter the sanctuary. 

Love and hugs,

Rev. Liz

Dear Siblings, 

I believe most of you know that one of my favorite hymns is Awake, Awake to Love and Work! You may not know that another hymn of which I am fond of is You Are Salt for the Earth, O People. I’m not sure, but whenever I think about the church  where I grew up, Church of the Savior UCC, it’s the song that most readily comes to mind. So, I’m glad that we’ll sing that hymn on Sunday, as we make-meaning out of Jesus’ lesson on salt and light. 

A few weeks ago, I wrote that I’ve been thinking a lot about notions of citizenship and my hope is that our scripture readings and our music in worship might help us all think about our place in the City of God.

An important part of our Common Life is simply being together. So come for something on Sunday! Come for Sunday School, for the voices of choir, the sermon, Story for All Ages, Pizza on the Playground and/or our NEW sandwich ministry opportunity. 

Come, not because you must, but because you may!

See you Sunday(in-person or online),

Thomas

Dear Members, Friends, Siblings, All,

“I have no words.”

This is what Rev. Thomas announced in our worship planning meeting to explain why he had proposed that on Sunday we have a hymn sing. He was also giving me permission to say out loud, “Neither do I.” At the end of a week in which another peaceful voice for justice had been silenced forever by our own government agents, I have no words. How can I preach? How can I pray when the world in on fire?

Well, with all due respect, it’s not the first time. Violence, injustice, hatred, tyranny—that long list of the hateful stuff we do to one another, the ways we refuse to see the dignity and beauty in one another, disrespect and dehumanize one another—that is not new. All of this has been around since forever. But we are feeling it now, in our own skin, in our own broken hearts, in the anger and confusion of this very day. And some of us are dumbstruck.

So, what to do? When my faith in God and in people and in elected leaders and the people of God takes this many hits right in front of my face, how do I find stable footing? How to ready for the next steps ahead?

You know my answer already: I sing. What else can I do? “My anchor holds and grips the solid rock/That rock is Jesus.” “Give me Jesus/You may have all this world/Give me Jesus.” ”Hold to God’s unchanging hand/Build your hopes on things eternal/Hold to God’s unchanging hand.”

In worship on Sunday, we will sing. A lot. Tune up before you come.

In the meantime, there are others who DO have words. Good words, in fact, thanks be to God. Here are two that came to my attention this week:

https://youtu.be/0ElUloNFf-8

https://vimeo.com/1159835662?share=copy

After worship, I hope you are planning to join us for the long-awaited Congregational Asset Mapping Experience in the Fellowship Hall. We will have lunch for you, and we will make sure it’s good and warm inside for those of us who will take on the extreme cold outside. We’re still working on a way to include our Streamers, probably using the link you use for worship. Look for more by Sunday.

Hope to see you Sunday.

Love and hugs,

Rev. Liz

Fun fact: the enews note is often more difficult to write than a sermon. To be honest, I don’t really have words for this edition of the This Week @ Central. 

There are some days when I wake up and think “I’m not built for this, maybe tomorrow I’ll wake up with a different call.” And there are other days when I wake up and think “the heavens are singing the glories of God and somehow I’ve ended up in the chorus of creation that’s shouting for joy… might as well enjoy it.”

In the past week, I’ve thought about baptism and the wilderness, the collapse and emergence of a new political order, continued threats from AI(I am very very bearish on this), concepts of citizenship, and the Jesus problem that is now very apparent to me in the American church.

Some of those thoughts will preach and some of them will not! For this Sunday, I think you’ll hear something tied to wilderness, citizenship, and the Jesus problem in the American church… all through the lens of our lectionary texts. The real goal is for us to consider memories and new understandings of hope. A lot of this is inspired by these words from Rev. Dr. Cody Sanders:

Feral hope is a hope that is driven into the wilderness by the Spirit, alongside Jesus emerging from the baptismal waters in the Synoptic Gospels. It is hope dashed and born again, like the disciples moving all along the way of Jesus—misunderstanding, halting, sometimes regressing, yet buoyed by surprise and wonder and the intrigue of companions moving along a winding pathway. Feral hope is a hope that travels to the grave—the place of death, the aftermath of violence—unsuspecting. Like the women coming to the tomb of their crucified beloved not to witness resurrection, but to anoint a corpse with spices and tears. It is a hope-against-hope, a hope acquainted with hopelessness, a hope born of the alchemy of grief and wonder. Feral hope is radical hope.

In my last sermon, I briefly noted that the promise of the world to come is not guaranteed to be made known in our time, regardless of how much work we put towards that world coming into being. I want to be in conversation with those words offered by Rev. Sanders, because he talked about this before me, and I happen to think that we are pointing at the concept for our faith and its practice in the 21st century. His full article, called Feral Hope for Futurist Leaders, (just 10 pages) can be read here.

Aside from the above, we have a few updates on Sunday plans, which you can read about below:

– How the Bible Actually Works will not meet.

– Asset Mapping is postponed and will take place on February 1.

– our plan for worship will be announced by midday tomorrow(Saturday), which is what most churches around us are planning to do too. 

If worship is cancelled, we will share my sermon via email, but unfortunately are not able to share the wonderful music that our choir would have offered. We will also not gather online. Please stay tuned to your email or our Facebook page for that announcement tomorrow!

I started this note saying I had no words, and yet here we are. 

Be good to yourselves and one another, and I will see you Sunday (or a Sunday soon),

Thomas

Dear Members, Friends, Siblings, All,

This is the weekend we celebrate Martin Luther King’s birthday and for many of us, the holiday tomorrow will be a “Day of Service” to our communities in one way or another–service to others and a greater good to honor and memorialize the model Dr. King’s life gives us.

It is also the Second Sunday after Epiphany in the Calendar of the Christian Year, the Sunday just after we celebrate the Baptism of Jesus, and where we begin to understand what difference that baptism made. We may also wonder what difference those waters make for the baptized—for us.

When I was teaching ninth and tenth graders an introduction to the Bible as literature, a course called Judeo-Christian Tradition, we prepared for the term’s final exam by putting butcher paper around the classroom and drawing the narrative. Other teachers thought this was elementary (as in not rigorous enough) for this top-tier New England boarding school. However, I invariably learned something I hadn’t learned in seminary. Case in point:

As we stood back to look over our work and notice things together, one girl spoke up to say, “It looks like, every time they go through water, things change.” Oh? Can you say more?

“Well, it gets hard before it gets better.”

It was right there. The Exodus. The Wilderness. The Babylonian Exile. The Flight into Egypt. Jesus at the River Jordan. But before we followed the story and the journey in images around the walls, I had not noticed that or drawn the significance of the movement of the People of God through the water.

So, what happened at the River? So what?

On the Second Sunday after the Epiphany, we turn to wondering what difference that event made, has made, could make. Our Lectionary readings for Sunday are from Isaiah 49:1-7 in the Hebrew Bible and 1 Corinthians 1:1-9 in the New Testament.

Does what happened at the River explain who the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was, what he did, and why? Does what happened at the River help us to know what we are called to be and do and why? What do you think think?

Come worship with us on Sunday—Streamers and Gatherers, Everybody. Come join us for a moment away from everything else we do to pray and sing and ponder and praise God who called and brought us through the waters of baptism. And who walks with us still. It will be good to be there with you in that conversation among friends, going along together, making God-sense of life as it happens, between meals. (Communion Sunday is February 1. Come then, too.) Hope to see you soon.

Love and hugs,

Rev. Liz

P.S. About this time of year, I often read King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail. It is a stunning piece; to say “brilliant” is too little. Something new comes from it every time. Have a look: https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/letter-birmingham-jail

Merry Christmas!

I trust that your holiday is going well. We are finally within the 12 days of Christmas and I want all of it. Today is St. Stephens Day, a day which honors the life of one of the first deacons in the early church. St. Stephen was put to death for his beliefs. I share that not to dampen the Christmas spirit, but to instead invite you to consider what this season really means for you. 

God came to us in the most vulnerable of human forms. I think it’s a reminder for us to pay attention to the most vulnerable in our midst, not just in this season but all of the time. 

If you plan to join us on Sunday, we’ll sing a few more Christmas hymns and I’ll offer a short reflection on some of what I think this season is all about. 

Rev. Liz and Josh are away on Sunday! But they still want you to join us in person or online. 

Merry Christmas to you, and your families. 

See you soon!

Thomas

Dear Members, Friends, Siblings, All,

Confession: I’m excited. Excited about our Sunday worship service which will feature both of the sacraments of the United Church of Christ. I’m not sure that has ever happened in my ministry. And an infant baptism has not happened at Central in seven years. I’m excited. This is B.I.G.

My excitement also grows from loving our Advent resources from Illustrated Ministry, LLC, The Will to Dream. Thanks to Rev. Thomas, we have this comprehensive guide through the seasons of anticipation and incarnation that invites our full selves and every aspect of our congregational lives. 

In Advent, we remember the prophetic promises of the Old Testament that we usually only sing in Handel’s Messiah. (Well, that’s how I remember they are there at all; they come with music.) It’s a time when we actually listen to the voices of daring dreamers, messengers who speak the word of God to the people of God via the audacity of dreams; odd ones who cry out inviting us to commit to hope–for peace, not less–and joy and love. And to imagine that, with the help of God, we can participate in the shalomification of our world. Yes, that peace–wellbeing, thriving, justice, wholeness, dignity, and equality, to name but a few.

I want to be one of them, one of those odd personalities. But churches do not often look for us. Except, sometimes, in transitions when the comfort has already been disturbed. I can see that now, after ten years in that space. Mine is a voice for crying out in the wilderness, calling for a shift of mind, metanoia, or what Matthew 3:2 “repent.” It’s not so much from sin, as we most often think, unless it’s the sin of not paying attention and thinking that what we can see now is all there is to see, and what we know and sense is enough. Imagination is a daring thing. 

Which is why I always say, watch out! Pentecost is always lurking in the wings, from which the Holy Spirit might intrude, grab our hearts and minds, and make us sing and dance and speak languages we don’t know and see love where it is (merely) hope, peace and joy. Only if you can imagine it. As Toni Morrisson wrote, “if you can’t imagine it, you can’t have it.”

I said I am excited but ça suffit comme ça. Besides, Pentecost is all the way next year, when the Christian year shifts from “the story of Jesus” to “the story of us,” the people of God and how we have done in the “refiner’s fire” and “preparing the straight ways of God.” The Bible is truly a treasure; the gift that keeps on giving.

Sunday will be a busy day for Central. After last Sunday when there were children running in the aisles (be still by heart), I trust we will find the energy to stay a while for the Jazz Christmas Coffeehouse with the MetroGnomes immediately after 11 am service. There will be good music, good food, good fellowship–it’s a dessert potluck–and holiday cheer. What’s not to like? Join us, if you can.

Later in the afternoon, Central is invited to join the Service of Ordination to Christian Ministry of Amanda Edwards who was a member here during her preparations for ministry. That service is at 4:30 EST/3:30 CST in Wisconsin. Use this link to register! After registration you are going to receive the Zoom link for the service! ​

Come be with us on Sunday, Streamers and Gatherers, all y’all. It will be another great day at Central. You don’t want to miss it.

Love and hugs,

Rev. Liz