Living in coronavirusworld 220: Matthew 25 Church

 12/1

House across from Morningside

The beginning of our virtual Presbytery meeting is taken up with  more than usual technical hassles getting people into the room and connected. So it is. But once underway, it picks up its own flow and goes smoothly apart form the random interruptions that come from  people not muting themselves sometimes at awkward, annoying and even amusing moments. 

There is no denying the impact of Covid on the life of Presbytery. Even before Covid, membership had fallen by 9%. Only 70% of congregations were paying per capita. Since Covid, only 40% have paid their per capita, reflecting the congregations’ own financial crisis due to loss of income.  

Some congregations have handled the crisis well, however, making creative use of streaming worship services and events. Covenant Congregation, for example, has become a truly international congregation that now has a 2AM Bible Study to accommodate cross ocean participants. 

Our special guest is Rick Ufford-Chase, up until recently Co-Director of Stony Point Conference Center. Rick shares his reflections on the future church. He tells how they had come up with the Matthew 25 initiative that is now gaining traction in the church. Of the  three periscopes that make up the chapter, he’s most drawn to the third,  the judgment of the nations. It calls us to both stand with those who are marginalized, excluded and oppressed and also to introspection as well. Very specifically he sees the church called to:

* nurture vital congregations

* dismantle systemic racism 

* bring an end to poverty

He has come to see the second pericope as badly misunderstood. Christians in Latin America helped him to see that far from a parable about the Kingdom of God, the parable is actually an accurate description of who multinational corporations are. When it speaks of the third slave as being afraid, the slave was afraid of becoming like the master. Jesus came to bring about new rules. We must ask ourselves what are we called to do? What is our capacity? And do what we can do in a way that would be pleasing to God.We must use our power and privilege when called upon by people who are at risk on their behalf. And the church’s mission, to be legitimate, must take seriously and act concretely towards reparations. Nothing else is valid.

Santa

Snowmen

Mike Geffner’s Inspired Word  World (virtual) open mic grows by leaps and bounds every week. The schedule falls two hours behind and somehow I get flustered and forget words to my own songs. That is embarrassing and upsetting.Over and over again this world demands  patience. 

iving in coronavirusworld 208: Bars and churches....

 

11/14

yes there is....

and we voted...

Going to the framer’s market, it’s hard to believe it was just a week ago the announcement can that Biden was declared president. A weekly visit here one more marker I’ve created to give structure to the week. And something about food right from the farms that is comforting. 

I spend the afternoon trying to learn new songs for the (now_) open mic at Bar 9. The summer show case is over. Much as I dislike it, I’m taking the directive tofocus on upbeat covers seriously.  And actually enjoying it. Learning a Rubber Soul era Beatles  song and discovering many of these songs are more complex than meets the eye.

In the gathering darkness, I meet my friend Beppe with craft spirits from the farmers’ market. It’s getting colder.  We’re beginning to wonder how we are going handle these outdoor meetings now that the virus is spiking again. Beppe and I share the same feeling. That  March feels like yesterday and last week a year ago.  He too had been pulled out into the streets by the surging wave of joyous people as the news spread. We know we are close to it being over. But thousands of Trump supporters rallied in DC today.  Including Qanons and Proud Boys and who knows who else. And I realize although it’s not objectively true, in Trunpland’s alternate universe it's Black Lives Matter and Antifa striking fear in the hearts of the faithful.  And we continue to be anxious about what happens next.

We the Whole People

Time Square vendor

Times Square

I join my classical music friends for a concert in a rehearsal studio, safely distanced of course. A concert with the timely theme of We the Whole People. (Inspired by a quote from Susan B Anthony: It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union. )And only 10 live audience members. To get the subway home, I walk through Times Square, again amazed at how full of life it is…without tourists …apart from the ‘B&T (bridge and tunnel) visitors from the outer boros and Jersey.  City people have made this their own playground. Young women striking sexy poses for their boyfriends with the Times Square lights behind them. 

11/15

in my neighborhood

My Sunday morning routine…when I wake early enough…is a Sunday Times and coffee and a pastry at the Venezuelan Monkey Cup cafe. Early morning. 

My friend Run leads West Park’s virtual service. Moved that he uses my song”Listen” from my new release. (

                                                                     Listen

 He takes the story of the talents and servant in a different direction than we went last Monday in Bible Study. His focus is more on the side of risks we need to take for the sake of the kingdom. And not hiding what you’ve got. It’a small but good group.

My son in Berlin is frustrated by the German spike and its impact on his students.  They had worked for weeks preparing for a concert performance. Families would be allowed to come.  But that was canceled and only live streaming allowed.  He wonders at the logic of it. These students are much less likely to get sick. Why are commercial stores allowed to remain open? And school events canceled? What is essential about headphones or North Face jackets or lamps? Choices. Not always data driven. 

At Stony Point, New York, a tea is being held to honor Rick and Kitty Ufford-Chase, co-directors.  As I watch on ZOOM, I can feel the coolness of the air 40 miles up the Hudson from the city.. That deep fall feel under overcast skies. I can almost taste it as I watch it, having been there. Eleven yeast of creative, groundbreaking ministry brought to a halt by Covid 19.  (And a limited institutional creativity…as I’ve said  vision  and institution are incompatible realties…) The air is heavy with sadness. And yes, for sure, thanksgiving. And even hope.  But what we have loved is gone. As the camera zooms around the circle, I catch sights of places that have meant so much to me. Locked down.  I count the groups I’ve been here with:

the Interfaith Assembly on Homelessness and Housing 

The Interfaith Center of New York City Marshall Meyer social justice retreats

the International Sanctuary Declaration project took shape and form here

My own congregation, West Park

The Presbyterian Church USA Central American Task Force initial meeting

Presbyteiran Health Eucation and Welfare Association

That all May Freely Serve’s gathering of 4 decades of friends engaged in the struggle for full inclusion of lgbtq people in the church, to make sure the history was preserved

My friend Zeljko bringing his film about the Serbian Colonel who shot down an American stealth fighter pilot…and both pilots …to speak to a national women’s group..

                                                          Second meeting

I mean I wrote my doctoral dissertation here….many of the meetings were to reimagine and envision a ministry, often with Rick’s help…Rick and Kitty are of course gracious…but as the testimonies die down, the pain cuts really deep.  Much grief here.

I try my new song out at Bar 9. The whole night goes fast because they’ve now declared bars must close by 10. I mean we’re done playing by 8:30. As I play, I keep thinking about watching the Linda Ronstadt movie last night. Realizing her value as perhaps the greatest interpreter of American music of all kinds. And ho when you do it well, the song becomes yours. 

As we finish, the wind picks up, the rain comes down in torrents. My friend texts me: tornado warning! We meet at the Gate anyways as it all dies down. The more we talk about it, the more the 10’oclock rule appears to be a cosmetic compromise gesture with no scientific data informing it. Bars and churches, struggling to hold on.

Living in coronavirusworld 184: We will get by, we will survive

 

10/8

Stony Point

My friend and colleague Linda Eastwood tonight is awarded the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship’s Barstow-Driver Award at a virtual dinner for her witness for non-violent social action. With more degrees than I can imagine. Linda has been a scientist, a theologian, an educator and an activist. She was one of the early pioneers in “Accompaniment” witness in Colombia walking with people through dangerous times. She later became the lead organizer for that work. Just retired from teaching at McCormick Seminary, she has travelled throughout the world on her journey. I came to know her as we travelled together last fall through Central America to learn why so many people felt they could no longer simply live safely in their home countries and came to join the refugee flow north. Her quiet courage and  clear thoughts and soft spoken but incisive words show what a faithful life can look like, It has been an honor to know and work together with her in our yet incomplete project, both in the immediate Central American work and in the larger project that is a neverending call. Even virtually, it was good for us all to be together. 

10/9

The word about Stony Point has now become official. The entire staff has bene let go, including my friend Rick Ufford-Chase, by the end of November. An amazing multi-faceted witness comes to an end. Education, worship, agriculture, community organizing, refugee defense work, sanctuary, spirituality and social action not just talked about or proclaimed but lived on a daily basis. It is heart breaking. A place that has been so important to me, where I wrote my doctoral dissertation, where meetings with my congregation, PHEWA, International Sanctuary Work Group, Interfaith Center, Interfaith Assembly  and so much more happened over the years will not be what it has been to me. Another location of my life landscape taken away. Rick and his wife Kitty are a strong team. They will go on.  Sadly, I don’t think the church understands what it has lost. Institution and vision seem incompatible with each other.

Rick, in his typical way of grace, does not blame an institution with difficult decisions to make for the outcome. He does, however blame  a national administration  the still has no coherent plan to deal with the virus. Covid claims another victim.

My housemate tells me that his younger sister, with some preexisting conditions, died this morning of Covid related cause. He will leave Monday for Mississippi. In case anyone may have forgotten, we are still dying. Meanwhile, the President, still infected, stages a dramatic return to the White House and with stage lighting and pompous music ascends to the balcony and removes his mask. It just doesn’t  stop.

Sometimes I just don’t want to do open mic. Enough. But there’s Mark, who’s produced some of the best in the business. Who was at Yale a few years before me. Who writes memorable music with good hooks. With dialysis three times week. There are folks who come after meetings. People who have come out on the other side of all kinds of things. Sharing music helps us all get through. So I keep coming back to do this, week after week. We will get by, we will survive. 

What do we do now?

5/21/17

Historic note…Good Shepherd Faith Church started as a mission project by West  Church. It’s original property was bought from West Church for the sum of $1 and the first service in the new building came in 1887.

The Good Shepherd

Today it is the last non-Lincoln Center or Julliard building on the block…There has always been a close friendship between West Park and GSF so it was a fitting place for my first sermon after retiring from West-Park…

Guest at Good-Shepherd Faith

Christ the King

Here’s what I  had to say:

Well,I think we could all agree that we live in….different times….they are unlike anything I have lived through in my lifetime before. A bit like living in an alternative reality. With no clear idea of what is going to  happen next.  

Looking up from the altar

So what then are we to do? I’m not going to say a whole lot about the political work that may need to be done beyond a reminder that in our tradition, no political candidate or party can ever be the full expression of the will of God. Every government needs to be  held accountable. It’ sour traditional Calvinist understanding that none of us is perfect, that we all fall short.  And that we need the shared collective wisdom of all of us to figure out our path. And that all of us together are smarter than any one of us.  That’s the Presbyterian way of doing things. And that our American republican form of government was inspired by Presbyterian polity. 

I believe that more than ever we need to be building and strengthening Christian  communities. Communities of people committed to following Jesus.  I was developing a seminar and used the phrase “…in the age of Trump…”. And my partner corrected me, “No…this is the age of Jesus…and will be…”  It’s a matter of where we see the ultimate authority.  

Our former Presbyterian Church (USA) moderator Rick Ufford-Chase has said that our communities need these marks, or commitments:

1. That we will be there for each other (when it hits the fan…)
2. To engage in disciplined study together
3. To worship together (sharing at the deepest level)
4. To act together

So…in the church year we’re in the season of Easter, almost to Pentecost. Jesus is talking to his disciples as to what to expect without him physically present. it’s kind of like that for us. He says this at the Last Supper.  So we’ll see what he has to say, how it might relate to living in Christian community. 

It begins with LOVE…so easy to talk about….

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments..” It’s pretty clear…that conditional IF…if we love him, we will keep his commandments…There’s  a saying among my Jewish friends that it’s more importing to obey God than to believe in God.  (Last summer at the Wild Goose Festival I heard someone say, “I don’t believe in God, but I love His with all my heart…” I’m thinking of Simone Weil, the French philosopher who once lived on the Upper West Side. 

At 549 Riverside Drive the plaque says:

Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. It is given to very few minds to notice that things and beings exist. Since my childhood I have not wanted anything else but to receive the complete revelation of this before dying.

She also said, “Love is not consolation, it is light”

 She said that in society, we are wrong to focus so much on rights. What we need to focus on is obligations. It’s interesting that as anti-Judaism as she was, her approach to ethics is so within the tradition. And of course, for Jesus, the two most important commandments, “to love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and to love you neighbor as yourself.”

Now it gets more interesting.  He will leave us another Advocate…not sure if you know this or not, but for Jesus, Satan, the one he knew as tempter, was like the prosecuting attorney. For me it’s like that accusing voice oil your head that never lets up. I think it’s like that for most of us…with the exception of say, Bernie Madoff…the voice that questions you, fills you with self doubt…

So the Advocate…is the defense attorney…Jesus uses this wonderful phrase “…the Spirit of Truth…”  I have a friend who says one of her problems with liberal Christians, liberals in general, is the constant relativity of truth…as an artist (and a Christian) she believes her work needs to be true…for me it’s like when you hear a piece of music, or see a performance and everything inside of you goes YES…

I’m thinking Jesus was like that for people…they saw him in action, and everything inside said YES….none of this Pontius Pilate,”what is truth?”  

Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life…” There is no separation between love and obedience….Ofelia Ortega, a minister from Cuba, once came to a Presbyterian General Assembly whose theme, based on an old hymn, was LOVE SO AMAZING……In her assembly sermon, she's said No me quire amor maravillosa pero amor eficaz…that is I don’t want love amazing, I want effective love…

The image Jesus uses is that we will not be orphaned…in his day, that also meant not only without parents, but without resources…that’s why throughout the old testament we hear the phrase “widows and orphans…” the most marginalized and vulnerable..and for some of us today, that being without parents, children or relatives…that feeling of a-loneness..is not uncommon in this city…

…you in me and I in you….he says….

It is we who need to be the hands and feet and heart of Jesus now..to hold each other up, to heal hurt, especially the aloneness, to be there for each other. The reformer Zwingli always said that in communion, it is not the bread and wine that is transformed, but it is we who become the body of the risen Lord…

Let me make it clear here…we are entering into…already are…in a time when being a Christian is not so much a system of beliefs but a way of life….to love Jesus, in his terms, the true leap of faith is obedience….

We are also entering into a time when more and more  churches will not be able to afford full time pastors. (More than half of New York City Presbytery…) That means to me that we need to create communities that have cohesion and coherence and sustainability even without a regular pastor. 

You are to be commended for the community you have and are creating here…

I will close with these words…

They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”

Following the service, a visitor said that Simone Weil was very special to him and that he appreciated the reference to her.  It felt good to preach again….it was a good Sunday morning…

Faithful Resistance: Gospel Visions for the Church in a Time of Empire by Rick Ufford-Chase...a review.....

6/30

Faithful Resistance: Gospel Visions for the Church in a Time of Empire by Rick Ufford-Chase

A review…..

With his new book, Faithful Resistance…our friend Rick Ufford-Chase had made an important and significant contribution to the growing body of literature on the future of the church. (And how to get there..) It is significant that Rick’s primary focus is not how do we save the church but how do we live as faithful followers of Jesus in this empire dominated day and what role does the church have and what kind of  church is needed in the struggle. The church is thus a means to faithfulness, not an end of and to itself.

The book is also an example of liberation theology praxis. It is intended not only as reflection and analysis but as a workbook to help the faithful be about this work themselves.  It is especially intended to be used in groups, groups that help sustain each other in mutual support and solidarity in difficult days ahead.  In that, Rick follows in the footsteps of the  Latin American liberation theologians who brought a Freiran approach to the doing of theology in their Christian Base Communities.

It is very helpful that Rick comes to this book not as an academic or even professional clergy but as a lay person who understands the value of each of our God-given unique ministries and our need for one another. He draws on his experiences as a seminary drop out, going adult volunteer, border justice worker, moderator of a historic denominational church with international partners, peace activism and co-chairing an ever evolving study center with interfaith intentional communities. In broad strokes, Rick responds to the already inevitable end of the large national (and local!) denominational church infrastructures  as we have known them. (For example, in New York City Presbytery, there are approximately 14,000 members in 99 churches. Half belong to 5 churches, the other half to 95 churches over 50 of whom have no pastor at all…) Related to our ecclesiastical structures are our literal structures from our  national office in Louisville with its echoing emptiness to our hulking aging stone buildings with mausoleum like silence. How do/can they function in our mission?

This is for Rick, not an occasion for mourning but more an exciting opportunity for recreating at the grassrootsiest of levels a church that is flexible, mobile and resilient. Being independent of reliance on larger structures, the church can be radically free to be a faithful witness, not unlike the primitive church.

Towards that end, Rick does several important things:

* Names and discusses the power of white privilege (and other cognate privileges of class, gender, orientation, etc…)

* Produces one of the first real discussions I’ve seen for the implications of this new reality for theological education. (Happy to see two institutions I’m involved with, New York Theological Seminary and Newark School of Theology on his list of emerging models of providing quality education for those who cannot afford.. moneywise or timewise…traditional theological education.)

Others chapters tackle such issues as confronting empire at the border, the importance of ecojustice, nonviolence as a principle and practice, worship, the meaning of solidarity, being a church that is “small but fierce.” Oh, and the intriguing exploration of the idea of  responsible living in a “watershed.”

Though somewhat presbycentric, Rick's primary context, it nonetheless has much to say to all of us struggling to find faithfullness.

Rick’s bottom line is one that appeals to me at the deepest level:

“ I am interested in creating a community where those who have been rejected in every other space can come and feel safe..”  Amen. Word.

Pull together a circle of friends. Get a few copies of this book. Let the connversation begin….