A Worship Experience

Each week I look forward with great anticipation to our worship together, and this weekend especially so. On Saturday @ 6:24, our Congregational Life Director, Alycia Erickson, will preach at MCC Austin for the first time. On Sunday, the Moderator of MCC Churches, Rev. Elder Nancy Wilson, will bring us the message in both services. In addition, our sanctuary choir will sing at both services on Sunday as will our good, good friends Out4Joy: Ken, Kim, Kay, and Doug.

So I've been thinking about what a wonderful thing it is to practically wish the weekdays by so that I can get to Saturday and Sunday worship. I mean, that's a really good way for a pastor to feel, right? I hope a good number of you feel that way too...

But on the other hand, last night I had an experience that reminded me that worship can happen in all kinds of ways and in all kinds of places.

I shouldn't have been surprised by my worshipful experience last night; after all, I was at church! But I wasn't in the Easter adorned sanctuary. I was in the social hall, sitting at a yellow plastic covered table, drinking watered down iced tea, eating stale pretzels, and making my way through an ambitiously full agenda with the rest of our Board of Directors.

Low and behold, worship happened.

As we entered the portion of our agenda titled "Grow as Spiritual Leaders," we read several times through Philippians 4:4-9. I asked the Board to share how those verses spoke to their personal lives or their service as Board members. What many of our reflections included was an acknowledgment of how we begin to lose our fear and find peace and accomplish more when we give our decisions and actions over to God. After our sharing time, we offered a prayer thanking God for direction and for the peace that passes understanding and headed into the action items on our agenda. We ended up working for another 2 hours, and we took up some challenging topics, but our spirits were calm, our hearts and wills were united in purpose, and we managed to laugh many times before we finally blew out the Christ candle and went home.

Here's what I took from this experience: Worship is ceremonies, prayers, or other forms by which we express our love for God. Many times this happens within a stated worship service, but many times it happens outside of those services. We worship together at Seders and socials, when we collect our history and welcome diversity, when we tend the grounds and decorate the sanctuary, when we teach the children and host IHN families and write checks for MCC Cares and pray for our Board of Elders. Whenever we express our love for God, we are worshipping.

Don't get me wrong-this is not an invitation to skip Saturday and Sunday worship services. Rather, it's an invitation to add to them in whatever ways speak to your spirit. Attend a class; join a ministry; participate in church meetings, go to cluster conference. God doesn't wait for the weekends to bless us; we need not wait to worship.

Grace and Peace...

Dancing With Conflict

This week we have many opportunities to fellowship and worship together. As we prepare to enter these holy experiences together, I want to share with you sort of a Paul Harvey "The Rest of the Story" story. You see, the events that led up to bringing you this week's worship offerings have been as much of a gift as I anticipate the services themselves will be. Here's the rest of the story:

The week before Holy Week, the MCC Austin Sunday Worship Team met for our weekly meeting. About a dozen of us squeezed around tables in a local deli, indulged in soup or sandwiches or decadent desserts, tried to filter out the clink and clatter from the counter, and tried to turn down the volume of nearby guests, some of whom practice their Spanish lessons with great volume and gusto each Monday evening.

The Sunday Worship Team is made up of roughly 15 people, and it represents a pretty wide swath of the congregation. We have members whose creativity and imagination skip merrily off the charts, members whose knack for analysis and deductive skills would shame Sherlock Holmes, and members who fill in nicely the whole spectrum in between. Each member of the team is passionate, amazingly articulate even if not especially verbal, and almost all fill leadership roles in their families, work places, or at our church. Considering our strength and diversity, we never should have been surprised by what happened next, but we were.

On that Monday before Holy Week, we had a rather unexpected visitor show up at our meeting: Conflict.

What on earth was Conflict doing there? We hadn't invited him. She isn't a member or regular attender of our church as far as any of us know. And besides, isn't Church the last place that Conflict would feel welcome, or wanted, or fed???

I'm embarrassed to say we politely ignored Conflict for a while, kind of like we would an elephant in the room. But then we threw caution to the wind and invited him to dance on the table! Right there in the midst of us! Right there in public!

Oh, and she kept dancing...even when the rest of us went home.

I couldn't sleep. I kept thinking about her dancing there.... In one way, she was pitiful and all alone, just dancing there with no one wanting to join her. And yet, in another way, she danced with us all...wouldn't stop beckoning and cajoling and insisting we be her partner...would not be, and never will be, ignored.

I don't know how each member of the team interpreted this dance, but I know that for me the interpretation continued to be one of great sadness. From my perception, our imaginations were stymied. Our appreciation for each other and free flow of ideas and actions were all gunked up. We were broken. I couldn't fix us. I felt small and useless.

I did the only thing I felt like doing. I cried. Then I did the only thing I thought could help. I prayed. Sometimes I used words; sometimes I didn't. Many of my prayers were like great big fill in the blank tests-with most of the blanks empty.

And then, finally, another visitor appeared. This one longed for and very much welcomed: The Lord of the Dance. The Lord of the Dance who danced at Bethlehem, at Cana, on the mountaintops, on the water. The one who dares us to remember:

They cut me down and I leapt up high
I am the life that will never, never die
I'll live in you if you'll live in me
I am the Lord of the dance, said he.

I don't know if any of this matters to you, but for me, I have had the blessing of an early Easter. For several days I had felt confined to a dark tomb, and then the Light of the World burst in and my hope and my heart were resurrected again. The Lord of the Dance wanted to dance with me! And not just with me, of course, but with all of us who had been hurting all week.

A week after Conflict surprised us all, our team met again. This time, we had a chair waiting for Conflict, and of course, he was there, but looking a little smaller and less sure of himself than he had been the week before. I think she was taken aback to find that not only had each of us found during the course of the week a certain comfort with having her present, but we were expecting her. We saved a chair for her. Yes, Conflict took his place right there along with Kindness, Compassion, Tension, "Stuff," Certainty, Doubt, Love, Pain, Grace, and all the rest of us. It was a blessed time.

So there you have it-the rest of the story. But only the rest of this one story. The Living Word has many, many more stories to create with us all.

I hope you find the services this week beautiful. They were created through the grace of God by beautiful people who love you, each other, and our God very much. Thanks be to God!

Always in Hope,

Rejoice in Adversity

Usually, I tell you on Wednesday what my weekend sermon IS about. Today, I'll tell you what this week's sermon, "Rejoice in Adversity," is NOT about.

It's not about the theodicy question. Theodicy is a Greek term for the problem of reconciling the presence of evil and suffering in the world with the idea that there truly is a benevolent, omnipotent God. I won't take up the theodicy issue because I couldn't even provide a decent bibliography of the topic in a fifteen minute sermon.

It's not about that saying we like to toss around jokingly: "God never gives us more than we can stand-I wish God didn't think so highly of me!" For the most part, my life is embarrassingly good. Never in my life have I lacked for nutritious food, clean water, or safe shelter. Never have I faced a life threatening diagnosis or lost a child to the 1,000 things parents fear losing their children to.

It's not about God's ability to bring good out of the greatest suffering. Yes, my life is easy and excessive in comparison to so many of the world's people, but when I hurt, I hurt. Sometimes I feel like that funny- looking man with the red nose in the game "Operation"-I feel like unskilled people are pulling out my internal organs with a flimsy pair of tweezers. This pain often has nothing to do with physical injury or illness at all. Often, it's the searing pain of rejection or a lost friendship or a bungled attempt at reconciliation.

Now, don't worry. Don't think that it's already Wednesday and your pastor doesn't have a clue about what her sermon is about. I do. God's been working on me.

If you'd like a preview, spend some time reading this weekend's scripture from the Gospel of Mark. There is a lot of adversity there, and a lot of rejoicing. I guess you could say there's a lot of life. I can't wait to worship with you!

Always in Hope,

Our Regional Conference - Join Us!

In addition to my weekly invitation to each of you to worship with us at MCC Austin this weekend, I also want to extend an invitation to each of you to attend the MCC Region 6 Cluster Conference coming up on April 24-26 in Houston, Texas. Originally, Region 6 was to have a combined regional conference with Region 7 in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, this spring, but the combined conference was cancelled in consideration of growing financial challenges in our global economy and local congregations. While the cancellation of the combined regional conference is disappointing on several levels, the decision to hold smaller, more easily accessible cluster conferences means that many more of us can attend the conference.

MCC conferences are wonderful opportunities to connect with fellow MCCers during worship services, workshops, forums, and fellowship. Some people might be under the impression that MCC conferences are only for clergy members and lay delegates, but that's not the case at all. While only clergy and lay delegates cast votes for nominated positions and for bylaws and revisions, everyone is welcome to participate in all worship services, plenary sessions, workshops, and of course, fun and fellowship. Especially important at this cluster conference will be opportunities to enter a discussion with Region 6 Elder candidate, Rev. Darlene Garner, before the vote on that position takes place and to participate in conversations about the two candidates for MCC Moderator to be elected at General Conference in 2010.

If you've been to an MCC regional or denominational event before, I'm sure I don't need to sell you on how wonderful they are. If you haven't been to one, don't let this opportunity to attend one so close to home pass you by. Do you remember how you felt when you first found your MCC home? Multiply by 20 and that's the feeling you'll have when you enter into worship and work with 200 or so others who are part of MCC's past, present, and future. Think of it as PRIDE weekend with the Spirit of God as the Grand Marshall...

Please, do join us and our friends from Galveston, Corpus Christi, Houston, Waco, and San Antonio at Resurrection MCC in Houston for the Region 6 Eastern Cluster Conference on April 24-26. You can register online for a very reasonable $50 per person, and hotel information is available online here . Please call Alycia Erickson, Director of Congregational Life, at 512-291-8601 with questions or for assistance.

I'd love for us to have 75 or 100 representatives from MCC Austin make the trip to Houston together. Encourage your friends and family to go; set up caravans and "green" carpools; stop and eat on the way; tie a rainbow flag on your antennae so you don't get separated from the group; and of course, honk if you love Jesus!

Always in Hope,

Confession

This weekend we "Reclaim Our Stories," and so I share a story with you.

Two years ago, a group of us were trying to revive the PRIDE multi-faith service after a major organizer of the event left town. As we began to plan the service, we each offered elements that we felt the service should have. One woman, a good friend of mine and a wonderful, committed, straight ally of the GLBT community, offered, "We should have a confession." Of course, I thought, a worship service should have a confession, a recognition that none of us live wholly loving lives that reflect the true nature of the God we worship...a recognition that we fail and we are forgiven. But maybe not this particular worship service.

I began talking with my friend about the experience many of us who are GLBT and Christian have had when it comes to confession. I explained how so many of us have been assaulted by those who believe our sexuality and gender expression are an affront to God, and how often we're urged to "confess" what is most certainly not a sin. I shared that many GLBT people I've met are so fragile in their self-esteem or, at the other extreme, so determined to celebrate their sexuality and God's affirmation, that confessions might need mountains of accompanying education to ensure that they could be embraced and understood for their true meaning and value. I told my friend that I wasn't sure we could pull off a confession in a service that was so multi-faceted and hoped to reach such a diverse swath of the GLBT community.

We didn't, that first year, but then last year we introduced a confession that acknowledged our need to provide better stewardship to our earth, air, and water. It felt like an honest, careful way to offer a corporate confession. That brings me to our worship together here at MCC Austin and the question I was asked this week: Why don't we have a confession before communion? I thought there might be many of you wondering the same thing, so here I am doing my best to answer this big question in this little space.

The first thing I want to share is that most often, we do include a confession (generally in the form of a Prayer of Confession) in our communion service. We have the advantage--through the course of living in community and worshipping and learning together regularly--of placing the confession within the context of God's faithful forgiveness. Always, when confession is part of our liturgy, it is followed by an assurance of God's pardon and grace...of God's love!

Right now, though, you will not find a Prayer of Confession as part of our communion liturgy. This is not because we no longer feel the need to bring our complete selves before God or because we've decided to ignore the 1st Corinthian teaching that we examine our hearts before taking communion; it's simply a process matter. For several series now, we've been using one worship bulletin for the entire series. This is a response to our desire to be better stewards of natural resources and to cherish the earth. During the Advent and "Love Letters from God" series, we included a prayer of confession in the worship bulletin. However, the repetition of the same prayer each week prevented the kind of variety and the personal "stamp" of the communion Celebrant that we so cherish.

For those reasons and others, we decided to leave a printed confession out of the bulletin for the Lenten series. For those of you who feel that you can't come to communion without a confession, let me offer you some possibilities.

First, you can always offer your own confession. It can be simple and personal, along the lines of "God, I know I'm far from perfect. Forgive me when I fail." You might use the words of a familiar song, hymn, or scripture; something like "Change my heart, oh God/Make it ever true," or "Create in me a clean heart, oh God/And renew a right spirit within me." If your soul craves the liturgy of other traditions, you might confess "Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed." And for those of you who need the pastor's assurance that God will forgive, does forgive, has already forgiven, believe this: When we confess our failings, God who is faithful and just forgives us wholly, totally, perfectly. That is very good news.

Always in Hope...

A Free Gift

Shameless, I know. But we have, to complement our Lenten series of reuse*renew*rejoice*resurrect, 500 awesome reusable tote bags. We plan to give one to every person who attends worship this weekend, and I want you to have one. They are beautiful. Deep green and a little larger than average reusable bags, they boast "MCC Austin: A green Church Without Walls" and our Church Without Walls logo on the side.


Whether you're participating with us in the carbon fast or not, we'd like for you to have one of these bags. They're free! A gift! No strings attached!

Which reminds me. That's pretty much what happens each time we worship together. Each time we gather as a community of faith and acknowledge God's dominion, God's love, and God's grace, we take away with us a free gift, no strings attached. So often we worship together and we leave with renewed hope and refreshed spirits. We leave reminded that God is with us and God is for us. We might have the unexplainable urge to smile at strangers, the strength to stand against adversity, an unexplainable feeling that things are somehow better, or at least the confidence that even if things are not better, we won't be facing them alone.

I hope you'll do yourself the favor of worshiping with us this weekend, either in the comfort of our Saturday @ 6:24 service or the celebration of our Sunday morning services. This weekend, as always, you'll receive many, many gifts. Most of them are on God; the bags are on us!

Always in Hope,

The Lenten Journey

Last weekend our scripture reading told the story of Jesus' temptation in the wilderness, and I suggested that a key to that story was that the temptation was preceded by 40 days of prayer and fasting. I asked you to imagine taking 40 days and nights to pray, to join your spirit and will to the spirit and will of God, and to think about what temptations you might overcome after 40 days of dwelling with God. I asked you to imagine what you might be strong enough to resist AND strong enough to accept if all your trials were preceded by 40 days and nights of communion with God, sustained only by the bread of life and living water.


I invited you to willingly enter a period of 40 days in which you removed yourself, to whatever extent you could, from the normal frantic pace of your life...decided to pray during lunchtime instead of running errands. Walked to work instead of driving or took the bus and read something good for your soul. Willingly entered a period of 40 days in which you bought and cooked only as much as you would eat and didn't throw anything away...

What if you promised yourself that every time you looked at your watch you would whisper, "God, help me slow down and live deeply"? What if you used less electricity, saved more water, produced less waste, and helped heal the deep wounds in our Mother Earth?


I want to add to those suggestions some more that were shared with me by a friend.

During Lent...Fast from worry, and Feast on the divine order by trusting GodFast from complaining, and Feast on appreciationFast from negatives, and Feast on affirmativesFast from unrelenting pressures, and Feast on unceasing prayerFast from hostility, and Feast on tendernessFast from bitterness, and Feast on forgivenessFast from self-concern, an Feast on compassion for othersFast from idle gossip, and Feast on purposeful silenceFast from judging others, and Feast on the divine within themFast from emphasis on differences, and Feast on the unity of lifeFast from greed, and Feast on generosityFast from thoughts of illness, and Feast on wholenessFast from words that pollute, and Feast on the phrases that purifyFast from discontent, and Feast on gratitude

I pray that your Lenten journey is a time of renewal, refreshment, and rejoicing.