How do we understand "preaching the word of God"?

A preacher posted the following on Facebook the other day:

While I am excited that our church is growing, I am heartbroken to hear what people are experiencing in other places. I had a lady tell me yesterday that she visited 4 churches before coming to our church and none of them where preaching the word of God. Please be kind with your comments, but is this what others are experiencing across the nation? When did the call to preach and teach begin to speak about everything but the word? Church this should sound an alarm in our hearts and we need to pray that God will bring our people back to his word.

Most of the responses were of the order of the following:

* (T)hat new word is often an old trick.

* Absolutely. Preach the word and don't sugar or water it down!!!! Keep preaching my brother in Christ.

* When was it this happened was your question. Judas started desiring the money, and the love of money is the root of all evil. Jesus is and was the Word. Either love all of Him, or the devil will come up with the silver for you to sell out Jesus.

* Everything that is not Christ is antichrist. Whatsoever is not of faith is of sin. Many like Jesus but few really love Him. Love your enemies. Take up your cross. Deny yourself. All of these and many many more are words Jesus taught. Today's lying messages are your best life now, and the carnal man loves that, but it is one of hundreds of doctrines of demons swallowed whole.

* Like chugging a camel, there is nothing there that survives Bible searching.

I think that you can see from these sample responses that there are people out there who have strong feelings about how the word of God is preached and what that means. I believe that everyone who responded is sincere. There are some subtle or emerging disagreements and contradictions expressed in the responses that I believe are healthy.

I wrote a lengthy response---more of a plea, actually---and it was quickly taken down.  I believe that my comments were taken down because I challenged the premise of the pastor's questions. I did not save my response, and I don't want to engage in polemics, but my points came down to the following:

* Let's tread gently here. It may be that some of us are hearing something that we're not prepared for now in a particular church, but we may need that message later in life. It may be that we're filtering what we're hearing only through our experiences and how we analyze those expriences rather than through what the Holy Spirit is calling us to and hoew the Holy Spirit wants us to analyze our conditions. It may be that we're either being mislead by the so-called "prosperity gospel" or that the relative privileges we enjoy here in the U.S. condition us and bend us more towards Ceasar than Christ and that we're confusing the two. It may be that we have a trauma- or abuse-driven mechanism in our heads that pushes us to binary views of the world and of how we encounter Scripture.

* The real issue here may also be our hard-heartedness. Preaching the word of God may take many forms, and not everyone will grasp or feel good about how that happens in environments that they're not comfortable with. For instance, I have attended a church where the majoirity of the congregation were houseless, on various medications, self-medicating, and struggling with surviving on the streets and the mental and emotional challenges that come with that. That is a very different exprience than where Christians are better off and more comfortable. The word of God is necessarily communicated and shared and experienced differently across places, times, and social groups.

* The church has experienced the word of God differently since our earliest days. It isn't news that some Christians object to how the word of God is preached and lived in other churches. If you find yourself in a church where you don't think the preaching and the living out is consistent with how you understand the word of God, take some gentle time to discern where it is that you may belong and search and pray to land in that place. But please be open to the possibility that you may want to return to the place that you're now uncomfortable in some day and that the Holy Spirit may work in that place and lead it and give that place grace and blessings that you are not receiving. 

* Matthew 10:14-15 does show that Jesus gave clear instructions to His disciples about how to respond to those who who reject the preaching of the word in the Spirit, but that was a commandment given to the disciples that came with other commandments regarding "the lost sheep of Israel," the radical message that "The kingdom of heaven is at hand," and curing the sick, raising the dead, cleansing lepers, and driving out demons without cost. We should set ourselves the tasks of healing the sick and raising the dead through social action, a necessary form of preaching the word of God. But so many Christians in the United States do something else. We judge ourselves and others when we're told not to judge. Please try to leave judging to God and be about the work of taking care of the hungry, the thirsty, the poor, the naked, and the imprisoned. We are quite busy shaking the dust from our feet because of what we think happened at another church---and folks at that church are doing the same after encountering us. And, meanwhile, creation is suffering and crying out in agony.

* Who do I know who preaches the word of God? I know a fellow in Southern West Virginia who is not a preacher in a conventional sense but who is gentle and soulful and cautions folks not to judge, and you can feel the Spirit moving in him. His life is a good sermon. I know a preacher in Southeast Kentucky who is part of the Primitive Baptist Universalist community who preaches a Biblically-based universalism and Preterism that most Christians around there can't yet accept, but they can't explain why and he has gotten run off from some churches. You might come into my church on a Sunday and not hear what you think is the word of God being preached, but my pastor's sermons have moved the mountains of my conscience. There is often "something in the air" in my church that assures us and heals us. When our pastor absolves us of our sins as a pastor I can feel that healing taking place. These are among the continuing miracles to be found in the churtch to this day. Bishop William Barber II and Repairers of the Breach  preach the word of God and live the word of God. Why is their message sidelined or ignored by the church? You will need much more than proof texts to challenge these preachers if you don't believe that they're preaching the word of God.

* The idea that some pastors or churches are not preaching the word of God comes as part of a construct that seems to be saying that the word of God must come to us as harsh condemnation. From my universalist perspective, Scripture seems to say instead that the word of God is sweet ("sugarcoating"?) even when it calls us to repentence and correction. That construct also seems to be saying that it's a one-size-fits-all message, but God gave us diversity and gifts of the Spirit, and Scripture opens the door to many possibilities---and God is still speaking and creation still holds us despite our sins and errors. The preachers who I most often hear working within this conservative construct often pose as radicals. "I may get arrested or get in trouble for preaching this, but..." is often used. But, in fact, their message is not a dangerous one or out of step with the society we live in at all. The victimization being preached suits the Trump folks perfectly. It seems to me that "bring(ing) our people back to his word" (see above) at the present moment is very much about building new relationships with one another and doing this in ways that both weaken the conservative paradigm and builds God's kingdom from the kinds of people our Lord loved most deeply.  

* At this very moment the scandal that we are trapped in is not about a moderrn church not hearing the true word of God being preached, I think. It's about how deeply the legacies of relative privilege and power, racism, sexism, militarism, and trauma have conditioned us. It's about our excesses while the world is suffering, and it's about our lack of sobriety and healthy relationships. It's about the church being silent as Israel carries out genocidal policies and about how complicit we are in that. It's about living in a world that can still be saved if we make God real in our prayers and in our lives and in our daily work, and it's about how so many of us opt for forms of death (addiction, oppression, injustice, violence) when God offers life.

        

 

A response to a cartoon

Let's consider the cartoon below. It is apparently being circulated by Christian pastors and others who may be trying to make a point about declines in church membership and active participation and engagement. But from my universalist perspective there may be a counter-argument to be made here and a reasonable explanation as to why someone might find this cartoon offensive. 

Let me say right now that I believe in joining and engaging with whatever religious or spiritual organization that you feel comfortable with after you have gone through time for discernment with God, taken some time with it, and your membership and participation have been determined to bless and benefit everyone in the circle. This is about faith, belief, and doctrine, to be sure, but it is also about how we view long-term commitment.

With commitment in mind, then, I want to lay out a few controversial points that I think the pastors and others passing this cartoon along will disagree with. Uniting oneself with a congregation or community will not work if you or that community come to the point of considering membership in a transactional way. If either side in this is thinking about some kind of exchange taking place, or in terms of a sale being made or a client-therapist-buyer-seller-sinner-preacher relationship being established, in order for things to progress then at some point someone will become dissatisfied and the relationship will suffer or end. We live in a world governed largely by competition, transactions, sales, profits and losses. Those in power often maintain their positions by encouraging dependency. People seeking the solace and strengthening that faith and faith communities can provide are often seeking an alternative to the harsh and cold world and the means of coping with and overcoming the violence that has been done to them in that world. We, all of us, need solidarity, not capitalist ethics and relationship dependencies in the pews.

Tithing has its roots in our communal religious and spiritual traditions and has come down to us as a form of fasting and as a form of generosity or charity ("solidarity lite"). But there are legitimate questions here about a proper Biblical approach to fasting in the first place. Is it Biblical to require the poor and the oppressed---the Lazaruses of our present day---to fast and to give? Is their life not already a story of fasting, faith and generosity? Yes, there are the accounts of the poor widow's offering and Christ's observations in the moment (Mark 12:41–44, Luke 21:1–4), but here I think the accent is on Christ condemning the wealthy and the powerful and not arguing that the poor must be squeezed.

We know that "people with means...are substantial givers. Middle-class Americans donate a little less. But the lower-income population surprises by giving more than the middle—and in some measures even more than the top. (As a percentage of available income, that is. In absolute dollars, those in higher income groups give much, much more money.)" The lower-income folks have an expansive definition of tithing, and one that I think is essentially correct, at least in terms of social practices. Someone may cover the mom in line at the supermarket who comes up short, or put up money for a son-in-law's tires so that he can look for work, or help someone make their rent. In my experience the people who are so generous do not often think of wat they are doing as charity, though they may not know the word "solidarity" or what it fully means or implies. Still, they model the concepts of solidarity by giving without the expectation of getting back and by giving in order to strengthen the social fabric that wraps around them as well. Instead of being transactional and talking about tithing, then, we should think about how we teach and model solidarity and where we find it in Scripture. The Bible is full of lessons on solidarity. The three that come readily to my mind are Hebrews 11, Acts 4: 32-5:11, and Christ's resurrection. Once solidarity is institutionalized and is communicated as an expectation and lived out daily, and once transactionalism is overcome,  the tithing and sacrifices will likely come.     

Well, it may be said, the folks in that cartoon are white and middle-class and seem to be squared away. I want to ask fellow Christians to seriously engage with the work of Marcus Borg and take up the project of doing economic analysis from a Christian perspective. The people in the pews may not be doing as well as fellow parishioners think they are. We live in a society that makes talk about things that matter and the struggles that we're going through uncomfortable and humiliating. Either people never talk about these hard truths of theirs or they abandon boundaries and go on as if theirs are the only and the most important problems and as if what they are suffering through is not the outcome of systemic inequities. So, in addition to not being transactional, engaging in solidarity, and doing economic analysis we also need to develop and teach healthy boundaries before we get deep into pushing church membership and tithing on folks. 

I'm coming from a place here of thinking about joining and fully engaging with a religious or spiritual community in terms of relationships---a marriage, say. You know that if you get married thinking "Well, we can always get divorced if things don't work out" then your marriage will likely not work out. The same holds true when you consider joining a religious community. You had better go into your marriage knowing your partner's faults and shortcomings, and both of you need to bend and be vulnerable to the other. Something similar happens in religious communities. Your heart will break and be broken and both you and your community will need to be flexible and take the long view. You know that if you get married but still keep up with old partners or go around looking at others as potential partners then you're not being fully faithful to the person you promised faithfulness to. Something like this applies to you joining a religious community as well; it's either a monogamous relationship or it won't last. It's okay if you can't do that now, "dating" is fine. You know that if you get married and you're not sharing the household tasks and paying the bills together and budgeting together then your marriage won't last. Most divorces start with fights over money. Again, there is a corollary with joining a religious community: plan, work, struggle and share the burdens to make it work, even if it means smaller communities made up of the blessed poor that God so loves. You don't want to marry someone who talks only about themselves, who is struggling with alcoholism or drug abuse, who is always deep in drama, who can't manage basic living skills without trouble, who can't handle their own power or work with someone else's in rational ways or who abuses their power and your trust. You also don't want to join a religious community where people with such issues proliferate and hold the keys to heaven and hell. And if you have been through a bad marriage or two you're probably not in a hurry to jump into another marriage. The same is true of joining religious communities; let God speak to you and study on how to bring that into focus, be rational about it, take your time.

Patrick Weaver Ministries grasps much of this in ways that I don't yet. See what they have to say about some of this.

For most of us, I think, the good traits and the most difficult problems that we bring to marriages and other relationships will be much the same as what we bring to any organization or effort we engage in, religious and spiritual communities included. Most of us have to work very hard to deconstruct what is negative in us and this is a lifetime project for many more of us than want to admit it. The capitalist society that we live in makes us unnaturally competitive and unable to find balance and cooperative paths to power. Churches may look at these conditions as sinful, or they may honor this with a gospel of prosperity, but neither approach finds the needed understanding. Our practical challenge is to make deconstructing ourselves and rebuilding ourselves a radical and social act of partaking with one another in the divine nature, or theosis (See Psalm 81/82, 2nd Peter 1:4. See 1 Thessalonians 5:17 and Matthew 25: 37-40 as aids). Is your religious community a place for rebuilding and healing?  

By this point I have probably lost the preachers and many readers. I'm going on too long and this is abstract. I do want to close with an additional point.

Many of the preachers who are circulating this cartoon and others like it claim in their sermons that they are swimming against the tide and say that they are risking their livelihoods and freedom by their strong teaching. I think that they are swimming very much with the tide by not taking on those in power who bring us a bit of hell (employers, banks, the prison-industrial complex, healthcare run for profit are examples), exaggerating their counter-cultural stance, and preaching an eternal hell because it is one way of preserving order in a society that jumps from crisis to crisis. Where is their attack on the systemic evils that oppress the people in the pews? 

On the other hand, there are some pretty brave Christians out there who really are challenging the oppressive powers and are paying a price for doing that and aren't posing as being counter-cultural. A committee of Mennonites led a peaceful demonstration calling for a ceasefire in Palestine/Israel last week and about 150 people were arrested at that demonstration. Where is the church in talking accurately and with love and solidarity about Palestine and supporting those who were arrested? Fellow believers cry out for justice but we're not listening. Where is the church in supporting  the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II and Repairers of the Breach when Bishop Barber says, "On March 2, our moral movement will be in Washington D.C. and at 30 statehouses across the country, launching a period of mass mobilization to the polls of the nation’s 85 million poor and low wealth voters leading up to the election in November. If mobilized around an agenda to address and end poverty and low wages, there is not a state where–if just 10 to 20 percent of poor and low-wage voters who did not vote in the last national election come to the polls this time around–they would not be able to swing the election and elect leaders who would vote for living wages, health care and voting rights."?

The beauty within us and around us

I saw this picture posted on the Appalachian Americans Facebook page the other day and asked Mr. James Dunaway if I could please post it and he kindly said that its okay. This is another example of what I'm talking about on this blog when I post about the beauty within us and around us. Mr. Dunaway says that this is "More of my wife’s work, the church gives them to charity" and he has been good about posting pictures of his wife's work. In a later message Mr. Dunaway told me that "We are Cumberland Presbyterian. But she does this we a group of ladies at the local Baptist Church, they quit, sew, crochet & knit for our Lord Jesus Christ." Not only this is beautiful and well-done work, but it serves a social purpose and connects people to one another all around. Our creativity works best and reaches its greatest meaning when it supports others and connects us to one another and---really no small matter---when it helps those who need the help most. In my world we call that solidarity.

A reflection on white conservative Christians and me

I posted a two-part article on this blog in November about preachers, priests, ministers, and pastors and how I relate or don't relate to churches and what I look for and hope for in religion and faith. I also mixed into those articles much about how some people in my circles have compelling personal testimonies. You can read those posts here and here.

Something of what I was talking about last month shows up in a post by Matt Tebbe that is making the rounds. Mr. Tebbe writes:

A convo I've had dozens of times:

White conservative Christian: "You're a liberal why do you hate Christians and the church so much."

Me: "I am a Christian; I've been in vocational church ministry for a quarter century."

WCC: "Well you sure do pick and choose how you interpret the Bible and you're really hard on Christians your exegesis is awful."

Me: "We all pick and choose. I try to choose what hasn't been picked very often in my experience."

WCC: "Well everything you talk about sounds marxist and you've abandoned the gospel for social justice."

Me: "Are you referring to the fact that I talk about women, racism, and money a lot?"

WCC: "The woke agenda yes."

Me: "'Woke' is an AAVE term (African American Vernacular English) used by Black people in a positive manner that was then appropriated by white people and turned into an insult, to cast aspersions on those seeking to redress the destructiveness of white supremacy. Reconsider using it as a slur for the sake of your neighbor."

WCC: "I see you've been brainwashed."

Me: "I'm attempting to conserve some Scripture teaching on wealth, property, debt, the human dignity and equality of all people, and the destructive impact of systemic partiality. Also: I think there's places to progress past an ancient ethic that held to the ontological inferiority of women, that slavery was a given, that women were basically property of their husbands/fathers, etc."

WCC: "You think that Scripture errs?"

Me: "Be curious about why you think dealing with systemic injustice, financial greed and inequality, racism, and misogyny are liberal issues. Why aren't they considered conservative issues?"

WCC: "I knew it you deny the authority of Scripture. And you're being divisive."

Me: "The truth will do that, divide and such. You seem to have no qualms about division when you accuse me of wrongdoing."

WCC: "I'll be praying for you."

Me: "May your justice increase so that your prayer would availeth much."

**it just never goes anywhere, beloved. But this Advent I again choose hope.**

That is a pretty limited conversation or encounter, or perhaps it's just reaching towards some name-calling. By the standards of current-day social media its calm, and perhaps it documents that most people will not say in one-on-one encounters what they will say on social media.

I steer away from these conversations and look for commonality or to hold the line and perhaps influence someone in the future. "Commonality" for me is founded on common experiences, a love for what is beautiful, sympathy. It is not founded on agreeing to disagree. I look for some understanding of solidarity at a time when the existence of society and the solidarity that is needed as society's underpinnings is so at risk. Many working-class conservatives (more about this below) where I come from understand that solidarity and support or embody it, something that I think often transcends politics and religion. It's about decency and humanity and my side does not have the corner on either anymore. Many get that, perhaps many more don't. For that matter, lots of liberal and progressive people who I know don't get it either. 

When such conversations do occur, face-to-face or on social media, they can escalate rather quickly and can end on a bad note. I try to save something for the future with most people even when it means my holding something back. My bottom lines, I hope, are racism/anti-racism, sexism, and solidarity. Loving the people more than hating the oppressors.

Truth be told, this is less about right vs. left or progressive vs. reactionary. Over the past few weeks I've had some bitter encounters with others on the left, people who I considered comrades and a couple who I considered influences in my life. The depth of that bitterness has made my head spin. It feels as if we are drowning in arguments, whether its in our political or religious or social and family circles. There are too many paths open to nihilism. I find myself feeling as if I have to defend the concepts of society and social order and kindness and solidarity. Is it really raining despair and hatred? Is there any shelter in this storm?

Danny Bowling recently published the following on the Appalachian Americans Facebook page and I believe that it has some relevancy here because religion and the church have often served as shelters in a tough world.

Church used to be everyone come to the choir.
Now it’s a praise team.
People used to feel free to testify of the good things of God.
Now that's not in our plans.
People used to be faithful to church every service, Now they only come on Sunday morning.....
People would pack the Altar for prayer and cry out to God, Now the Altar is empty....
Preacher’s used to read, study and pray for the message.
Many today read the internet and study how to deliver someone else’s message.
Church music was part of the worship experience.
Now it’s so loud and has become the focal point.
Church used to pray for God to send them a pastor.
Now it’s a beauty contest. We know him and he would fit in nicely. Caring less if they even meet the biblical qualifications.
Church used to have the Holy Ghost leading the services.
Now we have emotions leading the church.
Let’s seek out the old paths and walk in them AGAIN !!!
CHURCH we need to be CHRIST centered and
following the leadership of the HOLY GHOST.

This reads as a poem to me, sad or angry or despairing or demanding. Many of the people who have read the post found a subtext in Mr. Bowling's words that (I think) validated their points of view, and this has been overwhelmingly conservative. For whatever its worth, I also feel what Mr. Bowling is saying if we just take his words at face value and without the heavy weight of conservative context. And because I feel this with some intensity I stay as connected as I can to Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro, North Carolina, the Poor Peoples Campaign, and a few other churches and religious communities that I consider to be Spirt-filled.

We have two sets of problems, two arguments being made that miss one another. Mr. Tebbe is taking on white conservative Christians and not getting very far. Mr. Bowling has a vision of what church could be and memories of what he has seen church be. There are fears and anger on all sides here and these are only going to deepen unless the contradictions between them are resolved. I hope that there will be a willingness to engage in ways that move us forward.

Mr. Tebbe's white conservative Christians have no identity beyond the labels he gives them. We don't know if they are female or male, what their economic situations are, what generations they come from, if their politics derive from their religion or if something else is going on, what sections of the country they come from. Mr. Bowling is somewhat sentimental about the forms that religion often took in Appalachia and about a time and place that has been ground down by deindustrialization, oppression and corruption, and, most recently, deliberate efforts to create widespread substance abuse. Mr. Tebbe enters his discussion able to debate about racism and anti-racism. Mr. Bowling and most of his supporters seem unable or unwilling to do so. Mr. Tebbe seems to assume a political equality between believers, and he and the people he is arguing with all seem to accept a "politicized" religion, for lack of a better word, though they take opposing political sides. Mr. Bowling seems to believe in an equality of all believers before God that is based on our fallen natures, God's grace, and the work of the Holy Spirit. This is worked out for him, I believe, in a Christian community that is Spirit-led but that rests on anointed leaders and people who feel a personal connection to Jesus Christ.

Mr. Tebbe may be sanding with the wrong kind of planer when he focuses on whites. White people often come to these arguments feeling that we have something to protect, and white middle-class conservatives have a Republican Party and its power behind them for validation and refuge and as their means of interpreting and spinning their experiences in ways that reinforce their power and excuse their faults. There are the legacies of slavery, racism, and the defeat of Reconstruction, and the denials of civil and human rights to contend with here, and few churches have been innocent bystanders or in opposition when it comes to the United States' racialized oppression. Saying this does not imply hatred of the U.S.

But it is my observation that as we move from the arguments with the middle-class white Christian conservative to talking with white working-class Christians and then with white working-class Christians who are union members that something helpful begins to surface. These white workers who have the experiences of unionization and the hope that it offers feel a greater commonality or shared interest with people of color, there are common reference points and more to talk about. This is especially true where people have the experience s of working in groups in which workers depend on one another, like mine workers or nurses. The conversation is still not one between people with equal standing before the law or with the same de facto political rights, but it begins to bend in that direction. Motivations shift. The arc of justice bends because we have so many people who know how to weld in the working-class. Sections of the Black Church have remained a part of working-class struggles. The president of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists is a minister. There are few white churches, and no white leaders who I know of, who can meet the Black Church and faith-inspired Black working-class leaders where they stand. Until that changes we will all suffer greatly---and separately. The salvation of the working-class majority in the U.S. is in Black and Brown hands now.

Working-class conservatism and working-class liberalism or radicalism have their own dynamics apart from what Mr. Tebbe is up against. This makes it possible for working-class people to shoehorn political and theological radicalism in the old institutions and social structures. Our challenge is not to explain theology or to talk about white privilege when people of color and working-class whites encounter one another, but to find the means of identifying long-term self-interests and common interests and take those to church and into politics. Leadership is with and from Christ and the Holy Spirit, but we will have our Moseses and our prophets. Intercommunal survival, building leadership and capacity, and finding the right structures are our biggest immediate and so far unresolved problems. Perhaps the structures we're looking for are hiding in plain sight. 

The church that Mr. Bowling is hoping for could be the church that a multiracial and self-aware working-class lands in with some adjustments made. A Christ-centered and Holy Ghost-led church filled with people of color and working-class whites who have made the connections between their personal relationships with Jesus Christ and communal salvation and who have experienced victories in their communities that bring everyone up will be a deeply politicized church, so deeply politicized that the very definitions of "politics" and "religion" will change. We're all going to be surprised when the Holy Spirit touches us, but I have this inescapable feeling that when the Holy Spirit touches white churches they're going to be taken to task for segregation and all that has kept them white that was in their control to fix. The falls under the heading of "some adjustments," I guess. 

Mr. Bowling is opening one door, Mr. Tebbe another. The differences that they point to are real. And in a country that is as close to civil war as ours is, these differences can be magnified and taken to dangerous ends. The solution is not with dialogue and a search for some kind of center or middle point, but with a radical embrace of a liberating and Christ- and Bible-based theology and church. Take Mr. Tebbe's hope and Mr. Bowling's best observations and build on them. If that project succeeds, I think that the white Christian conservatives who Mr. Tebbe is arguing with can be converted.

Remembering church in East Tennessee

The following remembrance comes from Wilma L. Jozwiak and was posted on the Appalachian Americans Facebook page. I think that it's well-written, good history, and a good read.

In general, church in the summer in East Tennessee was torture. By the time Sunday School was over and services began, the sanctuary was a miserable place. Air conditioning was unknown, and little girl legs beneath Sunday dresses stuck firmly to varnished pews. Viewed from above in the balcony (not that little kids got to sit in the balcony), the sanctuary was a sea of funeral parlor fans attempting to move stagnant air. In the summer, ministers had no difficulty convincing the flock of the dangers of hell fire.

In East Tennessee, women wore posies to church on Mother's Day. The average temperature on Mother’s Day in Rogersville, Tennessee is 82 degrees, but even on the hottest days of spring in East Tennessee, the humidity usually guarantees morning dew. I remember the cool touch of moisture as I slipped bare footed through the grass at my aunt Nettie B’s side on the mornings of Mothers Day.
We headed for the garden, tucked at the end of the garage in the back yard of Grandma’s house. It was Mother’s Day, and I got to help make the posies.

Women whose mothers had passed wore white posies. That meant my grandma, whose own mother was many years gone. Choices for her were white roses or white iris, filled in with babies breath. I agonized over the choice, but gave in to the sweet smell of the roses. My mother, Nettie B, and I all had living mothers, so we could choose from the vivid colors. I was a sucker for iris - to me, the wooly track down the curving purple petal was exotic and beautiful. My mother loved daisies, but they were white, so we chose blackeyed Susans for her. Nettie B loved the bright colors of the pinks, so we cut different shades of rose and red to make her posey. Together, Nettie B and I cut the flowers with Grandma’s sewing shears, and added bridal veil spirea and a fern frond to each. Nettie B finished off each posey with a white or red ribbon pulled from her stash of reclaimed Christmas wrap. Each posey went into the fridge to wait until we were dressed for church.

Later I had corsages and a bridal bouquet created by florists, all worthy of note for their professionalism, but it is those Mothers Day posies, created in the relative cool of an East Tennessee morning, that live in the freshness of my mind.
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Some random thoughts to consider

Bishop Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II preaching, "Just When You Need Him Most..."

This is Bishop Barber's first sermon since the historic Poor People's Campaign reached Washington last week. Both the message today and the mass presence in D.C. last week are significant events in our history. Just click on this link and it will take you there.  

No wonder you're not going to church...

 

Zion Primitive Baptist Church

Whatever my disagreements with the Primitive Baptists, I found this picture and the accompanying paragraph from Zion Primitive Church on Facebook warm and reassuring. I appreciate Zion's simplicity. I often think about this when I go into old churches, and sometimes I believe that I can feel the weight of the prayers of all of the oppressed people who have been there before me and their guidance or concern for me.

This is the sanctuary of Zion Primitive Baptist Church. There have been many who have sat in these pews over the last 34 years. Saints, who desired a little place to worship in Spirit and Truth. Before this sanctuary was built, they met in a conference room of Georgia Power and in living rooms singing praises to God for the love He expressed through His only begotten Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
For those who have been worshipping at Zion for a long time, they can look out over the pews and see the faces of those who have gone to be with the Lord. This was a special place for them and is special to us, it is where we come together and worship our Creator, through our Savior.
Come and see.

AN EASTER PRAYER: TO RECOVER THE RUSSIAN ORTHODOX TRADITION OF PEACE (Michael Centore in religioussocialism.org)

Taken from ReligiousSocialism.org. Please support them. I believe that Michael Centore's article is especially important right now. 

For those of us with a deep love of Russian Orthodox spirituality, the events of the past two months, heartbreaking enough on their own, have brought additional grief. We mourn the warping of the Russian Orthodox faith for nefarious nationalistic ends. We see Patriarch Kirill’s longstanding capitulation to the violent messianism of Vladimir Putin as a tragic case of succumbing to a false god.

We are not alone in this. In March, nearly 300 Russian Orthodox clerics issued a statement decrying the war and comparing Russia’s actions against Ukraine to Cain’s fratricide of Abel in the book of Genesis. Archbishop Leo of Helsinki, the spiritual leader of the Finnish Orthodox Church, challenged Kirill to “wake up and condemn this evil.” Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams made the case for expelling the Russian Orthodox Church from the World Council of Churches. Pope Francis has been unequivocal in his criticism, breaking protocol to appeal directly to the Russian Embassy in February and exclaiming during a general audience on April 6, “Let the weapons fall silent! Stop sowing death and destruction!”

Unlike the Roman Catholic Church, which has a hierarchical leadership structure centered on the person of the pope, Eastern Orthodoxy exists as an association of 16 (or 14; there are still internal debates over the status of two) autocephalous, or self-governing churches. Many of these are organized as national churches—think of the Russian Orthodox or Bulgarian Orthodox Churches, for example. Though modern ideas of the nation-state and its relationship to ethnicity did not exist when many of these churches were founded, some members have anachronistically applied them to advance nationalistic agendas.

This is precisely what Kirill and Putin are doing when they invoke “Holy Russia” or the “Russian world” as justification for the invasion. In a dangerous alliance of church and state that links up with a longstanding vision of Russia as the “Third Rome,” imperial heir to the Byzantine Empire and defender of “Christian civilization” against a decadent, secular West, they are proposing what the authors of a dissenting open letter at the website Public Orthodoxy describe as “a transnational Russian sphere or civilization . . . which includes Russia, Ukraine and Belarus (and sometimes Moldova and Kazakhstan), as well as ethnic Russians and Russian-speaking people throughout the world.”

Read the rest here.

The Altar And Iconostasis In An Orthodox Church

 

Churches and spirituality

 

The Primitive Baptist Universalist churches

Easterr Sunday---You're invited!

 

Salem First United Methodist Church

600 State St, Salem, OR 97301

You're invited!

Salem First United Methodist Church

600 State St, Salem, OR 97301

 

Consider yourself invited...

Salem First United Methodist Church

600 State St, Salem, OR 97301

Holy Week In Some Of Salem-Keizer's Methodist Churches---Everyone Is Welcome!

 Click on the graphic to enlarge it or go to http://salemfirstumc.org/.

Rev. Donnell Mason (Deceased 2/20/2012) - When the Gates Swing Open 6.12.2011

 

Why bother going to church?

Brother Elijah Collins preaches in Pilgrim, KY. on why going to church matters. Not all of my friends will appreciate this. It's back-home and down-home preaching. I'm including it because I know that many of us are helped by this. Do I agree with everything here? No, I do not. Do I think that there is positivity here, that it's inspired teaching and preaching, and that it speaks to many working-class people? Yes, I do. Please listen in and think about where Brother Elijah Collins talks about helping strangers and being Jesus to someone today.

The Rev. Dr. Helen Svoboda Barber At The Seminary Of The Southwest On 2-28-22

She has some great points about Biblical teaching, race, gender and race and gender justice. This is a good short sermon on doing the "restoration and reconciliation work of God" and what is required of all of us. There is especially good advice to students here.

Frank Newsome - Sometimes I Sing