Summer

I was a lifeguard for six years as a teenager. It was, hands down, the easiest job I’ve ever had, and its bad parts—cleaning days, really really hot days, watching one guy sit in the pool when it was seventy degrees and drizzling—were far outweighed by its good. So for six years, the summer was marked in my brain as beginning the week before Memorial Day. And starting Memorial Day through Labor Day, that was summer, until nine p.m. on Labor Day when we’d lock up everything and then refuse to do end-of-season cleaning, as was the tradition at the company I worked for.

Now, I realized summer doesn’t really start for me until Pentecost. That means it can be as early as May 10, and as late as June 13, thanks to a lunar calendar. So even though it’s hot out, and June, summer doesn’t start in my brain until we bust out the red and celebrate the Spirit. Summer does, however, end in my mind on September 3, which is sometimes Labor Day but always, and I admit my own ego’s complacency in this, my birthday.

 

I have heard from other pastors, and I have served at other churches, where the congregation “takes the summer off.” That hasn’t been the case at Midway Hills, at least in my experience of… one summer, and I thank you for that. I am excited about what’s happening in the life of the congregation this summer, and I hope you are, too.  Here’s a preview of the sermon series for the summer—

 

Beginning June 15 – “Raising the Roof”
For a building, the roof is the absolute top—it is the highest and farthest out it can go. Too often, the church (the body of believers united in the good news of Jesus Christ) is mistaken for the church building. In these instances, God has a very clear and unique tendency to raise the roof—push limits, test boundaries, and unsettle what is settled—so that God’s will is done. We’ll be looking at three texts that specifically deal with roofs, and see that all three stories speak to God’s holiness through grace pushing people past where they’re comfortable, where they’re content, and where they expect God to be.

 

For most of July – Science Sundays

Neil DeGrasse Tyson said, “The good thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it.” The universal church has not been the friendliest towards science, with folks on one extreme adamantly denying it and on the other shouting, “Yes we do! Yes we do!” This series in July will look at three (historically) major theological friction points with science and show that faith and science are mutually compatible and sharpen one another like iron sharpens iron.

 

And in August, “Before the Exodus”

The story in all of Scripture is one of faithful covenant, liberation from oppression, and love winning. Throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, the God who liberated the Chosen from Egypt is again and again invoked as a reminder to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly. The beginning of this story speaks as much as the signs and wonders that happen during it. We will look at the first four chapters or so of the book of Exodus to see holy origins and a call for the church to follow as well.

 

We’ll be announcing big stuff in the coming weeks as well, so watch this space! I look forward to seeing you all Sunday (and don’t forget to wear red!).

 

Shalom y’all,

 

Arthur

A Special Moment

My friend Erin is a wandmaker. He does other things by which he makes his living, but as a hobby and small business, he makes magic wands. It’s a wonderful little company that sells mostly on the internet — all kinds of wood, all suppositions of mythical beast core properties—and it’s a niche market that gives him enough business. It also means that occasionally, he does conferences and conventions for the nerdily-inclined, like a couple weeks ago at Dallas Comic-Con.

I was at Comic-Con to escort his kids around, spoil them as their favorite adult, and keep them out of the tiny booth space in which Houchin’s House of Wizarding Wares was based. But we still ran into him and his wife Keri out and about on the floor. (If you’ve never been to Comic-Con, please imagine t-shirts, costumes, comic books, action figures, sci-fi stuff, exhibits, booths, all sorts of things, all in a grid pattern.) We also ran into a man dressed as “Princess Batman,” which makes me smile even now, two weeks later — he was wearing the black gloves and cowl of Batman, and this marvelous pink ballgown. He still did the Batman voice.

 

But I digress. Erin and Keri have been married for 11 years. They don’t really do anniversaries — they’ll go out, but they don’t buy presents or go bigger and bigger each year. This year, Keri told Erin that she had got him something — she couldn’t resist — and she’d spent x amount of dollars and he was welcome to go shop at Comic-Con for her. So he goes off, and he finds an artist they both like, and he commissions a drawing from him for his wife. As it turns out, she had just done the same thing for him. Of all the artists and all the booths and all the possibilities, they knew each other so well that the surprise of similarity was the best surprise there was. The normality of the moment made the moment that much more special, if you will.

 

This Sunday is Ascension Sunday, and the readings for it speak to one of the most abnormal parts of the Jesus story — his rising into heaven. But we’ll take Luke apart a little bit, and see that normal old Bethany is the perfect spot for God to make something special from the mundane.

 

I look forward to seeing you Sunday. Shalom y’all,

 

Arthur

Navigating the Differences

In the midst of all the busyness of the past two weeks, I have been musing a lot on differences of beliefs. As a second-generation Disciple of Christ, I feel like this is part of my DNA, i.e. to be present in community with those who hold similar and dissimilar beliefs from myself. This is something our community values as well, in fact we speak to this inclusive attitude almost every Sunday. It is interwoven into our liturgy and mixed into the foundation of our community. Yet, it is one thing to have discussions in Sunday School gatherings or conversations with like-minded or similarly-minded individuals about how to "live into an inclusive community" but is something completely different when you encounter a person who actually disagrees with you. 

When perspective meets sticky life situations things get…complicated. Take for example this “real life” situation, which slapped me across the face during Lent this year. Several elements played into this experience. First, I had decided to take the train from Fort Worth to Dallas during Holy Week to save on gas, wear and tear on my aging vehicle, etc. Second, I had decided to wear a clerical collar on Wednesdays during Lent. As I got on the bus, the driver called out, “Heya, Preacher!” I had outed myself. For the next 30 minutes we engaged in a theological conversation about the infallibility and inerrancy of Scripture, role of women, and the Truth of the Gospel. Our options were like oil and water. At my stop, we agreed to disagree and I got off the bus thinking about what had just happened.

I am not sure we had a genuine conversation. I am almost sure there was not time to build a level of respect or create the foundation of relationship within that 30 minutes. Yet, it made me think. It made me wonder about how we segregate ourselves into groups of like-minded individuals, sheltering our thoughts and beliefs and in turn “other-izing” those who do not agree with perspective. Thus when we encounter the “other” we assume we have nothing in common with them. Inclusivity turns into control and demand for uniform thought. Perhaps the bus driver and I did not make any headway with the other, convincing the other to come to the “right and true” side. Yet, for me the conversation challenged my uttered stance of welcome and dared me to actually embody that belief.

In the end, all I know is that this inclusive gospel thing is far more difficult and complicated than I truly understand and that this welcoming and embracing gospel thing is truly unattainable without a committed community to journey alongside.

Blessings,

Amber

Ordination Expectations

If you haven’t heard yet, we celebrate and authorize the ordination to Christian ministry of Amber Churchill this Saturday at 2 p.m. (And if you haven’t heard — seriously, where have you been? We miss you.) Ordination is an incredible moment in the life of the church and in the person being ordained; it is a moment to step outside of our own context and hear the Yes of God resonate and bounce throughout the Church universal and eternal.

I’ve been to my fair share of ordinations — it’s one of the joys of staying local after divinity school — and something I’ve noticed is that every person’s service is different, even though they all use the same order of worship, and many times, the same calls to worship, reaffirmations and responses, usually. My friend Paul Carpenter is a mellow, thoughtful, almost monastic man centered in prayer, and his service was intimate, steeped in prayer, and invocative of a very present Holy Spirit. My friend Megan Amman is a gregarious, intelligent, folksy and inclusive, and her service was a call to everyone to go and serve (y’all), complete with a bluegrass anthem and the feeling you get watching fireflies in June. My service was on April 1st in the middle of Lent, and at times it felt more like a roast than a sacred service, but I promise you, the Spirit of God was there making our joy complete.

So what can we expect from Amber’s service of ordination on Saturday? She refuses to put God in a box under any circumstance, so a diversity of a lot of people, texts and ways to worship. She is brave and confident, so expect some good challenges and questions. She is inclusive and communal, so please expect a full house. And I realize as I write this I can tell you great things about her, but I won’t be able to say a word about her service until all is said and done, because that’s when God shows up, and makes things new, again and again and again. And not just in ordination, but in mission, in service, in faith development, in outreach, in evangelism, in worship, too — and a whole host of other ways and places, too. I guess I’m trying to say if we don’t see you Saturday, I hope we do see you Sunday. But I definitely hope we’ll see you Saturday, as well.

Shalom y’all,

Arthur

That Is Church, Too

The North Texas Area Assembly was this past Sunday afternoon. It’s an all right thing — a “family reunion” of the NTA churches and a worship service with some commissionings and a guest preacher. This past one was a bit controversial. The guest preacher was the Rev. Phillip Dukes, pastor of Crestview Christian Church in Greenville, Texas. Our Acting Regional Minister Coretha Loughridge recommended him when she had to back out of the service. In his sermon on the transformative power of the Great Commission (Matthew 28), Rev. Dukes stated (I do note I paraphrase, slightly), “We have to love homosexuals fully, just like we do adulterers, thieves and liars.” At that point in the service, I checked out. When the sermon was done, I walked out. And that night, I spoke out.

This week has been full of conversations with our Area Minister Larry Ross, numerous other pastors and lay members of churches in the NTA, and one brief phone call with Rev. Dukes. Both Larry and Phillip were aghast and highly apologetic — it was not Dukes’s intention, he told me, to come off the least bit judgmental or hateful towards the LGBTQ community; he was instead affirming the call of the church to serve and love everyone, homosexuals included. I had to point out that lumping gays and lesbians in a list of sins that need to be fixed — thieves should stop stealing because it’s bad relationship with God, others and the community; can we say the same thing about LGBTQ folks?—is problematic. Larry has been actively calling everyone who spoke out against the sermon, and is taking steps to rectify the situation. I am thankful for his pastoring in this regard; he is doing good work in the situation presented.

Here is the good news in all this: other people spoke out. I would wager, as the senior minister of the area’s only officially Open and Affirming congregation, that I was the first phone call on Monday morning, but I was not the last. Churches that are all but official in their welcome and grace have another topic of conversation to engage in. Churches that want to be more welcoming and graceful to LGBTQ folks have people who heard that statement, accidental or ignorant or unplanned or whatever, and need to discuss it. Action is coming after words.

This is one of the myriad reasons Midway Hills can’t go away. This is one of the myriad reasons we have to stay put, in the North Texas Area and Southwest Region. This is one of the myriad ways we know what we are doing matters — because more people Sunday exclaimed their dissatisfaction than they would have a few years ago, and more people were able to point to us and say, “That is church, too.” That, and even that, is pretty awesome.

Next year, let’s all plan to go. It’ll be the first Sunday of May. And on this upcoming second Sunday of May, I look forward to seeing you in worship.

Shalom y’all,

Arthur

Music Does the Work of God

So, what’s your favorite hymn? Even better, what’s your least favorite hymn?

I will go out on a limb and admit that I, Arthur Stewart, am the one who picks the hymns for Sunday morning worship. I do not play favorites — if I did, we’d simply do “Come, Share the Lord” every single week for communion — and I do, on occasion, take requests. I plan them out about three months in advance, along with scriptures and sermons, hope they all work together, and make sure we run the gamut in styles, content and time period. Why? Because every hymn is someone’s favorite, and, as the Rev. Dr. Zan Holmes pointed out this last week at Jazz Vespers, God speaks in every language, including jazz, and in this case, your least favorite hymn.

A few weeks ago, we did the hymn “Come, Celebrate the Call of God” (#454) which is an ordination hymn, and is printed in the Chalice Hymnal with feminine pronouns. Don’t get me wrong, that’s awesome; it just seemed really weird that I picked it, it seemed really weird doing it on Palm Sunday, it seemed really weird to sing it as a discipleship song. And as I was standing up there grinning in verse two, Sue Nunn and Melody Heath came forward to join the church. Was it the hymn that sealed the deal for them? Nope. But was there a Spirit in that room that called Sue and Melody? Yep. If I haven’t said it publicly lately, I am so glad that God is far more competent than I, or else we’d all be doomed.

Music does the work of God. At Jazz Vespers this past week, I will admit I was a little worried when Charles, the pianist and leader of the Quartet, let me know they’d be doing “I Know it was the Blood” during communion. He and I have had a lot of talks about what he calls “the blood songs,” and about what I call reconciliatory atonement — I tend to preach the cross as the action of God in reconciliation and redemption, not as sacrificial atonement. But man! The way they did it made me hear it for the first time ever. It was awesome! (I need to get “TRUST CHARLES” tattooed on my hand just so I remember to more frequently.) I can’t say “I Know It Was the Blood” is one of my favorite hymns, I can guarantee we won’t be singing it this Sunday, but God spoke through it, most definitely.

I look forward to seeing you on Sunday. And until then, shalom y’all,

Arthur

Is There Room at the Table?

If you were at the Maundy Thursday service, you may have had a hard time hearing the sermon. That was intentional. If you were not at the Maundy Thursday service, you definitely had a hard time hearing the sermon. Here it is, if you’d like to read it:

Disciples: Judas Iscariot (Mark 14:26-34; Luke 22:47-53) Midway Hills Christian Church. April 17, 2014.

Does Judas Iscariot have a spot at this table?

A chair is left open for him; on this night of remembrance, as the penumbra of the cross looms ever closer, as the darkness closes in—does Judas Iscariot have a spot at this table?

Suprisingly and not, his seal stands with the rest of the Twelve Disciples. He was one of them, he is the name that Jude Thaddeus avoids, the treasurer Matthew was glad to have, the incendiary that Simon the Zealot held suspect. Unlike other traditions that leave his shield and sign blank—a legacy left unfinished, a life unworthy of notation—here we have the price of his betrayal: thirty silver pieces.

Perhaps it is fitting, and perhaps it is not. Many of the other seals speak to the means of the disciples death—sawn in half, bludgeoned, crucified, snake bite. The other seals speak to the priorities of their interaction with Jesus—the shell in James the Greater’s seal for baptism; the book in Simon the Zealot’s for teaching. To minimize Judas Iscariot to thirty pieces of silver—is it some sort of revenge by the Church on him? To quantify and characterize him only as a betrayer, an outsider, a thief and embezzler, a renegade, a hypocrite, a scoundrel and a problem—

Is there room at this table for Judas Iscariot?

He is the most egregious of the egregious in the Gospels—John introduces him as a traitor; Matthew and Mark both spoil the story, noting Judas’s betrayal in the first list of disciples; Luke flat out accuses him of being the agent of the Devil in the end of his gospel. For thirty pieces of silver he hands Jesus over to his trial, mocking, scourging and crucifixion; repentant, or at least concerned over blood guilt, he returns the money. He hangs himself, we’re told in Matthew; he falls and is eviscerated on sharp rocks, Luke records in Acts.

Is there a spot at this table for Judas Iscariot?

And I do not mean on Maundy Thursday, as if this were a reenactment of the Last Supper. It is not enough to say he had a spot and he lost it; he fell from grace and he fell on rocks. We cannot let Dante get the last word on Judas Iscariot, who in The Inferno now suffers eternally in the lowest pit of Hell alongside Brutus. No relief, no redemption, no mercy, no hope.

When Jesus takes bread, give thanks, breaks it and passes it, can anyone be skipped? When the wine is poured out for the many, which is a nice Biblical translation of a word perhaps best spoken as “all,” are there conditions? Does Judas Iscariot have a spot at this table?

We cannot contain this story of the Table at this Table. We cannot contain the power of God through love in spite of power on the Cross. We cannot forget the promises God has made to all people in Christ, even the worst of the worst, the least of the least.

There is possibility Judas acted out of fulfillment of prophecy. To goad the Empire and the Jesus movement to clash. To usher in the Kingdom of God as he, and really all of the Disciples, understood it to be—a political entity, a Rome-free theocratic paradise. There is the possibility Judas was hurt, offended and otherwise dismayed and so he left, and acting impulsively set into motion things he could not control, undo or participate in. There is even the possibility that Judas Iscariot chose to betray his teacher and friend Jesus for a simple thirty coins; that he was done with the movement, he had had enough, he supported the status quo after all. In all these things, though, we are a people of the cross in the light of resurrection; of reconciliation made possible through God’s shattering of death; we walk with Christ as he calls us from our own tombs. So we have to ask—is there room at this table for Judas Iscariot? And if not, is there room at this table for anyone?