One of my favorite parts of ministry is hearing folks share their faith journey. While we encourage Elders and Deacons to do so during their period of training before their Ordination and Installation, it’s something all of us should do from time to time. Actually, it’s more a sharing of one’s journey of “life and faith” for each informs the other!
Ann Lamotte wrote “Traveling Mercies” and she shares a prayer about our journeys of life and faith: “Traveling mercies. Love the journey. God goes with you. Come home safe and sound.” A beautiful prayer to pray over our years of living!
As Presbyterians, we have an understanding of our faith journey – beginning at our baptism, continuing through our Confirmation and membership in any number of churches in different times and places, and throughout our lives as we continue to grow in our understanding of faithful discipleship and service. The journey continues on into eternity, when we see Christ face to face. It’s important that we have an understanding of life’s journey as well, for it is in life’s experiences that come our way that our faith is tested and tried and strengthened, as we come to see the ways God is always with us.
I like to encourage folks to take a sheet of paper and divide it into columns by decades of living, and reflect upon the life experiences of each decade and how those life experiences drew upon our faith resources as we journeyed. Another way of approaching this exercise is to draw a river with different streams feeding into it from first one side and then the other. The river is our years of living; the streams flowing into it are the life experience that change our course or deepen our journey. Often it’s only in looking back that we are able to see the hand of God at work in our lives.
At a recent Presbytery Officer Training Class, we considered the story of Moses and all the excuses he came up with for not answering God’s call. There were actually five excuses: “I’m not adequate to the task; I don’t know enough; People won’t take me seriously; I’m no good with words; I’m not willing.” God’s response each time was to remind Moses, “I will be with you.” To know that is a blessing, and is enough!
As we continue on our journeys of life and faith, in looking back, may we come to see all the ways God has been with us, and may we look forward to God’s faithfulness in all the years to come. “Traveling mercies. Love the journey. God goes with you. Come home safe and sound.”
Elizabeth
One of my special joys in ministry through the years has been participating in the work of Presbyterian Women, especially the yearly Horizon Bible Study. This year’s study is “God’s Promise: I Am With You.”
This study will be a journey through scripture, tracing the repetition of God’s most frequent promise– “I am with you.” The promise is spoken to individuals and communities from the time of the Patriarchs to the prophets; from the judges to the kings; before, during and after the exile; into the New testament and beyond, to the end of the age! As Jesus ascends to heaven, he speaks the words of promise one last time, “Lo, I am with you always, even to the close of the age.” (Matthew 28:20b)
From month to month, we are challenged to “pluck post-it-note reminders” of God’s promise, as it “wends its way through scripture.” Most importantly, we are challenged to consider how the promise speaks into our circumstances, and has always been a “post it note reminder” of God’s faithfulness to us. How has God been with us and blessed us, wherever we have gone?” God’s “I will be with you” promise is very often accompanied by the reassurance, “I will never leave you or forsake you.”
In Lesson One, we followed the promise from Abraham to Isaac and to Jacob. Reading the story of Jacob’s Dream at Bethel in Genesis 28, and hearing his affirmation: “Surely the Lord is in the place and I did not know it,” we were challenged to remember such times in our own lives and share our “hindsight testimony” of God’s faithful promises made and kept! Throughout this year of study, we are challenged to put in place our own “post-it-note reminders of God’s promise” seen in looking back over our individual journeys of life and faith.
We noted that God’s promise to Jacob has four parts: “I am with you; I will keep you; I will bring you back; I will not leave you.” All present were asked to consider which part of the promise speaks to them most in their current circumstance.
“If God will accompany Isaac and Jacob and the whole cast of characters we will encounter in this study, then God will accompany us. Even us. Because God’s promise is not based on our merit, but on God’s grace. Not on our faith, but on God’s faithfulness.”
May the Spirit open our eyes to the abiding presence of God in the day-to-day of wherever we are! Giving thanks for God’s faithful promise to be with us always, and for those streams of mercy, never ceasing…
Elizabeth
One of my special memories of Christmas 2018 will be the experience of sharing “A Bold New Love: Christmas Eve with Middle Collegiate Church.” The CBS Television Network broadcast the special service, featuring four choirs, two dance companies and a spoken-word artist. Nationally-recognized theologian Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis serves as senior minister for the 1,200 –member congregation, which is located in Manhattan’s East Village. Founded by Dutch immigrants in 1628, Middle is co-affiliated with the United Church of Christ and the Reformed Church in America. “New Yorkers say Middle Church looks like the subway at rush hour but feels like home; when I stand on the pulpit and look out at our congregation, to me it looks like heaven,” says Dr. Lewis.
“We are seniors and toddlers, children and teens. We are multiracial families and single folk. Millennials and boomers are our largest demographic. We are Black, White, Asian and Latinx. We are gay, straight, bisexual and transgender. We are a Christian church that believes there is more than one path to God. Therefore, Jews, Buddhists, agnostics and atheists join Christians of many stripes in our worship and educational events, and in our work for justice.”
“At the center of the Christmas story is hope…hope which comes to us in the form of a vulnerable, poor baby. A child, not a king, changes the world. God appears to us as a marginalized, Afro- Semitic, Jewish child from Nazareth in Palestine. A child who grows up to teach us to welcome the stranger. How would our world be different if we loved our neighbors as ourselves?” asks Dr. Lewis.
“In our country that is deeply divided around race and religion, Middle Collegiate Church is a rare place where blacks, whites, Hispanics, and Asian Americans worship together. Also Christian, Jewish, atheist, and Buddhist worshippers are drawn to the congregation because of its legendary music and commitment to the poor, the LGBTQIA+ community, and addressing race relations in our nation. On Christmas Eve, this congregation gives us a picture of unity and hope…We hope this CBS program draws people to our way of being Christian: “Love. Period.”
For me personally, this service in many ways “completed” the message I shared at our recent Interfaith Thanksgiving Service. It is this “bold, new love” that will “bless the spaces between us.” I believe this is the love Jesus teaches and calls us to live out together with our brothers and sisters on God’s good earth. “Love. Period.” That’s the message of Christmas – a bold new love that blesses the spaces between us!
Giving thanks for the beauty of a fresh, new Christmas message, the wonder of God’s love for all people, and those streams of mercy, never ceasing. In this new year, let us open ourselves to that “bold, new love” and so love one another.
Praying a blessed new year for all,
Elizabeth