Christmas Eve meditation

December 25, 2013 / Beth Merrill Neel / 2 Comments

Though I don’t make it a practice to post my sermons here, in the spirit of the day, here is what I had to say last night.

Merry Christmas to all, and God bless us, every one.

Do you know how strong babies are? It’s been said that an experiment was conducted in which a professional athlete was asked to mimic the movement of a baby lying on his back. The athlete quickly became exhausted and couldn’t keep up.

Babies are powerful. Recently my family and I attended a choral concert where a group of twenty young women were on stage singing beautifully, fully; but when one little baby in the audience began to wail, their sound was drowned out and every eye went from the stage to the baby.

Babies change the world, in the way that babies up-end the lives of their families from the moment they are born. Scattered parents suddenly become aware of the need of regular feeding times; grandparents start to call more often. Strangers coo as they peer into the stroller, and the most reckless driver slows way, way down when a bicycle towing a Burley is riding on the street.

We’re so glad you’re here tonight, with or without a baby, and though it might be presumptuous, I would say that all of us are here tonight because of a baby. You might disagree with that. Maybe you’re here because your mom made you come. Maybe you’re here because you miss your mom or another beloved person has passed, and you know nothing would have delighted them more than sitting with you in church on Christmas Eve. Maybe you’re here because you love the ceremony of carols and candles. Maybe you’re here because it is a culturally appropriate thing to attend a church on December 24. And maybe, just maybe, you’re here because of The Baby. Whatever the reason for your presence here tonight, welcome.

Babies bring out the best and the worst in us. Some of it is biological, that protective urge we have for the young. In her book Small Wonder, Barbara Kingsolver tells the true story of a sixteen-month old toddler in Iran who wandered from home. For hours the villagers searched for the child. Eventually they found him, in a cave, in a cave that was the den of a bear. When they found the child, the mother bear was nursing the baby and protecting him from the intruders in her home. As Kingsolver writes, “What does it mean? How is it possible that a huge, hungry bear would take a pitifully small, delicate human child to her breast rather than rip him into food? … You could read this story and declare “impossible,” even though many witnesses have sworn it’s true. Or …you could think of all that and say, Of course the bear nursed the baby. He was crying from hunger, she had milk. Small wonder.”

Babies do that to us – draw maternal instincts from women and men and even wild animals. Babies do that to us – unless we’re on a six-hour cross-country flight and we’re sitting next to one who is crying, or spitting up, or needs a diaper change when the “fasten seat belt” light is shining. They bring out the best and the worst in us, and the Christ Child is no different.

The Christmas story is perfect, in a way: a simple story with stock characters, all the wonder and exhaustion a newborn brings, cute farm animals flanking the Holy Family. And this child, lying in a manger, this child who brings out the best in us – all our hopes, all our graces. But for some this child is neither blessing nor annoyance but a threat. Kings want him dead. Governors will want him tried and crucified. This child represents not innocence but power and an end of the old regime. So much on a little baby’s shoulders; thank heavens babies are strong.

But the point of the Christmas story is not the strength of the Christ child. Really, the point of the Christmas story is just the opposite: that God, the Omnipotent Creator, came to earth as a baby – a helpless, wee little baby. That, in the words of the apostle Paul, God chose what was weak and foolish to confound the strong and the wise. That God became as vulnerable as an infant so that God might know what it meant to be human.

I think about that bear in the story Barbara Kingsolver tells, if in a way we’re not a bit like that bear when it comes to the infant Christ: wild, in a way, ferocious in our limited humanness, mistrusting of others, and yet innately aware of our job to protect this little life. But God needs no protecting; it is we who need God.

When I was younger, living in my parents’ home or visiting them at Christmas, I used to hide the baby Jesus in our family nativity. He would show up in the middle of the centerpiece on the dining room table, or on top of the paper towel roll, or sometimes in the junk drawer that we all have in the kitchen. It drove my mother crazy, especially when my siblings and in-laws joined in in the game. I know there are some people who don’t set baby Jesus in the nativities until Christmas Eve, but that’s not what this was about. It was about mischief, and having fun trying to find where someone hid Baby Jesus, and (truth be told) about making my poor mom just a little more frazzled at Christmas.

But I wonder if maybe in another way we hide the baby Jesus. If we looked for him, could we find him in the manger, or is he somewhere else? Have we hidden him, or has he left his usual place so that he can go out to meet us where we are? He goes out to us, confined not within the walls of a stable or even a church, but to places where no one would expect a baby much less a savior. He goes to the dusty corner of a funeral chapel, where we sit rent from grief. He goes to the tents of refugees in camps that look like cities, there amid those who must find a new home. He goes to wait in line for a bowl of soup, or a pair of warm socks. He goes to the stoop where children won’t sit for fear of being victims of a drive by shooting. He goes to the prison cells where the guilty wait for nothing. He goes to the ICU room where a beloved lies unconscious and unrecognizable because of all the tubes and machines. He goes to houses that don’t know his name.

He leaves the place we expect to find him so that he might find us.

A physician friend of mine and I were talking about biology, about how extraordinary conception and birth are on a purely scientific level. They are near-miracles, given all the things that need to happen in order for life to begin. My friend commented that labor is hard, not just hard for the mother, but for the baby as well. I wonder if labor was hard for God. I wonder if it was hard to put on the mantle of flesh and bone, to limit speech to mere cries and mews, to become small and soft. It was a labor of love, of course, for God to become a human child, sent to our dens where each day we choose to seek this God, or not. And if we choose not to seek, not to follow, if we leave and wander off, we are neither lost nor hidden. We are found and loved.

May the Christ Child bless you, and find you, and know you. Amen.

In Praise of Church Musicians

December 23, 2013December 18, 2014 / Beth Merrill Neel / 3 Comments

Yesterday afternoon I was getting out of my car in the church parking lot, there to go Christmas caroling to some of our homebound members. A parishioner was getting into his car, having finished up a little celebration of some sort or another. He commented that I was back after a busy morning, and said he wondered when we clergy types get to worship and soak in the beauty and meaning of Advent and Christmas.

That was kind of him, but he is a kind person so I expect nothing less from him. I told him that we find ways, that when someone else is preaching or praying, or when the choir is singing, we let go of all the leader-stuff we’re supposed to be done and find a tidbit of worship.

Truth be told, pastors have it a whole lot easier than church musicians. (Disclaimer: my brother is a church musician, and a university music professor, and conducts lots of choirs, so I am a little biased about this whole thing.)

Very very few church musicians have just one job; very few churches can afford a full-time director of music or organist or choir director who gets a good salary and full benefits. Most church musicians have at least three jobs, differing choirs, and December becomes a weary blur of concerts and recitals and eggnog (if they’re lucky.)

I have been blessed to work with amazing church musicians. Just yesterday, our choir sang one of my favorite pieces of music – Chesnokov’s “Salvation Is Created” – as the prelude, followed by an incredible a cappella anthem, with drums, the African “Betelehemu”, followed by a Rutter anthem using the words of a 16th century poem, followed by a beautiful choral response to the Welsh tune Ar Hyd y Nos. As if that weren’t enough, our organist and assistant organist played a four-hand, four-foot postlude. Really, who needs a sermon when you can have all of that?

So today, I tip my hat, I bow, and I thank all the church musicians, and special nod to those with whom I have worked over the years, and to the one I have known my whole life: Allen, Tom, Emily, Allan, Will, Marion, Rudy, Liz, Chris, Lee, Frances, Paula, Todd, Jenee, Debbie, Jeff, Michael, Leslie, Si, Linda, Anne, and my dear Tommy: thank you for making happen what the mere spoken word cannot. Thank you for reminding us that the morning stars sang together at the beginning of all things. Thank you for sharing your talent, for the countless hours, and the patience, and the sheer endurance of it all. Come the 26th, put your feet up and rest, for heaven’s sake!

Gloria in excelsis Deo!

Haunted

December 2, 2013 / Beth Merrill Neel / 3 Comments

Today, after lunch after worship, I went to one of our senior living communities to preside over our monthly communion there. I love doing that – extending the morning’s table to a group of our saints who can’t make it to the church in the morning. For some, it’s too hard to physically get into the van that brings them to church, and then too hard to climb even a few stairs. For others, one hour-ish is just too long to sit in a less than comfortable pew with restrooms too far away.

So we take church to them, gladly. Two retired clergy who live in this place, and who worship with us regularly, organize the whole thing and I appreciate that. These two guys could easily play Statler and Waldorf – the old Muppets commentating in the balcony. They love to make cranky observations about church, but I’ve learned as I watch them minister to the saints at communion that you only have to dust off that fine powder of curmudgeon to discover some sweet and compassionate men.

When I arrived at our communion place, which is also where people gather to watch movies and assemble jigsaw puzzles, one of the deacons told me that a regular wasn’t feeling well enough to join the group; could we take communion to her? Of course. As we went to her room, we passed one room where a church member recently died. Farther down the hall, we passed the room where that woman’s husband died a year or so earlier. Other people now live in those rooms.

It was odd passing those rooms where I spent a few very intense hours as they lay dying. It’s odd that other people live there now. It’s odd that those place which were so holy during those dying days are now rooms for another purpose. Is the holinesss still there? Or did it leave with the soul of the departed?

After communion I stopped by the hospital to visit another member who has been unconscious in the intensive care unit for ten days now. She’s another saint of the church. At 93, she’s been taking French lesson. As I entered the ICU, I passed by the room where a member was recovering from a stroke. She has since passed, but I remember the conversations she and I had in that room, and the prayers shared there with family and friends.

So I’m feeling a bit haunted today; haunted by the memory of people who have died, haunted in spaces they inhabited, haunted not so much by their death but by their absence. It’s odd to feel haunted on the first day of Advent. Of all the things this season is about, mourning loss or even just remembering it doesn’t quite fit the bill. It’s a season of light and dark, of portents and hope, of God breaking into the world. It’s not about our breaking out of the world, or about emptiness.

But maybe it is. Maybe Advent is about loss, in a way – the loss of the old way of doing things, the loss of the old understanding of how God does things. And maybe it’s a little okay to be haunted by that.

Stuffed; or better, My Cup Runneth Over

November 28, 2013 / Beth Merrill Neel / 2 Comments

Early this morning I was on my way to the grocery store for eggs and Rainier beer, because it’s Thanksgiving, of course. As I drove along the familiar route, I looked up to the steeple of the Methodist church, and noticed a bird on top. It took me a moment, because I wasn’t sure if it was a real bird, perched atop the cross on top of the steeple, or some sort of weather vane thing. It was 7:15 on Thanksgiving morning and no one else was on the road, so I just watched for a few seconds until the bird moved its head, and the mystery was solved. Because I was driving toward what was left of the sunrise the bird was silhouetted, and I couldn’t tell what it was, but I guessed it might be a seagull. Interesting.

For the rest of the drive I thought about the bird on the cross on the steeple. Maybe it’s keeping watch, or having its own little vigil for all of its bird-kin who gave their lives today that we might enjoy turkey and dressing and the works.

I got to the store and immediately went to Starbucks, because Momma hadn’t had her morning coffee yet and it would just be better if I did. I got my eggs, and noted the Safeway does not sell Rainier beer, and picked up a few things to make a pumpkin cheesecake I hadn’t planned on baking. I thanked everyone at the store profusely for working on Thanksgiving. They were all quite gracious, and said no problem, that’s why we’re here. Nice.

On the way home I thought about food. I thought about my plan to eat so that I’m full but not stuffed, and my intention for exercise today. Then I thought about all the people who will be getting their Thanksgiving dinner at a shelter or soup kitchen, if they get any Thanksgiving at all. I thought about the cut in food stamps, and the food that flies off the shelves at our local food pantries, and maybe yours, too. I thought about the woman at my parents’ church who died recently, about her personal ministry of collecting food from local stores and driving it out to the fields to feed the migrant workers.

Last night at dinner our daughter asked about the Great Depression. She’s reading the American Girl “Kit” books, and wanted to know what a depression is. I told her that her grandparents remember the Depression, and how her great grandmothers would give food to anyone who came to the house who looked hungry.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, but it does stir stuff up, stuff about the privilege of having a table of friends or family to eat with, the privilege of drinking good wine and eating an ethically-raised turkey. It stirs up stuff about people who don’t have community or food; it stirs up stuff about the gloss of the first Thanksgiving story.

We’re joining friends whom we love for dinner today; I am grateful that they invited us. They’re not particularly religious people, so I imagine there will be no grace said at the table, which is fine, because I can say many graces of my own today. So here goes – and a happy Thanksgiving to you.

God of bounty, who calls us to see the scarcity;

may we be full today.

May we be full of your stuff, and not ours –

full of gratitude, of course;

full of mercy for the things that go wrong;

full of sorrow for those who hunger;

full of hospitality to those who are lonely;

May our cups runneth over.

God who loves the widows and orphans, who calls us to look far to the margins,

may we hunger today.

May we hunger for your graces, and not ours –

hunger for some justice;

hunger for some healing;

hunger for kindness, humility, and faith.

Hunger for our suffering kin who are so depleted they cannot even wail.

Our cups do run over, God, because you love us.

Let us fill each other’s cups today.

Amen.

The gathering

November 11, 2013 / Beth Merrill Neel / 4 Comments

Having just led my third memorial service in three weeks, and with All Saints still fresh in my mind, and with one of our members in her last few days, I’ve been thinking a lot about death and grief and community. I’ve also had a lot of stiffness in my “angel wing spots” – that place just inside the shoulder blades that get tense and knotty. I’m thinking it’s accumulated grief, having witnessed a lot of tears and soggy tissues lately.

I’m one of those who often says, “I don’t know what people who don’t have a church do when someone they love dies,” except now I do, because I’ve been a witness to that, too. The first of the recent memorials was for a woman whose husband described her as “a very lapsed Catholic.” Church is not his thing, and was not hers, but they needed a place to have a memorial for this woman who was an extraordinary advocate for justice in many ways. The church, full of faithed and non-faithed people, was packed, like Christmas Eve packed. People wept, and sang, and gave testimony to her life. I offered a prayer and a blessing.

The second memorial was for a woman who was a person of faith, but who had so many different communities of which she was a part – 12 Step, running, partying, engineers. Again the people gathered, some have nothing to do with God, some relying on their Higher Power, at least one who follows the path of Buddhism. God didn’t matter to so many of them, but gathering in community mattered very, very much.

So to my own question of “what do people who don’t have a church do when someone they love dies?” I now answer: they gather.

And sometimes they gather in a church, because (at least for me) churches still offer the witness of hospitality, opening our doors to those who grieve. We don’t ask for proof of baptism at the door; we don’t preach that those who don’t believe in Jesus will go to hell when they die. We open our doors. Because they – whatever they believe – need to gather, we do what we can – offer pews and organs and pianos and chairs, and tea and coffee and cookies. We have projectors and screens for their slide shows, and tables for photographs and flowers. We have deacons who pass out programs and hosts and hostesses who refresh the bowls of nuts.

I think people are surprised that churches do this sort of thing, at least in this neck of the woods. “You would let us have your service there? But my loved one wasn’t a member/ didn’t go to church/ maybe didn’t believe in God.” Yes, we would. That’s what we do. We witness to the hospitality of God by offering hospitality to the community.

In my All Saints sermon, I said “I imagine sometimes that the walls of the sanctuary have a patina, invisible layers of our songs and our prayers and the tears shed in this space.” And here’s the thing: some of those songs and tears have come from people who don’t believe in God, who are shocked to find themselves inside a church, amazed that they are even welcome in a church. But their tears and songs and silences are part of the patina too. They don’t have to believe in God in order to grieve the death of this person they loved.

There is a holiness in grief, and a privilege in witnessing it. But I would like a little less of it, please.

Alas.

My Favorite Sunday

October 28, 2013October 28, 2013 / Beth Merrill Neel / 4 Comments

The celebration of All Saints is, hands down, my favorite Sunday of the year. Not the Sunday before Christmas, not Easter, not Epiphany or any other, but All Saints. As the preacher of the day, I always want to capture this elusive feeling/image/sense I have of the day – something glowing, radiant; Ralph Vaughan Williams, gold and white, a packed house with nary a dry eye. Rarely does it come together that way, but we can have our aspirations.

The church I grew up in didn’t celebrate All Saints; few Protestant churches did in the ’70s and ’80s. My first experience of the holy day was at seminary, when in the chapel service a list of the dead was read and in the Latin American tradition, after each name was pronounced we all shouted, “Presente!” They are present. The saints have left, and haven’t.

This year, it’s a ten-day celebration of saints for me. It began last Saturday with a memorial service-ish for someone I’d never met, a woman who was not particularly Christian any more, whose friends filled just about every nook and cranny in our sanctuary (which seats around 500.) Last night, I led our evening worship service, borrowing elements from the Day of the Dead tradition. People were invited to bring photos of their beloveds who had died, or to write their names on a card, and to take the photos and cards to the communion table and decorate them with flowers and candles and chocolate and other things. Last night was no glowing, white and gold majestic thing. It was colorful, vivid, as down-to-earth as you can be while singing accompanied by guitar and accordion.

This coming Saturday I’ll preside over another memorial service, for a young woman who was a member of our congregation whom I knew a little. She was murdered a few weeks ago, having fallen in with the wrong sort. Shot in the head after a night at a strip club, she died alone in the middle of the night. I want to throw up, and scream, and go back in time to save her. But I can’t. What I can do is offer a place for her varied group of friends to come and remember her, to testify to the good and to the mess of her life, to build a community so that, at least for a few hours, some light will shine in the darkness that surrounds her death.

And then there’s this Sunday, my favorite, golden and gleaming (maybe). Good hymns, good liturgy, the roll of the deceased read and the opportunity to name loved ones who are gone. Communion, too. I love it, and hope to do it justice but know that really, that’s not up to me but the Spirit who usually does show up when She’s invited, and often shows up when She’s not.

Why do I love it, this day that can be so sad? I can’t get through “For All the Saints” when we sing that line, “through gates of pearl stream in the countless host.” Why do I love it? I think because it’s a thin place, All Saints Day. Earth and heaven breathe on each other like a mother and child snuggling at bedtime. It’s a thin line between the living and the dying, because all of us who are alive still face the mystery of death, and because those who have died linger among us in their gifts and legacies, and their eerie presence that we still feel at unexpected times.

All Saints Sunday is coming, and I am glad for that. In the meantime, there is a memorial service to plan and, I just learned, another one after that. There are committee meetings to prep for, and a poetry class that starts this Sunday. There’s a newsletter article to write, and one last pumpkin to carve at home. I might even put up a few cobwebs for Halloween, and I still need to buy candy.

In the meantime, life happens as it happened for all the saints. We feebly struggle, they in glory shine. That’s what I’m counting on, when my meantime ends and that thin line is crossed.

Pride and Humility, with maybe a bit of prejudice thrown in

October 15, 2013 / Beth Merrill Neel / 1 Comment

But maybe it’s humble pie…

So I was pretty sure I was about to get my gluteus maximus handed to me on a platter. Instead, I received a more gracious lesson in humilty than I could ever have imagined.

Someone else handed that part to me on a platter in a different matter, but that’s another story.

A friend of mine just posted “I’ve been learning a lot about humility lately” and I replied “me too.” I have a new-found respect for the beatitude about the meek, because if they’re anything like the few meek people I knew, I do believe they deserve the inheritance of this beautiful earth.

Maybe like a lot of people, I have a lumpy ego – strong in some areas, wilted in others. In my role as pastor, and particularly as female pastor, I’ve assumed a strong stance. Just because I’m a lady minister does not mean that I am a pushover, so I will assert myself in meetings and sermons and emails and all sorts of places. And sometimes I really am working from a strong place; sometimes I’m just pretending and praying that no one will pull the curtain and discover that, in fact, I am not Great and Powerful but just pretending to be.

I want to be strong, smart, articulate, assertive, on top of things. But I learned today that sometimes being those things is off-putting or discouraging to someone else. There I was, talking to someone whom the world might disregard, overlook, or write off, for reasons of prejudice I won’t go into. I was pretty sure this person was mad at me and was going to let me have it. So I had girded my loins and prayed my version of the Sinner’s Prayer: “Dear sweet Jesus, please help me to keep my mouth shut and help me to channel just a little bit of your grace. Amen.”

Well, Jesus didn’t need to help me keep my mouth shut because my Meek of the Earth person did. In an elegant, direct, kind way, this person helped me understand that when I put forth my Miss Smartypants self, I can be intimitidating. The wilted part of my ego finds it hilarious that I could intimidate anyone, but the reality check I had today confirmed it. At some point during our conversation I had the big a-ha. Oh, this is what Jesus means by the least of these. These are the ones we are to care about and to care for. I have gotten it wrong, wrong, wrong. It really is so not about me.

Anyway, I’m humbled today, and that comes from a strong place, if you know what I mean.

The Great Hall Curtains

October 12, 2013 / Beth Merrill Neel / Leave a comment

These aren’t our curtains, but they could be.

Last weekend I was at church for a dinner which was held in our Great Hall, a space that’s known as the fellowship hall in other churches. It’s a big room with a stage at one end and a kitchen at the other. Pretty much everything happens there – coffee hour after worship, Christmas pageants, chorus rehearsals, Qi Gong, youth fellowship, congregational meetings, congregational dinners. The whole schmear.

So I’m in the Great Hall, a place I’ve been hundreds of times, and once again I notice the curtains. Dear Lord in Heaven, they are in terrible shape. On some of them the rod is detaching from the wall, so they hang at a nice slant. On others, the curtain pull mechanism is broken and they look a bit like wilted lettuce (if lettuce were beige, in which case I wouldn’t eat it.) Most of them are stained, and a few have some holes in the lining. So I’m sitting at this dinner and make some sort of remark of exasperation about the curtains.

Not five seconds later, I regret the remark. I’m sitting next to a visiting Presbyterian minister who is one of our denomination’s missionaries working in Mexico along the Arizona border. He has come to speak at the dinner, to teach a class about his ministry and about our relationship with Mexico, and to preach on World Communion Sunday. I bet the last thing he noticed were the curtains. And I wonder if he heard my comment and thought, “with all the need in the world, with all the need I see on a daily basis, with all the need even in your own backyard of Portland, you’re worried about the curtains?”

He didn’t say that, mind you. He made a general comment about taking care of spaces and I, chagrined, quickly changed the subject. I wrestle with it – how do we spend our resources? On the one hand, I want to take pride in our facility, because it is used not only by the congregation but by a variety of groups in the community as well. A few weeks ago we held a memorial service there because there was a wedding in the sanctuary. Did the mourners notice the dilapidated state of things? On the other hand, there are people going hungry; isn’t it better that they are fed than that the curtains look nice?

I suppose it’s good to struggle, but today, I wish for an easier answer.

The Kindness of Strangers

October 4, 2013October 5, 2013 / Beth Merrill Neel / 6 Comments

So I’m at Target, because it’s my day off and one pair of jeans evidently isn’t sufficient for our second grader. Because I have been very, very good at Target, and bought only two pairs of size 6 pants and one package of trouser socks (as opposed to $150 worth of stuff I don’t need) I treat myself to Starbucks which, quite conveniently, is right there in the Target.

The woman ahead of me in line is chatting up quite a storm and I keep telling myself “this extra minute she’s taking will not throw off your entire day’s schedule.” I breathe in through my nose and breathe out through my mouth. I imagine I am one with the universe, but I know this is a lie, because really, all I want is my skinny latte, thank you very much. There’s only one thing standing between me and my latte, and that is this chatty woman.

She finishes her order, then turns to me and says, “Would you mind signing a birthday card for a complete stranger? My best friend is stuck in a hotel room all by herself on her birthday and she’s going through a nasty divorce and I thought this card signed by random people would cheer her up.” I say yes, and get my comeuppance for my impatience. The Universe is right more often than I am. We meet at the pick-up counter, and I have plenty of time to sign the card, because her mocha latte with four pumps of peppermint is taking a long time. While we wait, she asks another few folks to sign the card, and then leaves.

I’m still waiting for my drink, but I notice she is on her way out the door without her Minty Minty Special, so I go after her and ask if maybe she would like her drink. She smiles, and makes that face I make at least three times a day – I believe we call that “chagrin” – and I get my latte and go on my merry way.

That was a kind thing for her to do – to picture her friend ordering room service in her jammies, all alone on her birthday in some generic hotel room and to want her not to feel sad. She put herself out there, a little bit, risked some foolishness so she might cheer up her friend. I’ve always appreciated the kindness of strangers; I haven’t depended on it, but I do appreciate it.

So I’ve been wondering how I can be kind to our congressmen and women right now. Really, they are strangers to me. Our congressman attends our Christmas Eve service, but other than a handshake, I don’t know him. I don’t know any of these people duking it out at the capitol. I know what I think of them, especially those on the other side of the aisle than mine. But this little voice – maybe it’s Jesus – keeps tickling my brains saying, “You have to be kind to strangers. And you have to love your enemies.” Sigh. Why does Jesus have to make everything so hard?

So I guess I have to pray for all those people, the red state people and the blue state people. (Honestly, I can never remember which is which.) I’m pretty sure I’m not supposed to pray for God to change them, but I think I’m on the right track by asking God to help them. I’ll pray for Pam, alone in a strange city in a Hyatt on her birthday. I’ll pray for her friend, too, because she pretty much made my day.

Here’s to some kindness all around.

For the rain it raineth every day

September 30, 2013 / Beth Merrill Neel / 4 Comments

Long ago, while studying the Hebrew scriptures in seminary, I was more than a little bored while we were in the middle of 1 & 2 Chronicles and their fully detailed description of building the temple in Jerusalem. Feel free to read 2 Chronicles 3-6 if you want to get a sense of this. Anyway, dear Marv Chaney noted our rolling eyes and yawns, and said something like this:

“Surely these details are abundant, but I tell you, some day when you’re the pastor of a church and you’re building a new sanctuary, you will want to fill me in on all the details of the plans.” Yeah, right, I thought, little knowing that in my first call, we would remodel the sanctuary; in my second call, we would build an entirely new sanctuary/office/fellowship hall; in my third call, we would remodel the kitchen and fellowship hall; in my present call, we are figuring out what to do with this building which of late has sprung a few leaks.

When I went into ministry, I did not realize I was signing up for building management. I wasn’t, of course, but…. We have really, really competent lay folk – architects and engineers and interior designers and contractors – who are able to make informed decisions, and building and custodial staff who deal with the nuts and bolts of our physical plant. But still, hundred-year-old buildings, like hundred-year-old people, require a lot of care. So while over the past few months we’ve talked about accessibility and deferred maintenance and improvements, and while in the last week we’ve dealt with significant water damage caused by rain during a re-roofing project, I’ve been a bit convicted by something Frederick Buechner once said in an interview with The Christian Century.

“I say the best thing that could happen to your church is for it to burn down and for all your fax and email machines to be burned up, and for the minister to be run over by a truck so that you have nothing left except each other and God.” (9/18/02)

There are days. There are those days when I wish we didn’t have a building to care about. But then I remember the holiness of a church building and of our church building. WIthin these walls people have seriously mourned, and riotously praised. Within these walls the Spirit has led people to join the family of God. We’ve broken bread and shared the prayers of broken hearts. We have sung, and those songs still linger like incense among the rafters. The church building is a holy place, not because of the cross or pulpit or stained glass, but because in the building God and humans have run into each other and laughed with amazement at it all.

So I guess I’m both resigned and grateful to have this building to take care of. And there will always be something to take care of, because as Feste sang in Twelfth Night, “the rain it raineth every day,” or the boiler will be on the fritz, or a toilet will overflow. But I would appreciate it if God would stop sending the rain our way so that we can mop things up and get on with the work of ministry.

Hold Fast to What Is Good

A blog and some art and some liturgy