Monthly Archives

July 2018

admin
In Weekly Update

Time

Paying Attention to the Sacred

Tim: Lately I’ve been thinking about how easily Mark’s writer commands our attention. He (or she—I love that we’ll never know who wrote this text) gets us so wrapped up in what’s happening we don’t really notice when the story shifts.
Shea: So true. The last section of our study is a great example. Jesus comes down from the Mount of Transfiguration, travels through Galilee, walks south through Judea and ends up in Jericho. When this week’s study opens, he’s within shouting distance of Jerusalem. Now ask me what’s so odd about this.

Tim: I’m game. Tell me.
Shea: Seen any scribes and Pharisees lately? In the early days, up in the northern provinces, it felt like Jesus couldn’t do anything without drawing their criticism. Now he’s down in their ‘hood and they’re nowhere to be found.

Tim: I never thought about that! That might cause the disciples to think they’re out of harm’s way. Taking Jesus’s enemies offstage for a while surely adds to the suspense. We know something’s brewing. Then, when Jesus goes into Jerusalem, it’s clear he’s intent on getting his adversaries’ attention. He’s pushing all the right buttons at the right time.
Shea: And time is really the key here. No other Gospel pays so much attention to time. Mark’s writer is highly attuned to days and seasons and even hours.

Tim: Which is a very Jewish idea.
Shea: Time is sacred in Judaism, because it signifies many things that cannot ever be forgotten.

Tim: Such as?
Shea: Life is a journey through time and the collective memory of the community is bound to time. That makes every moment a gift and every day is a treasure. The Sabbath and the Holy Days place specific demands that unite everyone in time. So here we have Jesus riding into town—staging a very peculiar, highly effective mockery of Roman power—at a very particular moment in the life of nation, when Jerusalem is overrun with visitors and imperial bigwigs. After that, all bets are off.

Tim: This time is going to be different, very different.
Shea: Better believe it. By the time this week is over, nothing will be the same. In the meantime, the text calls us to think more deeply about time, to account for our time, to understand what time really is and what it means. As Christians, we remember this part of the gospel as “Holy Week.” But I think we might want to be a little more attentive to how Mark uses this narrative to turn our attention to time. There’s something there for us, I think.

Join us this Thursday at L!VE Café, 163 S. Oak Park Avenue in Oak Park. Doors open at 7:00p, the study begins at 7:30p. If you can’t be with us in person, join us via Facebook Live.

We need your help!

As we think about the future of Gather, please let us know what gifts you bring and would like to share with the community. There are many roles that have to come together to make Gather happen every week. This includes setup, technical support, worship, managing handouts and information, coordinating drinks, and teardown. We need your help. Please let us know what type of service you’d be interested in!

Watch God Work,
Tim & Shea

Summer is the perfect time for a “walking tour” of Mark’s Gospel. The oldest and shortest of the Gospels, Mark is full of amazing details that capture the life and ministry of Jesus in fascinating ways. Mark’s Jesus is a man on a mission without much patience for folks who can’t keep up. He says exactly what’s on his mind. And the writer tells the Jesus story in an action-packed style overflowing with mysterious touches. Why is there no Christmas chapter? Why is Jesus so tough on the disciples? Why can’t they see who he really is? Why are the women afraid to tell the news of the Risen Christ? And what’s up with that naked man in Gethsemane (among other peculiarities)?
Join us every Thursday from June 7-August 30, as we spend the summer touring Mark’s Gospel. It will be a trip well worth taking!

COMING SOON!

Sunday, August 19: Gather will gather at Scoville Park to join our neighbors at a free concert. These concerts are always a joy and are designed to be family friendly events. So don’t miss this opportunity to mix and mingle with the fine folks of Oak Park. The concert begins at 5:30
_____
August 23-25 the Fellowship of Affirming Ministries Mid-West Regional Conference and Workshops will be held at Pillar of Love Fellowship United Church of Christ. On Sunday, August 26, Gather will join churches from across the Midwest to celebrate Pillar’s 15th Anniversary, with our own praise and worship team helping lead the service and Bishop Yvette Flunder delivering the sermon. This is not something you want to miss. Make sure you mark these dates! (See poster below.)

As we prepare to become a vibrant worshipping community, we invite you to enjoy a Spotify playlist that captures the kind of worship we hope to embrace. Give it a spin while you’re driving. Make it your workout jam. Add it to your devotional time. Most of all, feel yourself becoming part of a sacred village of believers who love their God and one another!
Check out the Gather Worship Playlist here.

admin
In Weekly Update

Tough Questions

God’s Vision and Our Vanity

Shea: We’ve come a long way in our study of Mark’s Gospel, from the exciting early days of the Jesus Movement when miracles were happening all the time with the only complaints coming from the religious establishment.
Tim: Of course, we know what’s going on there.

Shea: Jesus is a real threat to them, not only in terms of his popularity. But his theology—his kingdom of God idea—poses a big problem, because God’s kingdom is beyond their control.
Tim: It’s mustard seed logic. The movement is going to take root in unlikely places, spread wherever it wants to go, and in the process it’s upsetting all the order the Pharisees and priests and scribes have worked so hard to create. All their vain attempts at piety and purity are going sideways.

Shea: For starters, Jesus is including everyone: Jews, Gentiles, men, women, adults, children, all religions, clean, unclean—the list goes on and on. What’s more the cancer of Roman imperialism is being contested. Longstanding rules and taboos are getting debunked. Now with Jesus heading for Jerusalem, Mark is building up to the big showdown. And it will not be pretty.
Tim: No, it won’t. So far, Jesus has been able to control the violence. Violent people have found freedom. Violent diseases have been cured. Violent storms have been calmed. Now Jesus informs his followers he will confront a violence so deadly it will put him in the grave. Temporarily, he says. But it will look like death and evil get the upper hand.

Shea: It’s hard for people to understand this, because resurrection is an abstract concept for them. It’s will be tough.
Tim: With the ministry literally going south there are a whole lot of tough questions to struggle with. I like your point last week about the blind man who doesn’t see clearly at first. Very little of what’s going on is clear anymore and the disciples do what many do when they don’t know what’s going on: they jockey for position. They’re looking for security and they can’t find it.

Shea: They say vanity is rooted in insecurity…
Tim: That’s why Jesus starts talking about children. “God’s kingdom belongs to people who are like children,” he says. Young people know how to tap into God’s vision. Experiencing everything for the first time disables their vain impulses. They have the kind of clarity Jesus wants his followers to have—a kind we need, particularly now, when clarity is in very short supply.

Shea: Hopefully we’ll get some this week.
Tim: First we’ll pray, then we’ll prepare, and finally we’ll see!

Join us this Thursday at L!VE Café, 163 S. Oak Park Avenue in Oak Park. Doors open at 7:00p, the study begins at 7:30p. If you can’t be with us in person, join us via Facebook Live.

We need your help!

As we think about the future of Gather, please let us know what gifts you bring and would like to share with the community. There are many roles that have to come together to make Gather happen every week. This includes setup, technical support, worship, managing handouts and information, coordinating drinks, and teardown. We need your help. Please let us know what type of service you’d be interested in!

Watch God Work,
Tim & Shea

Summer is the perfect time for a “walking tour” of Mark’s Gospel. The oldest and shortest of the Gospels, Mark is full of amazing details that capture the life and ministry of Jesus in fascinating ways. Mark’s Jesus is a man on a mission without much patience for folks who can’t keep up. He says exactly what’s on his mind. And the writer tells the Jesus story in an action-packed style overflowing with mysterious touches. Why is there no Christmas chapter? Why is Jesus so tough on the disciples? Why can’t they see who he really is? Why are the women afraid to tell the news of the Risen Christ? And what’s up with that naked man in Gethsemane (among other peculiarities)?
Join us every Thursday from June 7-August 30, as we spend the summer touring Mark’s Gospel. It will be a trip well worth taking!

COMING SOON!

Sunday, August 19: Gather will gather at Scoville Park to join our neighbors at a free concert. These concerts are always a joy and are designed to be family friendly events. So don’t miss this opportunity to mix and mingle with the fine folks of Oak Park. The concert begins at 5:30
_____
August 23-25 the Fellowship of Affirming Ministries Mid-West Regional Conference and Workshops will be held at Pillar of Love Fellowship United Church of Christ. On Sunday, August 26, Gather will join churches from across the Midwest to celebrate Pillar’s 15th Anniversary, with our own praise and worship team helping lead the service and Bishop Yvette Flunder delivering the sermon. This is not something you want to miss. Make sure you mark these dates! (See poster below.)

As we prepare to become a vibrant worshipping community, we invite you to enjoy a Spotify playlist that captures the kind of worship we hope to embrace. Give it a spin while you’re driving. Make it your workout jam. Add it to your devotional time. Most of all, feel yourself becoming part of a sacred village of believers who love their God and one another!
Check out the Gather Worship Playlist here.

admin
In Weekly Update

Transformation & Transition

Leaving the Secure Area

Tim: We’re halfway through our tour of Mark’s Gospel and things are about to get very serious.
Shea: Not that they haven’t always been serious, but you’re right. Up until now Jesus and his crew have focused their energy on the province of Galilee and surrounding Gentile region. Their encounters with religious and political toadies have been minor scuffles. Unlike John the Baptist, who paid for his activism by losing his head, the Jesus Movement has not yet gained the notoriety to put it in the crosshairs. All of that’s about to change.

Tim: Suddenly, it’s as if the light shifts, the music tenses up, and the scenes get longer, more complicated. The reader immediately senses something’s up.
Shea: Yes. Things get bumpy right off the bat. Jesus heals a blind man. But it takes two tries for the man to recover his sight. He also performs this miracle in private, away from the crowd. And he does something else we’ve not seen before. He spits in the man’s eyes!

Tim: That’s another move the Jewish authorities would revile as unclean.
Shea: You better believe it! From there, Jesus begins talking about his death, which puts everyone on edge. Peter rightly identifies Jesus as the Messiah but immediately gets into an argument about whether or not Jesus should risk dying.

Tim: The tension between them is galvanizing.
Shea: Jesus makes it very clear there’s a cost of discipleship. They’re going to pay dearly for this work.

Tim: So why do they stick with it?
Shea: Because they see and experience things no one else has ever witnessed. Take the Transfiguration, for example. There’s no way to explain what happens on that mountain. For centuries theologians have conducted a robust discussion about what it actually means. But, for all that it is and whatever else it might have meant to Peter, James, and John, we have to know it was life changing.

Tim: And timely, because the Transfiguration comes at the turning point, when Jesus focuses his attention on Jerusalem.
Shea: Exactly. The comforts of the provinces are a thing of the past. They’re going into the big city to confront the corrupt religionists of their time. It’s like those signs you see at the airport as you’re leaving the secure area. There’s no turning back now.

Tim: This is so exciting!!

Join us this Thursday at L!VE Café, 163 S. Oak Park Avenue in Oak Park. Doors open at 7:00p, the study begins at 7:30p. If you can’t be with us in person, join us via Facebook Live.

We need your help!

As we think about the future of Gather, please let us know what gifts you bring and would like to share with the community. There are many roles that have to come together to make Gather happen every week. This includes setup, technical support, worship, managing handouts and information, coordinating drinks, and teardown. We need your help. Please let us know what type of service you’d be interested in!

Watch God Work,
Tim & Shea

Summer is the perfect time for a “walking tour” of Mark’s Gospel. The oldest and shortest of the Gospels, Mark is full of amazing details that capture the life and ministry of Jesus in fascinating ways. Mark’s Jesus is a man on a mission without much patience for folks who can’t keep up. He says exactly what’s on his mind. And the writer tells the Jesus story in an action-packed style overflowing with mysterious touches. Why is there no Christmas chapter? Why is Jesus so tough on the disciples? Why can’t they see who he really is? Why are the women afraid to tell the news of the Risen Christ? And what’s up with that naked man in Gethsemane (among other peculiarities)?
Join us every Thursday from June 7-August 30, as we spend the summer touring Mark’s Gospel. It will be a trip well worth taking!

COMING SOON!

Thursday, July 19: We will have our second worship experience led by our “virtual pastor” Shea Watts. The music will be great. The Word will be powerful. And the fellowship will be outstanding. Invite some friends and join us!
_____
Sunday, August 19: Gather will gather at Scoville Park to join our neighbors at a free concert. These concerts are always a joy and are designed to be family friendly events. So don’t miss this opportunity to mix and mingle with the fine folks of Oak Park. The concert begins at 5:30
_____
August 23-25 the Fellowship of Affirming Ministries Mid-West Regional Conference and Workshops will be held at Pillar of Love Fellowship United Church of Christ. On Sunday, August 26, Gather will join churches from across the Midwest to celebrate Pillar’s 15th Anniversary, with our own praise and worship team helping lead the service and Bishop Yvette Flunder delivering the sermon. This is not something you want to miss. Make sure you mark these dates! (See poster below.)

As we prepare to become a vibrant worshipping community, we invite you to enjoy a Spotify playlist that captures the kind of worship we hope to embrace. Give it a spin while you’re driving. Make it your workout jam. Add it to your devotional time. Most of all, feel yourself becoming part of a sacred village of believers who love their God and one another!
Check out the Gather Worship Playlist here.

admin
In Weekly Update

Teachable Moments

Jesus and the Immigrant Mother

Tim: So we’re reaching the halfway point in our tour of Mark’s Gospel.
Shea: The Gospel moves so fast and draws so many contemporary parallels that our heads are spinning.

Tim: No kidding. The great theologian Karl Barth said you should study faith with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other, and our work in Mark has certainly validated that idea.
Shea: The issues Jesus confronted in his time continue to surface in our struggles today: empire, social indifference masked as religious piety, war on the sick and the poor, ethnic struggles and boundary issues, and questions about what defines authentic family.

Tim: Now this week, the timeliness is especially intense as we look at an immigrant mother who challenges Jesus’s xenophobia. That probably makes a lot of people uncomfortable—to think that Jesus had some rough edges that needed attention.
Shea: That’s right. Mark shows us what happens when Jesus encounters a foreign woman whose love for her daughter compels her to risk her own humiliation as she begs Jesus to reconsider his feelings about people who don’t belong to his tribe. She actually teaches Jesus how faith and inclusion are intertwined. “All” means all for her and Jesus learns that from their interaction.

Tim: Wait. Are you saying Jesus doesn’t know it all?
Shea: The idea of a “teachable moment” for Jesus, well, that upsets a whole lot of the perfection we place on him. We talk about Jesus being fully human and fully God. But we don’t allow him to have a fully human experience, which includes getting it wrong sometimes, discovering the full the scope of his ministry, and, as a human, learning what godly compassion is all about. His own people don’t get him. But this Syrophoenician, pagan, foreign mother, she sees all that Jesus can be for her and everyone like her. And it’s she who teaches Jesus in this moment.

Tim: A fully human Jesus, who needs to unlearn some of the prejudices and assumptions his culture has put into him—that’s powerful stuff.
Shea: He calls this desperate woman a dog!

Tim: Why would Mark’s writer include such a story? It’s not Jesus’s finest moment.
Shea: Mark wants to show us we all have some unlearning to do in order to be taught. And to think that we don’t suggests we think we’re better than Jesus.

Tim: Which clearly we’re not.
Shea: This moment is pivotal in Mark’s Gospel, because it comes just before all the attention turns to Jerusalem, where Jesus will confront, and be confronted by, the evils of empire and religious bigotry at their most powerful and blatant. He has some learning to do!

Tim: There’s even more to this story and we’ll unpack it all this coming Thursday night!

Join us this Thursday at L!VE Café, 163 S. Oak Park Avenue in Oak Park. Doors open at 7:00p, the study begins at 7:30p. If you can’t be with us in person, join us via Facebook Live.

We need your help!

As we think about the future of Gather, please let us know what gifts you bring and would like to share with the community. There are many roles that have to come together to make Gather happen every week. This includes setup, technical support, worship, managing handouts and information, coordinating drinks, and teardown. We need your help. Please let us know what type of service you’d be interested in!

Watch God Work,
Tim & Shea

Summer is the perfect time for a “walking tour” of Mark’s Gospel. The oldest and shortest of the Gospels, Mark is full of amazing details that capture the life and ministry of Jesus in fascinating ways. Mark’s Jesus is a man on a mission without much patience for folks who can’t keep up. He says exactly what’s on his mind. And the writer tells the Jesus story in an action-packed style overflowing with mysterious touches. Why is there no Christmas chapter? Why is Jesus so tough on the disciples? Why can’t they see who he really is? Why are the women afraid to tell the news of the Risen Christ? And what’s up with that naked man in Gethsemane (among other peculiarities)?
Join us every Thursday from June 7-August 30, as we spend the summer touring Mark’s Gospel. It will be a trip well worth taking!

COMING SOON!

This Thursday, July 12: After a slightly shortened worship/study experience we’ll hold a brief congregational meeting to take care of some pressing business. If you are a regular Gatherer please do your best to be there!
_______
Sunday, July 15: We’ll meet more of our Austin-Oak Park neighbors at one of the weekly concerts in Scoville Park, at the corner of Lake St. and Oak Park Avenue. Bring a blanket, some refreshments, and big smile as we introduce ourselves to the neighborhood. Concert begins at 5:30–let’s assemble around 5p. See you there!
_______
Thursday, July 19: We will have our second worship experience led by our “virtual pastor” Shea Watts. The music will be great. The Word will be powerful. And the fellowship will be outstanding. Invite some friends and join us!

As we prepare to become a vibrant worshipping community, we invite you to enjoy a Spotify playlist that captures the kind of worship we hope to embrace. Give it a spin while you’re driving. Make it your workout jam. Add it to your devotional time. Most of all, feel yourself becoming part of a sacred village of believers who love their God and one another!
Check out the Gather Worship Playlist here.

admin
In Weekly Update

Jesus, the Boundary Crosser

Embracing the Whole of Humanity

Shea: This week we’re looking at chapters five and six of Mark’s Gospel and I don’t know how else to say it except Jesus is crushing it.
Tim: The next two weeks give us some of the most famous miracles—feeding thousands of people (not once, but twice), curing a woman who’s been sick for 12 years, reviving a religious leader’s daughter and healing a pagan woman’s daughter, walking on water, and an exorcism that ends with 2000 drowned pigs. It’s all spectacular!
Shea: The earlier issues of clean and unclean, touchable and untouchable, who’s a sinner and who’s not, whether or not Jesus is crazy or possessed—none of the accusations hurled at him are sticking.
Tim: What’s more, we see a new pattern emerge with Jesus and his followers sailing back and forth across Lake Galilee. Mark’s writer cleverly uses geography to bolster the Gospels’ theme: the kingdom of God belongs to everyone.
Shea: When he’s on the west side of the lake, he’s talking to Jewish folks. But when he sails to the eastern shore he’s with Gentiles, folks who don’t worship the God of Israel, who don’t keep the Sabbath, who don’t obey all the clean and unclean rules that have occupied so much of the story up till now.
Tim: Yet the author is very careful to show us that what happens on the “Jewish” side of the lake also happens in the “Gentile” region. The mirroring is brilliant and the message is unmistakable.
Shea: Embracing the whole of humanity is Jesus’s mission. It’s central to God’s reign. And if we look at what he’s doing, the repentance Jesus calls for when he announces the kingdom of God is not a call for exclusivity, rigidity, piety, and other “religious” compulsions that cause so much pain. Jesus’s call is actually the opposite: to become more inclusive, more open-minded, more welcoming, and completely unconcerned about borders and boundaries, labels and locations.
Tim: How timely this lesson is right now! Jesus meets people in all kinds of trouble on both sides of the lake. On both sides, desperate parents whose children are endangered seek him out and Jesus is so moved by their faith he changes his policy to see the families are cared for. That alone should give us pause.
Shea: He also upsets an entire village when helping a deeply troubled man literally puts their pork-based economy under water. Something else we should think about, given our current proclivity to place financial gain over and above care for the neediest among us.
Tim: No amount of discomfort or disapproval can stop Jesus. In his mind, boundaries are for crossing, freedom is for taking, and the good news of the kingdom is for all people. And if we’re going to follow Jesus…
Shea: The road always takes us home, doesn’t it? “All” means ALL. Thursday night is going to be rich!

Join us this Thursday at L!VE Café, 163 S. Oak Park Avenue in Oak Park. Doors open at 7:00p, the study begins at 7:30p. If you can’t be with us in person, join us via Facebook Live.

We need your help!

As we think about the future of Gather, please let us know what gifts you bring and would like to share with the community. There are many roles that have to come together to make Gather happen every week. This includes setup, technical support, worship, managing handouts and information, coordinating drinks, and teardown. We need your help. Please let us know what type of service you’d be interested in!

Watch God Work,
Tim & Shea

Summer is the perfect time for a “walking tour” of Mark’s Gospel. The oldest and shortest of the Gospels, Mark is full of amazing details that capture the life and ministry of Jesus in fascinating ways. Mark’s Jesus is a man on a mission without much patience for folks who can’t keep up. He says exactly what’s on his mind. And the writer tells the Jesus story in an action-packed style overflowing with mysterious touches. Why is there no Christmas chapter? Why is Jesus so tough on the disciples? Why can’t they see who he really is? Why are the women afraid to tell the news of the Risen Christ? And what’s up with that naked man in Gethsemane (among other peculiarities)?
Join us every Thursday from June 7-August 30, as we spend the summer touring Mark’s Gospel. It will be a trip well worth taking!

As we prepare to become a vibrant worshipping community, we invite you to enjoy a Spotify playlist that captures the kind of worship we hope to embrace. Give it a spin while you’re driving. Make it your workout jam. Add it to your devotional time. Most of all, feel yourself becoming part of a sacred village of believers who love their God and one another!
Check out the Gather Worship Playlist here.