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April 2019

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In Weekly Update

Atonement

Making Meaning of a Grisly Death

Tim: I trust you had a blessed Easter

Shea: It was a very rich time of sacred reflection, followed by celebration. And you?

Tim: I experienced the same thing. In my reflection, though, I kept my eye on our new series, “Once, For All: Reconsidering Atonement.” Particularly during the Maundy Thursday and Good Friday services, I was struck with a notion. The grisly death of Jesus—along with the flagrant injustices that enabled his execution—was so traumatic his followers are still struggling to process what really happened over 2000 years later. It’s become a fixation of sorts.

Shea: Trying to make meaning of the cross is Christianity’s greatest obsession. We want all the pieces to fall into place so everything makes sense. But they refuse to go that way. For example, if we sanctify the crucifixion as “God’s redemptive plan,” we sanctify the violence and humiliation Jesus endured as divinely ordained. That doesn’t work.

Tim: No, it doesn’t. There’s also the harrowing moment when Jesus realizes he’s lost touch with God. “Why have you abandoned me?” he cries out. But has God abandoned him? It would seem just when Jesus is most vulnerable God’s presence would be most present—if what we say about God is true.

Shea: Many suggest God turns looks away because the sin Jesus carries is too horrible for God to behold. But that reassigns blame for Jesus’s murder. It’s no longer the corrupt powers of his day who perpetrate this inhumane act. It’s we who bear responsibility. That’s a big leap without much to back it up.

Tim: But there are many scriptures that implicate us in this drama. Paul tells the Romans, “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8).

Shea: The unconditional grace evidenced in Jesus’s submission to death reaches us despite our separation from God. That’s true. But remember Paul sets that idea up with, “God demonstrates God’s own love for us…” He never suggests we’re to blame. That flies in the face of his assertion there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Rom. 8:1).

Tim: The cross provides freedom from guilt and shame. Yet we keep trying to turn the particular trauma of Jesus’s death into a universal blame game. God becomes the punisher. Spilled blood and torn flesh turn Jesus into a vicarious victim. Now we get into a very difficult spot where we begin to equate an unjust execution with ancient animal sacrifice rituals—trying to read sacred meaning into a traumatic event metaphorically, never asking if the metaphor works.

Shea: And ignoring the fact that the tradition we draw on—Judaism—expressly forbade human sacrifice, which raises all kinds of warning signs.

Tim: So how do we make meaning of the cross?

Shea: We start where Jesus started, with the Kingdom of God. Jesus dies because his commitment to God’s reign puts him at odds with a corrupt dictatorship. He submits because he knows something that his executioners can’t imagine. The real story happens when he destroys the hold that sin and death has on us all. Yes, the death is horrific. But it’s not the point. The rising is what this story is really about.

Tim: That will preach, my friend! You’ve given us a great start to a very complex subject. I’m really excited to see where these discussions lead us!

Don’t miss this three-part study, “Once, For All: Reconsidering Atonement,” every Thursday evening at 7:30 CDT. You can join us in person at Pilgrim Congregational Church (460 Lake Street, Oak Park; Green Line: Ridgeland) or online at FB 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

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.

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In Weekly Update

Growing Edges

Experiencing “the Other” as Ourselves

Tim: We’re coming to the end of our time with Howard Thurman.

Shea: You’re never really done with him. He sort of gets into your system—

Tim: He’d call it your “consciousness”—

Shea: Yes, he gets right in the middle of how you think about and view your life…

Tim: And long after you’ve put the book down you can hear him in the back of your mind.

Shea: That’s by intention, I think, because Thurman is pretty adamant that spiritual life is lived in community. It’s a collective kind of consciousness that relies on our awareness of each other in order to shape an accurate understanding of how God works in the world.

Tim: In our last sequence of readings—from day 31 on to 40—he keeps returning to a theme: becoming fully human depends on our ability to experience others as fully human. This is particularly important when we encounter folks who don’t resemble us. Zeroing in on their humanity keeps us in touch with our own humanness.

Shea Thurman calls this a “growing edge.”

Tim: And we want to thank him for that, because it’s a powerful reminder that we’re never fully finished, there’s always more…

Shea: Because God is all about more—abundance is God’s M.O. Just when we’re sure we’re at our limit—

Tim:  When it feels like there’s nothing more we can do, there’s nothing left to discover, there’s not another way for God to surprise us—

Shea: Just when we’ve run out, there’s a new growing edge, a new area to explore and learn and find out what God is able to do in us.

Tim: How does scripture describe it? God is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all we can ask or think according to the power that works in us (Eph. 3:20). We can never run out of growing edges!

Shea: Yet Thurman wants us to understand that being our most human is how we recognize the humanness of those around us. And in that humanity we catch glimpses of the Creator who makes all things possible.

Tim: It’s a powerful idea, especially in the way it holds everything in place: humanity opens us up to God, openness to God alerts us to the humanity in others. I’m so curious about where this conversation is going to go on Thursday night.

Shea: Me too! It’s going to be a great conclusion to what has been a very powerful Lenten series. You don’t want to miss it!

Join us this Thursday as we conclude our Lenten conversation with the help of the great 20th century pastor, activist, and mystic Howard Thurman. We meet at 7:30pm in the Resource Room of Pilgrim Congregational Church, 460 Lake Street, Oak Park or online at FB Live. See you this week!

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

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.

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In Weekly Update

Balance

When the Bubble Bursts

Shea: Our Lenten journey with Howard Thurman takes us into some very interesting territory as Thurman shifts focus to equilibrium and arrives at an illuminating vision of spirituality.

Tim: I’m very curious to see where you’re going with this.

Shea: When I hear people characterize themselves as “spiritual” (often with “but not religious” tagged on), I sense many of them imagine spirituality as a bubble that shields them from life’s complexities. Spirituality is imagined as a retreat rather than an opening to meaningful engagement.

Tim: A lot of Christians turn their faith into a hideaway. Vital practices like prayer and study become escape mechanisms. As the old adage goes, they become so spiritually minded they’re no earthly good.

Shea: I’m convinced Thurman would contest this kind of “spirituality” as not spiritual at all.

Tim: So how would he define spirituality in relationship to everyday living?

Shea: Here’s a little of what he says, “All the negative things are present… But there is something more, there is strength, power… a kind of concomitant overflowing of creative energies” that demand self-honesty.

Tim: He’s talking about balance, learning to take the bitter with the sweet.

Shea: So many folks are devastated when their spiritual bubble bursts… when the hard truths of life intrude on their nirvanas. I’ve seen them fall apart in all kinds of ways. Some question God’s justice: how can God allow this? Others give up on God entirely. Still others become so shaken they give up on life itself.

Tim: Thurman sees balance as a survival skill.

Shea: Slightly paraphrasing, he refers to this as “the ability to bring ourselves, our will, our feelings, our very thoughts and impulses under the synthesizing scrutiny of God.”

Tim: “The synthesizing scrutiny of God”—that’s quite a phrase! What does he mean?

Shea: He’s telling us balanced living isn’t about keeping negativity out; that’s a futile endeavor that he disdains as “flesh.” A genuinely spiritual approach integrates all of life—

Tim: Or, in Thurman’s terms, synthesizes it with God’s help—

Shea: Exactly! All of experience can become useful when we leave the “either/or” concept of balance to embrace an “all of it” approach.

Tim: I love this! It’s a hard idea for us, though, as we’re preconditioned to think in binaries.

Shea: That’s right. And Thurman wants none of that! It turns out that Jesus wasn’t a fan of binaries either!

Tim: We’ll dig into these big ideas in this week’s conversation. It’s going to be exciting!

Join us each Thursday in Lent as we delve more deeply into our spiritual lives with the help of the great 20th century pastor, activist, and mystic Howard Thurman. We meet each week at 7:30pm in the Resource Room of Pilgrim Congregational Church, 460 Lake Street, Oak Park or online at FB Live. See you this week!

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

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.