Monthly Archives

January 2020

HIGH NOON

Matthew, Mark, and Luke—often known as the “Synoptic” writers because they follow a similar synopsis of Jesus’ ministry—are masters of the short form. In the space of a few verses they tell big stories that end clearly and cleanly. A person crosses Jesus’s path, his/her life is forever changed, and both parties move on. (Often, to make a point about how transformative these events are, nearby hyper-religious gatekeepers grumble that Jesus isn’t obeying the rules.)

John’s Gospel is different. This writer loves lengthy discussions about theology and life and who Jesus is and what it means to know God. Indeed, this Gospel’s central happening is a four-chapter dinner conversation known as the “Final Discourse,” because it’s Jesus’s last time with his followers before he’s executed. But even this talk isn’t all that unusual. John’s writer sets this trend in motion with a lengthy chat between Jesus and a religious leader named Nicodemus, immediately followed with a lengthy talk with a Samaritan woman whom no one else seems very interested in. (And in the latter case, the fanatics who get upset with Jesus are none other than his disciples.)

The Samaritan story is a fascinating tale that renders many layers of meaning. In the course of what sounds like a fairly innocuous back-and-forth about faith traditions many important topics surface: worship, inclusion, gender, prejudice, community, and social inequities to name a few. Underneath it all, however, is a bigger question about religion and spirituality and how they work together. To underscore the importance of this conversation, the writer sets it at high noon.

If asked directly, the woman might describe herself as “religious but not spiritual.” In our current environment—when religion regularly gets weaponized to abuse people, including children—people justifiably look through jaundiced eyes and often respond, “I’m spiritual but not religious.” Either way, we end up with the same result: an incomplete picture of what religion and spirituality truly are.

Can you be spiritual but not religious? Yes. Or religious but not spiritual? Absolutely. But will either result in wholeness and meaning? Absolutely not. By the time Jesus leaves the Samaritan woman she’s figured this out and her life is transformed. Not only that, but much that’s gone missing is restored. Most notably, she regains her voice in a community that stopped paying attention to her long ago.

This coming Sunday, February 2, Gather will take a closer look at this woman’s story during our February worship experience, “Spiritual but not & Religious.” Plan now on spending a time with us. You’ll be glad you did!

If you’ve not been part of a Gather worship time, you’re in for a joyful and moving experience. We begin at 5:00p CST. If you’re unable to be with us in person, you can find us online via Facebook Live. See you then!

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.

SEEKERS

I’m sometimes embarrassed to find I’m not up to date on religious slang, particularly of the hipster megachurch sort. Not long ago someone characterized a mutual friend as a “seeker”—meaning someone who’s not too religion-friendly, but spiritually curious. I liked that. But I was a little surprised to learn there are entire congregations who identify as “seeker churches,” suggesting they skew their worship, language, and affect in directions that soften boundaries between religious types and not-so-religious ones. I’m all for that. I think church has become so culturally bound with outmoded traditions and dogmas its decrepitude distorts any resemblance to Jesus’ ministry and early Christianity. But that’s another discussion for another time.

What interests me about the “seeker” designation is its surface deceptiveness. Is the seeker actively looking for faith or spiritual guidance? Or is he/she/they purposefully looking away from those goals to fashion something more amenable to their disengagement? To follow Jesus, regardless what your church experience may be, is to be engaged, committed to a life of prayer and fellowship, loving-kindness and social justice. Anything less is mere religion, regardless how “non-religious” it feels. (Yes, atheism and agnosticism are religious postures—another discussion we’ll take up some time.)

In the parable we’ll examine this coming Thursday night, Jesus has a very different idea about what makes someone a “seeker.” And, bluntly put, it’s someone willing to risk everything to gain the one thing he/she/they want most: life in God’s reign. In the parable, a gem merchant sells his entire inventory to purchase one pearl. Jesus says such a move is what the “kingdom of heaven is like.” That opens up all kinds of meaning and we’ll dig into what Jesus may be steering us toward this Thursday night. Don’t miss this conversation!

Join us this Thursday for our latest study in the “Kingdom Stories” series. We meet in person at 7:30p CST at Pilgrim Congregational Church, 460 Lake Street in Oak Park. Or you can find us online (in real time or later) 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

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.

RUNNING WILD

“The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed,” Jesus says in Matthew 13. Well, no big news there, especially for those who’ve grown up in church. But Jesus’s live audience probably scratched their heads and may have asked one another, “Did he say ‘mustard seed’?”

Yes, he did. And he also said the plant would grow as big as a tree, which would make it super-mustard, because the mustard plant most common in Palestine is more shrub than tree. Sometimes it grows to heights of about nine feet; but that’s highly unusual. More often, it’s about waist high. As a rule, the shrub isn’t sturdy enough to support nests; yet Jesus says this plant grows strong enough to house birds.

This week’s Gather Bible study focuses on a parable that, in its own telling, urges us to shed conventional thinking. “The kingdom is like a mustard seed,” ordinary and troublesome in many ways (see below). But in this parable, everything about the tiny seed becomes larger than life.

The exaggeration likely takes Jesus’s listeners aback. Nobody in first-century Palestine cultivated mustard because its extraordinary (and exasperating) ability to proliferate made it unmanageable. What’s more, once the mustard took root, it was impossible to get rid of. Planting mustard, as happens in the parable, is not anything a farmer would do, simply because his or her field would be overrun in no time. The grains and vegetables the farmer might be raising for profit very well could be choked out.

Jesus could have put it this way, “The kingdom of heaven is running wild. It will take over every place it’s planted. And it will grow into something bigger and stronger than anyone can imagine!”

That’s just the first layer in this amazingly short story (about 30 words) that has become foundational to our understanding of the Jesus movement. If we are “kingdom seed”—the medium by which the good news takes root and spreads—then we too must envision ourselves as running wild, spreading in places where we might not be welcome, feeling the stress of standing taller and stronger than those around us.

If we are like mustard, we are born to be wild, created to propagate more kingdom seed that spreads even farther afield. That’s why it’s futile to think we can confine God’s reign to one particular way of being or believing. It’s why so many faith communities get in trouble trying to keep the gospel tidy and flowery. By intention, the gospel is a problem! We are weeds and our home is the widest open fields where we can run as wild as we must to spread this spicy seed!

Join us this week as our Kingdom Stories series continues with a close look at the mustard seed parable. There’s much more to it! We meet at Pilgrim Congregational Church, 460 Lake Street, in Oak Park. If you’re unable to join us in person, you can meet us online 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

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.

MOVING FORWARD

Our Role in the Healing Process

“Do you want to get well?” Jesus asks in John 5. He’s speaking to a man who’s spent nearly 40 years waiting for a miracle that depends on meeting certain conditions. As longtime Gospel readers, we know that’s not Jesus’s M.O. When he’s in the mix healing doesn’t come with prerequisites. It happens when the people around Jesus choose wellness over infirmity. They do whatever it takes to get Jesus’s attention. They shout from the curbs. They push through the crowds. They create big ruckuses that embarrass the disciples. That’s why so many healing stories end with Jesus telling the cured individual, “Your faith”—that is, your trust and courage—“has made you well.”

But there’s often an interesting epilogue to these healing episodes. Many who receive their healing immediately move forward, telling folks what Jesus has done for them (even though Jesus seems to think their faith is the real hero) or going places they couldn’t access in their condition.

Sometimes Jesus gives them an extra nudge, instructing them to “show themselves” to the priests. This was a common practice in Jesus’s day because the Holiness Code set down in Leviticus barred people with illnesses of every kind from entering the house of worship.

What may have started as a public health measure escalated into a stigmatization of people with noticeable physical and mental disabilities: skin conditions, blindness, immobility, schizophrenia, bipolar disorders, and so on. Without access to the Temple, these people landed in the margins of society. So after their healing, the first thing they do is insist they have a right to belong, that social and religious confinements no longer apply, that they’re every bit as worthy as anyone else.

And the truth beneath all of this? They were never not worthy. Their healing enabled them to see what Jesus sees: people made in God’s image and likeness, worthy of the same respect and consideration we would give if God stood in our presence. (Which, when you think about it, is really what’s happening in these stories.)

So what about the fellow in John 5? Does he want to get well? He doesn’t say. Instead, he offers a lot of reasons why he’s not been able to get well for 38 years. (That should sound familiar to many of us who’ve struggled for a long time with our own issues.) In his case, Jesus commands him to move forward. “Walk!” Jesus says. The man finds the strength, courage, and determination to be healed. And what does he do next? He shows people how his life has changed.

Healing is about more than wellness. It’s about transformation, moving forward, insisting our worth is no less than any other person God made. Do we want to be well? It’s time to move forward!

Don’t miss this Sunday at Gather as we join together for a powerful worship experience focused on healing. We begin at 5p CST at Pilgrim Congregational Church, 460 Lake Street, Oak Park. If you’re unable to join us in person, you can find us online 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

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.