Join us each Thursday in February as we plug back into freedom with our new series, “Set Free to Be Free: Liberation Theology.” We meet at 7:30pm CST at Pilgrim Congregational Church, 460 Lake Street, Oak Park with live-streaming via FB Live.

Lead Us Not?

Tim: We’re wrapping up our look at the Lord’s Prayer and we’re ending on an unsettling note: “Do not bring us to the time of trail, but rescue us from the evil one.”

Shea: That’s the New Revised Standard Version. Most of us quote the King James’s “Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.” Either way, it makes you go, “Hmm…”

Tim: Why is that?

Shea: Asking God to refrain from leading us into trials and/or temptation goes against the grain of how many of us think and feel about God. Doesn’t God protect us from evil? Why wouldn’t God steer us from trouble and shield us from evil?

Tim: Great questions! But if the underlying theme of the Prayer is collaboration with God, could it be that Jesus and his students assumed the divine side of the partnership included guidance through trials and temptations.

Shea: Guidance, yes. But “lead us not”?

Tim: Remember the prayer is framed by two powerful moments in the Jesus story—one at the start of his ministry and the other in its final hours. Before Jesus declares God’s reign, Matthew’s writer says the Spirit leads him into the wilderness to be tempted. So there’s precedent for this. Then, on the last night of his human life, Jesus goes into Gethsemane, where he and his disciples are clearly tempted to submit to evil impulses.

Shea: One of them cuts off a guard’s ear, while another betrays Jesus.

Tim: Exactly. We get two very different pictures of being led into temptation. In the first, Jesus resists. In Gethsemane, Peter and Judas don’t. One turns out to be a self-destructive traitor. The other resorts to anger, deception, and lies. What’s more, violence is arises out of their actions.

Shea: Both get led into temptation. Both fail because they don’t resist.

Tim: Matthew also ties their failure back to prayer. Judas doesn’t even go to the garden to pray and Peter falls asleep when he should be praying. That’s why we embrace the prayer’s hope that we can resist evil and treachery, anger, deception and violence. Where one of these forces is present, the potential of the others is also there. That’s why scripture counsels us to avoid keeping evil in our hearts. If we give it room, it brings all kinds of malevolence with it.

Shea: Being led into times of trial is something we ask God to help us avoid. But when those moments come, we resist urges that would bring harm to others and ourselves.

Tim: Exactly. We’ll dig into this in more detail this Thursday evening. It will be a powerful conclusion to a very rich series!

Join us each Thursday in January as we deconstruct the prayer Jesus taught us pray in a new series, “66 Words: How the Lord’s Prayer Works and Why It Works.” We meet at 7:30pm CST at Pilgrim Congregational Church, 460 Lake Street, Oak Park Avenue with live-streaming via Facebook Live.

Ethics And Morals in the Prayer Of Jesus

Shea: This week we’re delving into one of your favorite subjects: bread in scripture.

Tim: I can’t wait. In the Bible, bread is always associated with divine provision. Manna falls from the sky. Ravens bring Elijah bread. The Gospels boast no less than accounts of Jesus multiplying a few loaves of bread to feed thousands of his followers.

Shea: And of course there’s the bread at the final dinner Jesus shares with his disciples.

Tim: Yes, that bread is also multiplied as we reach across the centuries to participate in the communal meal of bread and wine.

Shea: So when the Lord’s Prayer includes the petition “Give us this day our daily bread,” Jesus is keeping bread front and center. But I’m guessing something very particular is happening in the context of this prayer.

Tim: You would be correct. The petition for divine provision of bread evokes the memory of manna, even as it presages the meaning of the Eucharistic bread. Even so, this bread is also a politically charged subject, because it’s really about the distributive justice that characterized the Jewish ethic of Jesus’s time. He’s asking God to do what, ironically, God expects us to do—to provide for those in need, to ensure no one goes without. This idea is (forgive the pun) baked into the ancient consciousness, imbedded in Jesus’s culture since the time of Moses.

Shea: So what about forgiveness?

Tim: Note how specific Jesus is about forgiveness. In Matthew’s Gospel, it’s tied to debt. This also comes from the Law of Moses and it leads to liberation, since what Jesus asks God to do (and expects us to do) is liberate those who are enslaved because of need. Luke’s version uses “trespasses” which solves a different legal problem, but nonetheless is tied to freeing people from the consequences of their struggles. It’s a powerful idea, because it’s the moral code of Christianity in a nutshell.

Shea: Our moral obligation is the liberation of those who are indebted and/or in trouble because they’ve crossed boundaries. I see what you mean.

Tim: To see someone who’s oppressed or struggling and offer no help is immoral. It’s that basic. And we don’t condemn them. We forgive them, learning how to do what we ask God do for us. We work to make them whole, another financial term that Jesus was fond of, even as we ask God to restore our wholeness.

Shea: I can tell you’re all fired up and ready to get into this!

Tim: I sure am! This Thursday is going to challenge us in very real ways and I believe it’s going to bring us much needed insight and comfort!

Join us each Thursday in January as we deconstruct the prayer Jesus taught us pray in a new series, “66 Words: How the Lord’s Prayer Works and Why It Works.” We meet at 7:30pm CST at Pilgrim Congregational Church, 460 Lake Street, Oak Park Avenue with live-streaming via Facebook Live.

On Earth as It Is in Heaven

Shea: This series on the Lord’s Prayer may be the richest yet. People are talking about how much they’re enjoying it. Who knew there was so much wealth packed into those 66 words!

Tim: This week we hit full stride with “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Have you ever noticed how, when you’re at church and folks are reciting the prayer, it gets a little louder with that phrase?

Shea: Part of it is the poetry. The prayer starts to turn a corner right there. But I also think it’s the first phrase that most folks feel attached to. Everything before “thy kingdom come” focuses on God. When Jesus introduces this idea of “on earth as in heaven” we think, “Oh, this is about us!” So we give it extra gusto. We’re funny that way…

Tim: But is it really about us? We’re still talking to God about God, still speaking in the imperative tense, still petitioning God. At best we’re vessels for God’s use. Do you think folks assume the terrestrial reference is about us and the heavenly mention is all about God and not us? God is everywhere and wherever God is, heaven is there too. God is

Shea: I see what you did there. Hmmm. Asking God to bring God’s kingdom to life in the world is a powerful idea. Of course, the kingdom of God is central to Jesus’s theology and ministry—this notion of achievable perfection, wholeness that arises from justice and righteousness. And it seems Jesus wants us to envision its possibility as an ideal we can replicate.

Tim: But the kingdom is also relational; it comes to life in how we treat one another and our regard for God. The greatest commandments are at the heart of kingdom theology: love God entirely and love your neighbor as yourself. God’s will is always tangled up in our relationships with one another.

Shea: I agree! That’s why I love when folks drop the “g” from “kingdom” to pray for the coming God’s “kindom.” The image of a householder with many heirs permeates this prayer. Kinship is its heartbeat. We belong to God. God’s will is what God gives and how God leads. We’re not alone!

Tim: Never alone! Amen. This week’s lesson has life-changing potential.

Shea: Isn’t that what the Lord’s Prayer is supposed to do? Change us?

Join us each Thursday in January as we deconstruct the prayer Jesus taught us pray in a new series, “66 Words: How the Lord’s Prayer Works and Why It Works.” We meet at 7:30pm CST at Pilgrim Congregational Church, 460 Lake Street, Oak Park with live-streaming via Facebook Live.

The First Request

Shea: Continuing our conversation on the Lord’s Prayer, we come on the first request Jesus introduces, “Hallowed be your name,” or as the Common English Bible translates it, “Uphold the holiness of your name.” Interesting…

Tim: It’s easy to gloss over that when we pray this prayer. But its precedence in the prayer, coming at the top of the list of petitions, suggests we should slow down and give it closer consideration. What do you think is going on here?

Shea: Jesus is focusing first attention on God’s name, which was very important to first-century Jews. For Jesus’s students, God’s name was so sacred they refused to utter it. They wouldn’t even spell it out on paper, choosing instead to adopt a monogram—YHWH—that shielded God’s name from risk of being used frivolously.

Tim: Which goes back to the commandment that forbids taking God’s name in vain.

Shea: To this day, most Orthodox Jews won’t speak God’s name and if it needs to be represented in print, they render it as “G-d.”

Tim: Why so much concern about how we treat God’s name? It would seem our regard for God is more important than proper handling of God’s name.

Shea: You can’t separate them. Respect for the individual demands respect for the name and vice versa. That’s true in our own time. Your name and your reputation are one and the same. If God is holy, God’s name is holy and in Jesus’s day, “holy” meant “a thing totally set apart and protected from human tampering or corruption.”

Tim: So the holiness of the name isn’t dependent on ascribing reverence and honor that is clearly due God.

Shea: God doesn’t need us for that. God is holy all by God’s self. And that’s important because, as you recall from last week, this prayer begins by establishing God as the Divine Householder, the Lord of All Things. Jesus essentially prays that God will exercise divine privilege that is at one with God’s authority. The prayer, like all great prayers, quickly assumes a covenantal nature that embraces the collaborative nature of prayer: Holy God stands in agreement with us based on the integrity of God’s name.

Tim: God signs on the dotted line. God’s name becomes the leverage that makes the rest of the prayer effective.

Shea: It’s more than leverage. It’s the divine guarantee that liberates us to pray without condition or restraint.

Tim: I’m hearing something very powerful in this! I can’t wait to really dig into this idea!

Join us each Thursday in January as we deconstruct the prayer Jesus taught us pray in a new series, “66 Words: How the Lord’s Prayer Works and Why It Works.” We meet at 7:30pm CST at Pilgrim Congregational Church, 460 Lake Street, Oak Park Avenue with live-streaming via Facebook Live.

What’s in a Name?

Tim: When I’m asked or expected to pray, a photoflash goes off in my head. In that half-a-second I mentally scan the room to gauge how I should address God, and how I should refer to God as I pray.

Shea: I experience the same thing and recognize why it’s important to do that. But I’d like to hear your thoughts.

Tim: If I’m asking folks to join together in prayer and call God a name that alienates some of them, I’ve defeated the purpose before the prayer gets started.

Shea: Parental God-names are tough. Thinking of God as a father or mother alienates some folks, even though scripture and tradition overflow with metaphors that picture God in those roles.

Tim: And we have to ask whether the metaphors are broke or if the problem is one we’ve created through family dysfunction, patriarchal stubbornness, and casual acceptance of sexism in modern culture. I actually think the ancients were much more sophisticated where gender and family were concerned.

Shea: Gender was much more fluid in biblical times. Sure, gender roles were sharply defined. Yet like so much in ancient thought, these structures were also malleable because people acknowledged no rules or roles could encompass every situation.

Tim: That’s why there’s so much gender-bending in scripture: mothers who step forward and take charge, fathers who forego authority to show mercy. In fact, it’s very hard to find fathers and mothers, sisters or brothers who conform to gender norms in scripture. From Miriam to Mary, from Jacob to Jesus, we see parents and children push gender envelopes in interesting ways that a lot of us miss because we’ve become so concrete in what gender means and how it works. We’re not nearly as enlightened or fluid as we’d like to think.

Shea: Our hardbound categories create problems, don’t they? Like the Lord’s Prayer, for instance. The instant you begin with “Our Father,” the modern mind kicks in and there’s a problem.

Tim: And the problem is real, because we’re at a pivotal time when abuses of masculine power must be reckoned with. We know God is not male, because a male God would be inadequate, the same as a female God would be. God is beyond gender. But some of us have fashioned a male image of God—in part because of the “our Father”—that has fueled patriarchy and misogyny for centuries. As we do the necessary work of correcting gender inequities we have to address this problem of thinking of God as exclusively male or supposing that referring to God as female is the quick fix.

Shea: How do we do that?

Tim: We start be retrieving what Jesus and his students actually meant when they prayed “Abba, Father.” That was their standard address for God, a bilingual name that ascribed gender-transcendent qualities to the Divine. It wasn’t that God was just any “father” prone to masculine weaknesses that habitually trouble human life. God was everything to first-century Christians. Their best metaphor was that of the ultimate parent, a SuperDad whose power was equaled by the love and care showered on the kids, a God whose behavior surpassed gender norms.

Shea: We need that God today.

Tim: Yes, we do! And we’ll talk about how our eagerness to rectify perceived gender inequities in God may cause us to lose what Jesus wanted us to claim when we pray, “Our Father…”

Join us each Thursday in January as we deconstruct the prayer Jesus taught us pray in a new series, “66 Words: How the Lord’s Prayer Works and Why It Works.” We meet at 7:30pm CST at Pilgrim Congregational Church, 460 Lake Street, Oak Park Avenue with live-streaming via Facebook Live.

When Love Runs Out

Tim: Our final Advent study focuses on love, of course. But we’re going to raise some difficult questions that typically don’t make the cut when Advent turns its attention to love.

Shea: With Advent’s fourth Sunday sitting in closest proximity to Christmas, we usually focus on the power of love and the language comes very close to going over the top. Love can change the world. Love is all we need. Love can do anything. But I’m not so sure about that. I’ve had times when all the love in the world couldn’t change a thing—other than me, I suppose.

Tim: See there. Love did make a difference, just not the one you wanted! I think the contradiction that comes with loving others is one of the big take-aways in our last essay from Anne Lamott. In “Jah” she recalls trying to love a recovering alcoholic friend back to wellness. But apparently love doesn’t conquer all. As Bible-believing Christian, I’m not quite sure what to do with that. I’m not sure I’m comfortable admitting that love sometimes stops working. What about 1 Corinthians 13: “love never fails”?

Shea: Does love ever stop working? Or are we trying to work love in ways that love simply resists? Lamott loves her friend the best way she knows how. But there’s a kind of willfulness in her love, a determination to bring her friend around to her way of seeing and being. The turn-around Lamott wants is more than her friend can handle.

Tim: If there’s a twist in the story, it’s in how love goes to work on Lamott. After she thinks her love has failed, she finally allows her friend to join the conversation. Before that, when she was trying to force love on her friend, she did what so many of us do: she turned their dialogue into a monologue. She did most of the talking and not much of the listening. Even her prayers were more about telling God what needed doing than asking what was best.

Shea: The beauty of Lamott’s essay surfaces in what she discovers after her attempts at love run out. When our ideas about love fall short, grace and hope come to the rescue. Not always for the people we think we’re loving so well, but usually grace and hope come looking for us, because that’s what we need.

Tim: Gives us plenty to talk about this week at Gather, that’s for sure.

Shea: Yes! Powerful stuff and, despite the difficulty of the topic, a great gift to take into the Christmas holiday!

Join us this Thursday at 7:30 as we conclude our Advent study series, Hopeward Bound, a hope-peace-joy-love sequence of conversations in tandem with Anne Lamott’s Almost Everything: Notes on Hope. We meet in the Chapel of Pilgrim Congregational Church, 460 Lake Street, in Oak Park, Illinois. If you’re unable to get there in person, find us online at Facebook Live. 

Turn It Up!

Tim: In her essay “Humans 101,” Anne Lamott says we’re designed for joy. Assuming you agree with her, what do you think she means?

Shea: I do agree and, based on how she discusses joy, I believe she’s connecting joy with wholeness, a kind of deep contentment we sometimes refer to as “shalom.”

Tim: Are you saying our joy is contingent on having that kind of wholeness? If so, there would be plenty of days when joy would be impossible for me because shalom doesn’t always show up on my daily menu. There are plenty of days when I’m depleted, disjointed, cracked open in ways I didn’t see coming. But, rather oddly, on many of those days I still find joy.

Shea: Exactly. Joy is not contingent on wholeness, because there’s a discipline to it. We practice joy, particularly when feeling joyful seems beyond our reach. I think that’s what Lamott is talking about when she recommends going back and redoing the “joy training.”

Tim: Advent, of course, is the perfect season for contemplating joy, in part because it’s so central to the tradition and story. This coming Sunday churches around the world will light the “joy” candle and, of course, the texts and hymns and sermons will point toward rejoicing.

Shea: Yes, but I also think we need to take care not confuse Advent joy with “Yuletide cheer.” There’s a lot of sentiment wound into the holidays—the festivities and movies and decorations and songs playing nonstop wherever you go. That’s all part of the cheer. Joy runs deeper. Joy abides.

Tim: My mind keeps racing toward Jesus’s last conversation with his followers, where he assures them they are loved and then tells them, “I’ve told you these things so that your joy might be complete” (John 15:11).

Shea: And then he commands them to love one another, to the degree that they would be willing to die for one another. So there is a connection between profound joy and the deepest kind of love.

Tim: I couldn’t agree more. And that connection can unlock the mystery of abiding joy. The “joy training” Lamott talks about is actually closer to learning to love as fully as possible.

Shea: And if we want to turn up the joy this season, we’ll have to fire up our love lights and keep them burning at full brightness as well.

Tim: Yes! This Advent let us go back into the joy training and turn it up to full volume! Lamott is right. We are designed for joy!

Join us this Thursday at 7:30 as we continue our Advent study series, Hopeward Bound, a hope-peace-joy-love sequence of conversations in tandem with Anne Lamott’s Almost Everything: Notes on Hope. We meet in the Chapel of Pilgrim Congregational Church, 460 Lake Street, in Oak Park, Illinois. If you’re unable to get there in person, find us online at Facebook Live. 

A Letting Go 

Tim: This week our attention to turns to peace, which traditionally becomes the focus of Advent’s second Sunday.

Shea: But we’re looking at peace in a slightly different light, thanks to Anne Lamott.

Tim: In her book Almost Everything, she reminds us that peace is something we must find for ourselves.

Shea: What’s more she lets us know we can’t give peace to anyone else, even those we love dearly who may be desperate to find it.

Tim: Lamott calls peace “an inside job”—it’s very intense, personal, and hopefully enduring, work.

Shea: What interests me is how she sees peace as a result of letting go the shame and frustration—even sometimes the sense of failure—that we inherit from social demands and family expectations. And I’m wondering how that connects with Advent’s longing for peace. How does that work into this pattern Lamott draws for us?

Tim: It’s an interesting question. So often we take the Advent “peace” texts for granted. The child will be a Ruler of Peace, Isaiah promises. The lion and lamb will rest beside one another. High places will be brought low, depressed places will be lifted up. This poetry is in our bones. We’ve heard it for as long as we can remember. So long, in fact, that we don’t really think about these familiar verses very much.

Shea: What should we be thinking?

Tim: That’s what we’ll explore in this Thursday’s study. Onething I’d encourage us to consider is that the Gospels tell us Jesus was not born into peaceful circumstances. Both in Bethlehem and in the foretelling of Christ’s return, Advent actually disturbs the peace. Now why would that be?

Shea: Because the presence of Christ brings something new and powerful into the being. It requires us to let go of so much of what we rely on: our understanding of what is “normal” and “acceptable,” our belief that we are self-sufficient—

Tim: Our nagging worries that we don’t measure up—

Shea: And in the end our fear of losing control. That’s really how the coming of Christ disturbs the peace. And yet it’s also how peace comes to us.

Tim: To find peace means letting go, surrendering the idea that we’re in control, that we ever were or could be in control. It’s what pushes us to rely on the saving and keeping power of divine grace.

Shea: The coming of Christ teaches us peace is an inside job, something we have to wrestle out with ourselves.

Tim: This week’s look at peace is going to challenge us in a lot ways!

Shea: It will be a gift, that’s for sure.

Enter the Paradox

Shea: We’re going into our first Advent at Gather. It feels important somehow.

Tim: It is important. As a new faith community we have to establish Advent’s meaning for us. It’s like we’re setting up housekeeping, deciding what goes where and how it works.

Shea: Especially for those of us who may come from traditions that aren’t so big on Advent, understanding what it’s all about and why it’s important is, well, important.

Tim: It’s such a blessed season to walk through together, because it opens up so many questions and challenges us to reconsider so many things we take for granted.

Shea: Such as…

Tim: The Incarnation is the big one, this paradox of a fully human, fully divine God manifested in the company of ancient peasants and forever present in the world. Then there’s the paradox of how it all works, because the concept is very clear—the Word Made Flesh dwelling among us. But living into this idea is often a very messy proposition, mostly because it requires us to draw comfort from our own frailty even as we draw strength from the God who abides with us. Just considering Advent in this context can be a real mind bender when you really think about it.

Shea: Let’s talk about the Anne Lamott book we’re reading as part of our Advent study.

Tim: Yes, it’s a great read for the season. It’s not Christmasy in any way—not even overtly “religious.” But it’s messy in ways that mirror our current situation. The title really captures what Lamott has done: Almost Everything: Notes on Hope. It’s a little bit of this and a little of that. As she rummages through many thoughts that ricochet in our minds during these strange times, Lamott keeps turning us back to big ideas that belong in Advent—hope, certainly, but also love and joy and peace and faith and truth.

Shea: This week’s study focuses on hope and we’re revisiting some of the famous Advent prophecies in partnership with Lamott’s chapter called “Puzzles.”

Tim: That’s right. The essay is about finding hope in contradictory emotions, learning how to enter paradox, to draw life and hope from it, to recognize that, as she writes, sometimes the opposite of truth is another truth. I truly believe one of the Christ Child’s most pressing concerns was showing us how to deal with that.

Shea: Enter the paradox. This will be a very rich Advent!

Tim: That’s the prayer behind the hope.

Join us this Thursday at 7:30 as we begin our four-week Advent study series, Hopeward Bound, a hope-peace-joy-love sequence of conversations in tandem with Anne Lamott’s Almost Everything: Notes on Hope. We will meet in the Chapel of Pilgrim Congregational Church, 460 Lake Street, in Oak Park, Illinois. If you’re unable to get there in person, find us online at Facebook Live.