This week we’ll continue our dialogue with the great Christian mystic, Richard Rohr, in his Advent devotional, Preparing for Christmas. And our attention will turn to contrasts—living not in lightness or darkness, but lightness-and-darkness (and all of the grays that fall in between) Join us for Bible study at 7:30pm CST this Thursday. We meet at Pilgrim Congregational Church, 460 Lake Street, Oak Park. If you’re unable to be with us in person, you can join us online via FB Live. See you then!

Questions Hidden in the Christmas Story

There was no place for them in the guestroom.

–Luke 2:7

I come from a large family, with most of them living in Northern Alabama. But starting with my parents’ generation, the lure of better jobs and schools drew a lot of us away. Many went north, some went west, and quite a few relocated to larger cities down South. This means I likely have relatives near any major American city I visit. Should I land in, say, Phoenix or Miami or Boston and find my hotel overbooked, I know to call my people. In fact, because my family is steeped in Southern hospitality, I would be in big trouble if I needed somewhere to stay and didn’t reach out to them.

So where are Joseph’s people?

Recall how the story goes. Augustus Caesar decides to update the Roman tax rolls. Everyone has to return to their home villages to register, which means Joseph—a descendant of King David—has to return to Bethlehem—a.k.a. the City of David—to be counted. He arrives with his fiancée, Mary, who is nine months’ pregnant. They can’t find accommodations and end up in a filthy stable, where she gives birth to a little boy and lays him in a nasty manger.

The way this story usually gets told is deeply informed by American tourist mindsets. Presumably the hotel rooms in Bethlehem are filled when this young couple shows up. (Forget the Marriott—not even the Motel 6 has any vacancies.) But this telling, which has its own apparent set of difficulties, doesn’t answer the big question.

Where are Joseph’s people?

This is his hometown. His family comes from here. Even if they all moved away, they would still be need to return for the registration. Surely there are a few cousins or aunts or possibly even Joseph’s own parents with a little room to spare. Where are they?

This story is pressing us to look more deeply into the social fabric of its set-up. There are threads we need to pull so we can unravel some of the myth to get to harder realities. Why didn’t Joseph’s people come to their aid? Why didn’t they make room for this young and needy couple?

Luke (who’s writing to a Gentile audience) makes sure we understand that before the Christ Child even appeared there were deep-seated prejudices that put his life at risk. As we relish candle glow and carols, our own family and friends’ gatherings, the overly romanticized imagery of a clean baby cooing in a hygienically pristine barn stall, let’s not avoid the hard questions. The story is trying to tell us something about acceptance and making room for unwelcome wayfarers who pass through our lives.

May we enable the discomfort of these tidings to reach our hearts, even as sing of comfort and joy.

Join us this coming Sunday as we join together for our monthly worship experience. Our theme for December is “Make Room” and we will focus on often overlooked messages in the Advent and Christmas narratives. And—of course, being Gather—we will also practice joy and togetherness! Worship begins at 5pm CST in the Parlor of Pilgrim Congregational Church, 460 Lake Street, Oak Park. If you’re unable to join us in person, you can worship with us online via FB Live.

What God Desires

In the 1980s, one of my favorite gospel groups, The Winans, released a simple song that asked a powerful question: “Are we really doing your will? If not we’ll just keep still.”

The “will of God.” Can we really know what that is? We see this phrase repeatedly in the Gospels and Epistles. It was something our faith ancestors talked about constantly.

The word they used (theléma) suggested the “will of God” was much more than God ordering us around. In fact, the first Christians recognized that imagining God as a helicopter parent—all up in our business, telling us what to do—was incompatible with the divine nature. Our love and worship, our faithfulness, only have meaning to God when they’re offered voluntarily.

That’s the big difference between the Old and New Covenants. The old way was commanded; the new way that Jesus brings to life results form our own loyalty and longing to please our Maker. So we move from “obedience” to “pleasure.” Theléma implies a deeply held desire.

God’s will is more like divine longing—what God wants from and for us. There is mutuality and alignment: our desires to please God match God’s desires for our good pleasure. “Are we really doing your will?” translates into “Are we making God happy?”

It shouldn’t surprise us that Paul tells the Thessalonians to “give thanks in every situation for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thess. 5:18). We hear this text frequently this time of year—it’s a Thanksgiving standard. Yet we may miss the double entendre. Our gratitude regardless of circumstances doesn’t merely satisfy God’s desire for God’s Self. It also provides what God desires for us. This is God’s will for you. It makes God happy to see us happy, and happiness is a by-product of gratitude.

Still, it’s a bold teaching. Give thanks in every situation? Seriously? Maybe that was possible in Paul’s time, when life was much simpler. (Reality check: If you believe first-world problems are more daunting than first-century survival, feel free to think so.) To get the essence of what this means we have to step back and look at the framing guidance. “Pray continuously” precedes Paul’s advice, immediately followed by “Don’t suppress the Spirit.”

So there’s help for those of us who struggle with continuous, unconditional thanksgiving. We just need to pray more and stay attentive to the Spirit as it guides us toward gratitude. Then we can say, “Yes! We really are doing God’s will.”

God will be happy and we will be happy too. Happy Thanksgiving season to you all!

Don’t miss Part 2 in our three-part “Her Story” series. This week we look at Esther and identity politics, along with how brilliantly scripture blurs the lines between fact and fiction to lead us to important truths. We meet each Thursday evening at 7:30pm CST in the parlor of Pilgrim Congregational Church, 460 Lake Street, Oak Park. If you’re able to be with us in person, join us online via FB Live.

Identity, Politics, and Ancient Fake News

Like its heroine, the Book of Esther defies categorization. It’s presented as the backstory for Purim, a spring holiday that is easily the wildest party on the Jewish calendar. The Book (or “Scroll”) of Esther gets read twice: at night, as the revelry begins, and the next morning, when the previous evening’s folderol may have left a few folks feeling rough around the edges. The story of how Esther saves her people comes to life in children’s plays and costumes. There’s a lot of food and special treats for the kids and adults are encouraged to drink excessively.

Esther’s story is all about liberation. But is it true?

That’s been a perennial problem for scholars. The writer gets some details right. For instance, he (or possibly she) knows a lot about Persian palace protocol. This allows historians to date Esther about 200 years before the Common Era, making it one of the latest books in the Hebrew Bible. (The Book of Daniel, which has a lot in common with Esther, is the last.) But, also like Daniel, there are a lot of questions about this story. Neither the characters nor its events are known to history. Those who insist the Bible is factually “true” try to bend Esther to fit historical counterparts. But the book resists mightily.

The rabbis would ask: Does veracity matter? And they would reply (and have replied), “Not one bit.” The ancients were brilliant advocates of stories whose ability to explain origins, ethics, and faith transcended human events. They saw something bigger in these tales than historical record.

They were also well aware—and wisely wary—of fake news. Rewriting history was every ruler’s prerogative and I mean that literally; previous records often were replaced with newer ones that erased or exaggerated the flaws of past monarchs while valorizing current ones. We see this happen with King David, who is a complex, not always admirable character in Samuel and Kings, while the David of Chronicles (written much later) is simplistically pictured as the greatest king of all time.

Instead of settling for malleable history, Esther tells a story that surpasses facts. At its center is an extraordinary woman who understands the politics of identity and human susceptibility to beauty. Esther has courage; but her bravery is amplified by her uncanny sense of timing and recognition of how the world works. She also knows how men work and, man oh man, does she work them!

Esther raises a lot of important questions for 21^st-century Christian readers: questions about gender and identity politics, history and fiction, biblical interpretation and the problems of hanging one’s faith on scriptural literalism. There’s a lot to learn from Esther and we’ll dig into that this coming Thursday at our weekly Bible study. Do your very best to join us!

Don’t miss Part 2 in our three-part “Her Story” series. This week we look at Esther and identity politics, along with how brilliantly scripture blurs the lines between fact and fiction to lead us to important truths. We meet each Thursday evening at 7:30pm CST in the parlor of Pilgrim Congregational Church, 460 Lake Street, Oak Park. If you’re able to be with us in person, join us online via FB Live.

Grace in the Time of Gratitude

Last summer is now a fading memory; fall has taken hold. The reversion to Standard Time means darkness comes sooner than we’d prefer. Weather forecasts use words like “overcast” and “wind chill” and “cold front.” For those who love daylight and warmth, an unwelcome misery sets in. Falling leaves, blustery mornings, chilly evenings and longer nights suggest a winding down and resignation, not a time of renewal and hope. It’s an odd time of year to be called to thankfulness, particularly since “harvest” and “bounty” are now high-concept notions with plenty of fresh produce available year-‘round.

In 2 Corinthians 4, St. Paul reminds us that natural vulnerabilities and decay don’t define us. The great apostle says we hold our treasures in “clay pots” (v7) and, yes, he admits they’re subject to unavoidable changes and weaknesses. But seasonal variances don’t determine final outcomes. They’re merely circumstances, not conclusions.

So Paul assures his Corinthian readers (and us):  “We are experiencing all kinds of trouble, but we aren’t crushed. We are confused, but we aren’t depressed. We are harassed, but we aren’t abandoned. We are knocked down, but we aren’t knocked out” (v8-9). Clearly he’s referring to situations more stressful and serious than a case of mid-autumn blues. Yet the changing of seasons opens an opportunity for us to practice some of what Paul is talking about.

The evidence of death that grows more dramatic in the late autumn and winter can be revitalizing if we permit it to renew our awareness of vitality we possess. Gray skies that hang overhead and brittle leaves that crunch underfoot can be transformed into powerful reminders of new life and sustenance. The clouds will release snow and rain to replenish the earth; leaves will disintegrate and feed next spring and summer. It’s not what we see that makes the difference, Paul says; it’s what we can’t see, yet somehow know is happening.

That’s how grace works. It eases its way into seemingly hopeless situations and produces fresh beginnings and revived faith. It renews and restores and rectifies. It takes what appears to be turning to dust and disproves the notion that death is the end. That’s why Paul says, “We don’t focus on the things that can be seen but on the things that can’t be seen” (v18).

Perhaps late autumn is the right time for Thanksgiving after all. It compels us to look beyond what we can see and envision what God is doing behind the scenes, under the ground, deep in the wells of our own spirits. Grace is at work in us even when we can’t detect it. That’s what sustains us through frosty mornings and windswept afternoons, through dark nights and overcast days.

Join us this Sunday as Gather unites in a worship experience that explores how grace and gratitude are connected. You will leave with a richer sense of thankfulness and an assurance that the grayest days and coldest nights are filled with grace. Worship begins at 5pm CST in the parlor of Pilgrim Congregational Church, 460 Lake Street, Oak Park. If you’re unable to be with us in person (and you really should try to make it), you can find us online via Facebook Live.

JOY AND JUSTICE

October has been a tumultuous month. The political landscape at home and abroad grows increasingly unstable. The environment groans beneath the imposition of personal carelessness and corporate callousness. California is on fire. In our hometown, untenable working conditions have pushed Chicago teachers out of the classroom and onto the picket lines. We’re allegedly experiencing one of the greatest economic booms in our history. Still, there doesn’t seem to be enough to go around.

News flash: there will never be enough. Why? There will always be people whose lust for wealth, power, and privilege emboldens them to grab more than their share. Until we get over our greed, neglect and poverty will always be with us. Even Jesus admits this in Mark 14:7: “The poor you will always have with you,” he says, adding, “you can help them whenever you want.”

Help them whenever you want—which means if folks aren’t helped, it’s because we don’t want to. That last bit needs stressing. At present, in capitalist white America, a strain of “conservative” and “prosperity” gospelers try to twist Jesus’s words to justify toadying up to power while ignoring its abuse of the poor, marginalized, and homeless. They forget two of Christianity’s basic premises: welcome and care for the other and resisting the injustices of Empire.

Simply because poverty is constant doesn’t mean it’s acceptable. Because everyone goes through hardship doesn’t mean we have to surrender to forces that cause it. Because some don’t know how to control their tongues doesn’t mean we’re not obliged to watch our words. And because someone comes into our community with a fat bank account, big house, and fancy car doesn’t entitle them to more admiration or trust than the individual who has little to nothing. These are the teachings in the Letter of James, bounded in the wisdom that, despite all the injustice and suffering we experience and witness, we hold on to joy… We reach for joy.

At Gather, we’re spending this autumn looking at those two sides of life: joy and justice. This Thursday we wrap our study of James. Next month we’ll pair our Sunday worship experience (November 10)—gratitude and grace—with a look at Ruth, Esther, and Judith, whose passion for justice rewarded them as the only women with biblical books bearing their names. Then we’ll spend December with Franciscan friar and author Richard Rohr, whose lovely devotional, Preparing for Christmas, will guide us through Advent. We will find joy in all these places and with that we’ll find strength to navigate the times. Don’t miss this opportunity to be part of Gather’s family!

Join us this Thursday at 7:30p as we conclude our series “Words & Music”—a look at worship from the Early Church to today. We meet in person at Pilgrim Congregational Church, 460 Lake Street, in Oak Park. Or you can join online via FB Live.

A Letter from James

Martin Luther famously couldn’t decide whether or not the Epistle of James deserved space in the Holy Bible. On one hand, he was concerned because the letter has very little to do with Jesus. In fact, Jesus only gets two mentions, one in connection with the author, and a second time as part of a challenge to Christians who claim to believe in “our glorious Lord Jesus Christ” while showing favoritism to rich people in their community.

And it’s that second reference—James’s discomfort with wealthy people—that may be at the root of the problem for Luther. (It’s unmistakably one of the reasons others have argued against James’s inclusion in the biblical canon.) Elsa Tamez, the Latinx liberation theologian, hits the nail on the head when she titles her commentary on this short letter buried near the end of the New Testament The Scandalous Message of James. James is scandalous because its author makes no effort to hide his (or her) contempt for privilege that inevitably affixes itself to wealth.

Luther, like most of his Reformation contemporaries, was very conscious of the power of wealth, because it also carried political power, which he and his fellow Reformers needed. Without the backing of rich and powerful people, the changes they sought to effect on Western Christianity didn’t stand a chance. So Luther tempered his fondness for scripture (which was epic) with a pragmatic view that his biggest patrons might not take kindly to hearing James preached fervently, which was how Luther and his pals typically approached their sermonizing.

James doesn’t mince words. “Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court? Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you?” (James 2:5-7) The rich are blasphemers, James says. It would take a mighty deft preacher to dance around that!

So, for many years in many places, the strategy has been simple: ignore James. Pull a favorite bit from here or there—because James’s writer is an excellent wordsmith—but don’t dig into the guts of this powerful letter aimed at shaping the community life of the Early Church.

Yet James refuses to be ignored. And he’s never been more relevant than in our time, when the wealthiest one-tenth of one percent own a frighteningly disproportionate slice of American wealth while, in many rural and blighted urban communities, children don’t have shoes or glasses or know where breakfast is coming from. We need to listen to James, both as a corrective for our own warped sense of success and security, but also for guidance on how to do life together.

That’s what we’re focusing on this month in our Bible study series: “The Scandalous Message of James: Faith, Works, and Doing Life Together.” Don’t miss one week in this blended series, with some lessons taught in person and others online

Join us this Thursday at 7:30p as we conclude our series “Words & Music”—a look at worship from the Early Church to today. We meet in person at Pilgrim Congregational Church, 460 Lake Street, in Oak Park. Or you can join online via FB Live.

Worship in America: The Gospel Church

Over the past couple weeks I’ve been catching bits and pieces of Ken Burn’s PBS documentary, “Country Music.” As with so many of his explorations of American history, one of the things Burns does best is connect the story he’s telling to a larger story, often finding surprising tendrils that would otherwise get overlooked. In this current piece, I’m surprised at how often he goes back to church—not in the capital-C “Church” sense, but rather in the little-g-and-c “gospel church” sense. Repeatedly, Burns will frame a discussion about the origins of country music with a montage of images that intertwines worship in southern white churches with similar scenes in southern black ones. The soundtrack will often cross-fade between audio of a white church and then a black one singing a hymn like “Will the Circle Be Unbroken”.

The seamless marriage of sound and images makes its point. For all practical purposes, the gospel church is the American church. Whereas other worship streams—mainstream Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox—are rooted in European traditions, the gospel church is as much a homegrown phenomenon as jazz and blues and country and bluegrass.

How we do church in the US—even in more traditional Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox settings—is important, because it represents many things that American culture as a whole has refused to resolve about class and color and shared history. The gospel church’s influence spreads into the “high church” in ways that, quite possibly, its constituents may not recognize. (In fact, it seeps into faiths beyond Christianity. Flavors of the gospel church can be depicted many American Judaic, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, and New Thought congregations.) And all of this springs from an accidental mash-up of 19^th century revivalism, slave religion, and a very American recognition that entertainment and worship are not adversaries.

Purity is not something we do very well on our side of the pond. Yet our eagerness to experience, embrace, adapt, and invent has resulted in a worship style that now dominates evangelical religion and is surging ahead in other streams of Christianity.

So what makes the gospel church indubitably American? What spurred its innovations and adaptations of Christian worship? What do we need to understand in order to recognize why all of this matters? That’s our focus at this week’s Gather. Don’t miss it!

Join us this Thursday at 7:30p as we conclude our series “Words & Music”—a look at worship from the Early Church to today. We meet in person at Pilgrim Congregational Church, 460 Lake Street, in Oak Park. Or you can join online via FB Live.

How Technology Reshapes Worship

In the mid-15^th century, a German blacksmith named Johann Gutenberg had a fascinating idea. What would happen if he forged a set of alphanumeric characters that enabled him  to mechanically reproduce text? (We now call this concept “moveable type.”)

What did happen was nothing short of revolutionary. When Gutenberg’s Bible rolled off his printing press, he not only started a new industry—publishing—but he radically altered every aspect of human life as we know it, including how we worship.

Ready availability of the printed Word opened up a real can of worms! Now laypeople could read the Bible for themselves, which meant they could also interpret and respond according to their own lights. The worship experience was no longer a performance art starring priests and bishops. Now the liturgy could be published for everyone’s participation, and the daily offices—recitations of prayers and psalms consigned to monks and nuns—could be prayed by anyone who owned a prayerbook.

In other words, technology completely disrupted the worship lives of the Western church, removing an enormous barrier that separated religious practitioners (clergy and monastics) from religious observers (the laity).

It also created a lot of tension that erupted very quickly. Within 50 years, Martin Luther published his 95 theses, calling into question many of the Roman church’s medieval practices and beliefs. Soon after, a veritable raft of protesting (“Protestant”) theologians unleashed their own diatribes against the Church’s elitist practices.

These great thinkers and writers posed questions and ideas that, before Gutenberg’s breakthrough, were quietly discussed and, in many cases, kept out of the public’s hearing. Now they became hotly contested within the community at large. Many of these questions persist.

What is the proper procedure for baptism? What really happens when we take Communion? If we believe, as Luther insisted, “the just shall live by faith,” what is the role of the priest, whose primary function is mediating forgiveness of sin and pardon through penance? Why shouldn’t people be allowed to read and interpret scripture for themselves? Must everything in Christian worship be scripturally mandated? What about ceremony and tradition?

Technology enables progress. Yet it also raises a lot of questions, either by bringing existing quandaries to light or by generating new concerns. We see this writ large in our churches today. (Some folks get nervous if there’s a video screen in the worship space!) What do we do with technology? How do we ensure technology actually improves worship, rather than needlessly complicating it? Do we really need a live Twitter feed during Sunday service?

These questions are all wound up in this week’s “Words & Music: study, as we look at the Reformation and how its effect on how we worship in the 21^st century. Don’t miss this fascinating time together!

Our September series, “Words & Music: Where Our Worship Traditions and Hymns Come From,” continues every Thursday evening at 7:30p CDT. Join us live at Pilgrim Congregational Church, 460 Lake Street, in Oak Park or online via FB Live.

Fashionable Worship

As we continue our September study series, “Words and Music,” we come to a major turn when Constantine and later Emperors embrace Christianity. Two significant things happen. First, Christian doctrine gets codified in creeds—a number of which are still recited today, e.g., the Apostles Creed and Nicene Creed. Second, the nature of Christian worship moves away from its original, highly diversified home-church model toward something more ritualized and (dare we say it?) imperial.

Christianity’s establishment as the state religion ends Roman persecution of the church. That’s good news. But it also means weekly gatherings become something more than a loose assembly of Jesus followers envisioning a new world. Pageantry takes root. Worship moves from homes into basilicas, which served as Roman courthouses. The simple Eucharistic meal evolves into a distinctively ritualized feast that requires the services of a priest. This is a seismic change, because priests work in temples, and they practice at altars, neither of which are Early Church fixtures.

So Christianity inherits a style of worship that mirrors Roman pageantry and makes it fashionably acceptable to the power elite. It not only restyles easy rites that made Christianity readily acceptable and cross-cultural. It also shifts the typography and reshapes the messaging.

The cross becomes the chief symbol. The message of ready grace moves toward a more legalistic one of atonement that reflects a culture in which the Emperor and his magistrates deed clemency and exact punishment. The hierarchy becomes more elegant. Bishops now take the highest seats in the worship space. (In Latin, these chairs are called “cathedra,” or thrones, from which our word “cathedral” derives.) With all of this human imposition, things most become more regimented. The liturgy—from another Latin word that means “work of the people”—gets inverted; the people become end-users rather than originators of worship. The pulpit becomes a place where doctrine is preached. But it also becomes the top-down platform from which dogma—the unquestioned teachings of state-sanctioned religion—is traditioned, or passed along from generation to generation. Worship now becomes a control mechanism that bears watching, since many dubious theological principles get packaged as worship practices.

Why is this vital to understanding our faith? It helps us recognize how much of what we perceive as “Christianity” is actually a departure from the Early Church’s values and vision. As we continue our “Words and Music” study this week, we’ll look at the Roman influence and its impact on Western Christianity. (The Eastern Church dodged this bullet, which we’ll briefly discuss.) And we’ll talk about how these influences and events have imbedded themselves in what we experience when we go to church. Don’t miss this second part of the September series!

Join us for part two of our “Words and Music” study series. We meet each Thursday evening at Pilgrim Congregational Church, 460 Lake Street, Oak Park. Study begins at 7:30p CT and if you’re unable to be with us in person, you can catch us via FB Live.