From the Pastor’s Desk

This month is a little strange; well a lot strange. I’m traveling back and forth between Camp Calumet and home doing a couple of stints as chaplain at the resident camp, and then at the family campground. I discovered that Calumet has a new blogsite, which you can find here

Here are a few close encounters of the finest kind:

The first day Keeping the Earth we heard the Creation story as a call and response:
“Who created the Earth? “God did.”
“And what did he call it? “Good.”
“And what did he do?” “He blessed it.”
“And what did he say?” “He said it was holy.”

The second day we talked about the Keeping the Covenant. The rainbow was a central image of the day. With the help of some of the campers, we made a rainbow of painted hands. The best part was watching the irresistable delight of children and young people messing around with paint. It’s impossible not to want to smear paint on passers-by, if you have a bucket of it lying around.

The third day, our theme was Keeping the Abundance: and here the invitation was to notice how much of everything there is. How many leaves on tree? How many kinds of species of plants and animals, how many grains of sand–how much there is of everything. The question behind the theme: how will we steward such abundance? It’s a big question for young folks, but they had a pretty good idea that less is more, and sustainability is something to be desired.

The fourth day, we were invited to Keep the Song Alive. Creation is alive and singing the praise of God. In my research for the morning worship, I discovered that the musical tone of the background resonant hum of the universe is B-flat. Which I think would make all saxophone players very happy. One of the senior counselors said it made him happy to think that there is a sound at the center of the univserse: “it means we didn’t invent music, we discovered it.”

And the fifth and final day, we wrapped it up with Keeping Creation, having come full circle back to a contemplation of the gifts of this beautiful world, and God’s glory shining through this wondrous universe. In the closing worship, we ended up by the lakeside, in flickering candleight, singing quietly as the water rippled in the night breeze.

As is usual at Camp Calumet, it was an amazing time, the best week ever.

Today, it finally cooled off, and we had one of those astonishing days that made everyone glad they live on Cape Ann, breezy, blue, and beautiful. At the beginning of June, Synod Assembly gathered out in Sturbridge for our annual confab and business meeting. During Assembly, some of us attended workshops, and our voting members, plus one more from St. Paul went to one on social media. We came back all fired up to work on this as a goal in the coming year. We’ve been talking about communications for some time, in Council, and in the office, seeking to make improvements in how we share information. After our workshop, some of the members of the church have decided to do some brainstorming about our website, about Facebook and Twitter, and all the wonders of the cyber world.

In an effort to update some of the content of the website, I took the liberty of rewriting the copy for the Home page, and asked some of our speakers and the Chair of Fulilling the Dream, Dick Babson, to send material for a Fulfilling the Dream page. We’ve added that now; but we’re not done with tinkering with that page. Keep checking in, and please let me (Pastor Anne: pastor@stpaulcapeann.org) know what you think, or send a note to the church office, and we’ll forward it to the webmaster.

Thanks, P.A.

Three interesting articles this morning, one from Religion Dispatches, a daily current newsy blog about things of faith, definitely worth subscribing to. This article is a hair-raising account of human rights atrocities in Uganda, not easy breakfast reading. Read it here.

The second is a nice description of Spiritual Direction, a ministry of listening, which I do as part of my ministry at St. Paul. Spiritual direction in the Lutheran tradition is an expression of what Martin Luther described as the the consolation of mutual conversation between sisters and brothers in the faith. This article is also on the ELCA website in the Web Archives link on the Prayer page.

Spiritual directors have the privilege of partnering or accompanying others who are seeking to deepen their relationship with God through prayer, and to develop their capacity for contemplative awareness or what some teachers call a contemplative attitude. I’ve been practicing it for 14 years now; it’s a wonderful ministry of spaciousness within the busy-ness of parish ministry.

And the third link I found concerns a Buddhist American woman nun, Pema Chodron, who teaches meditation students from all religious backgrounds. Her books are best-sellers. She herself is a queit, humble spiritual powerhouse. This is a brief interview from ABC. She’s worth listening to, and what she says is applicable to Christian spiritual practice.

For your morning reading/listening. Peace and all good things, P.A.

There’s a short article in Alban Institute’s on-line resource that discusses congregational blogging; see here
I read it with interest because blogging is such a strange exercise. A Blog is a form of the diary and stands in a long tradition of personal reflective writing. Church website blogs can provide some glimpses into the wider life of the community, but the most innovative idea in the article was a community blog. Sharing the blog with members of a team helps keep information current, and offers insight into the multi-faceted perspectives of any one faith community. It sounded like fun. Of course, you have to have some editorial oversight, but overall it seems like an interesting endeavor. I think that we have some seasoned bloggers who might enjoy jumping into the community blog.

Also the article pointed out that blogs are typically short, while mine are typically long. Only because writing is a pleasure, and reading is as well. So apologies out there to you who like short blogs. And thanks to those who are willing to read longer ones.

Things are settling into summer now at St. Paul, although I have to say there was a lovely crowd on Sunday. I think it was because we were having an appreciation Sunday for our beloved Parish Administrator, Joanne Peterson, without whom, our little ship of faith would flounder. Thank you, Joanne, for all your service, compassion, and wisdom directed toward us.

We also had a brief, but fruitful meeting of Adult Education team yesterday, literally a standing committee. There were three different meetings happening simultaneously in Fellowship Hall and the Undercroft, amidst the usual conversations and snacking after the service. Adult Ed. met standing on the ramp between the two rooms. I’ve never had a meeting like that before, but it was quite enjoyable, to talk as people walked to and fro on the ramp. We decided to continue on the track we started last year, by assessing the learning needs and desires of congregational members. We’ll be using Book of Faith approach when appropriate, and offering some structured study. We will continue our lovely St. Paul Lecture series, afternoon times, and perhaps include a morning forum for adults on occasional Sundays during the education hour. Library plans continue to evolve, and the pastor is almost out of her old office, and into the new.

Meanwhile, the Holy Spirit is present and lively in this place, and the Gospel proclaimed!
Peace, Pastor Anne

Earlier this year, somewhere on this blog, I mentioned the term “emergent church” to refer to a broad movement in global Christendom that started gaining public awareness about 10 years ago. Many of you are aware of this movment, so don’t need an explanation. But it’s a particularly user-friendly expression of church. Emergent church is an expression that refers to communities of Christians “emerging” in unlikely settings, sometimes even within more traditional church communities. You might, for example, have a group of folks in your church who would like to meet outside the building, and find that they connect better at a coffee shop, or a tavern, or an internet cafe, or on-line, for that matter.

The exciting thing about this, for me, is that church happens, and for Lutherans, church happens wherever the people are gathered, the Word proclaimed freshly, and sacraments administered rightly. That’s our definition of church from Article VII of the Augsburg Confession in the Book of Concord. It means that we have a particularly flexible view of church. Here is the original wording in English translation.

” It is also taught among us that one holy Christian Church will be and remain forever. This is the assembly of all believers among who the Gospel is preached in its purity and the holy sacraments are administered according to the Gospel. For it is sufficient for the true unity of the Christian church that the Gospel be preached in conformity with a pure understanding of it and that the sacraments be administered in accordance with the divine Word. It is not necessary for the true unity of the Christian church that ceremonies, instituted by (people), should be observed uniformly in all places. It is as Paul says in Eph. 4:4, 5, “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism.” (The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, translated by Theodore G. Tappert, 1959, Augsburg Fortress).

One new emerging church, or emergent community, in our Synod is in Marshfield. Called Sanctuary, its pastor spends his time walking the streets of the town, meeting in cafes, and holding an evening supper with worship on Sunday. In some ways, it reminds of me of campus ministry–always an emergent church community, which often meets outside of a church building, in informal settings, and worships in spaces shared with others. It reminds me of mission churches in other parts of the world, of communities of believers who meet under the shelter of trees, or in the open, or who share their spaces with each other. In the early church, if you read Acts, church was a peripatetic enterprise, a moveable feast of people, water, bread and wine, moving from house to house, village to village, communities within communities in cities like Rome and Jerusalem. We didn’t settle down for a long time, and now, it seems we are on the move again.

But back along, even further back, all the way to Genesis times, is a God who met people in gardens and vineyards, on hillsides, in caves, by streams, and trees, in the high places, at wells, in the wilderness under stars at night, a God who led people by fire at night, and a cloud by day, a God who wandered with the people, who sent messengers and prophets to go with the people, a God of accompaniment, who was sometimes experienced as shepherd, king, whirlwind, storm, still small voice, sheer silence.

Sometimes at the edge of a campsite, our ancestors in wandering, set up a tent of meeting, which housed the holy of holies, on the borderland, at the margin, a sacred temporary shelter at the intersection of wild mystery, and human community, under the canopy of grace.
God is always emerging.

This morning was brilliant, blue, and cool, the sun shining early, and birds kicking off a major choral extravaganza starting around 4:30 a.m. I have infinite hope that today someone somewhere will figure out how to end the BP oil mess in the Gulf, and I pray with infinite hope that many, many people will lend helping hands for the dwellers along the shores and marshes there, human and otherwise.

We had a peaceful, thoughtful Council meeting last night at church. And I was glad for the privilege of being amongst a group of people, in one small corner of the world, who care deeply about God, each other and their neighbors.

I’ve been thinking about resources for the summer, and want to commend the following website to you. It’s a wonderful resource out of Valparaiso University, a Lutheran school, and is a project that began about ten years ago. I use it frequently, and I think it’s time to pursue it more intentionally in our congregation, but we’ll see how that goes. In the meantime, if you are interested, it’s a wonderful site, full of thoughtful guidance, good scholarship, interesting discussions, articles on topics for those interested in Christian life. Well worth an on-line visit.

Scriptures for this Sunday include the story of Mary Magdelene, and our focus will be on forgiveness and the wideness of God’s mercy, the compassion of God, as it was this last Sunday. (Of course, that’s the focus every Sunday!)

May the Lord, who makes all things new, renew you this day, enliven your faith, strengthen your courage, and kindle your hearts with even greater love for God and neighbor.
Peace, P.A.

“Eat this scroll,” the Lord directed the prophet Ezekiel. It was a provocative image for the prophet, one which reflected his experience of being fed by God’s Word. Many generations later, when Jesus was tempted in the desert wilderness, he rebuked the tempter with God’s Word: we do not live by bread alone. Daily we are fed, nourished, provoked, encouraged, beguiled, by the Word of God at work in our lives.

Many of you know of the Book of Faith Initiative, launched by the ELCA three years ago. It was a churchwide effort to encourage biblical literacy across our churches, a way of engaging the Bible as the first language of faith. It’s hard to describe what the Book of Faith Initiative has become:
–It’s a conversation among churches and individuals about how and why we read the Bible.
–It’s a wide network of excellent, easily accessed, published resources, on-line and on paper.
–It’s a discussion across generations and cultures about who we are as Lutherans, what makes us disctinctive in the Christian landscape, and why we persist in thinking that reading the bible in our own languages whether in church, our own homes, with our families, with each other, formally and informally, is one of the greatest gifts of the Reformation. Reading and/or hearing scripture was a foundational practice of the Reformers; engaging the Word is a foundational practice for any disciple of Jesus.

That being said, the point of this blog entry: Our New England Synod held a Book of Faith Festival, in New Britain, Connecticut. Our gathering was one among many that are happening all around the country. My daughter, for example, attended one held by her Southwest California Synod. We compared notes on the two events, which were similar.

Below are some of our conclusions.

1). We wish more people knew about the Book of Faith Initiative. We have a number of people at St. Paul Lutheran who know about the Book of Faith, but many are unaware of the reason for the Initiative. My daughter’s church had ten people go to their Synod event. It was a long drive, but mobility in California is a little different than mobility here on Cape Ann. Our Synod will continue to hold regional events, so that more people in each conference will learn about the resources.

2) The on-line resources for bible study through the Book of Faith and Luther Seminary are wonderful. Dr. Diane Jacobson, who spoke at the New England event said, “Luther Seminary has a charism for websites.” In our church, Joel Swan and Rob Claypool are good contact people for learning to use those resources. Rob started a conversation on Book of Faith, and he also uses Luther Seminary’s Enter the Bible. Check out this link.

3). Our third conclusion: No matter how much we learn and read and study the Bible, there’s always more there, more that unfolds, more to unpack, and ponder. The scriptures are a precious treasure, yeilding different insights as we employ different approaches and interpretive tools. Reading or hearing the Word is always an adventure in faith seeking understanding.

4). Our experience of worship each Sunday is profoundly transformed when we’ve listened to, or read and prayed with the scriptures for that week ahead of time. It makes a huge difference in worship. All of sudden, one realizes that every hymn, the sermon, everything we do in the langague of worship is biblical. Sunday worship becomes an immersion experience in the Word, a dwelling in the Word.

Truly, we don’t live by bread alone. Eat the scroll, figuratively speaking, of course. Ruminate, chew the Word. It will feed your life.

Dear Friends,
Below is a prayer alert from the Lutheran Disaster Response–with deep concern and prayers for the ecological disaster on the Gulf Coast and the Mississippi Delta.

I am broken hearted about it, as I know you all are, too. This is a very personal ecological and economic disaster for all who live there: the land, plants, creatures and people along the coast, and they have not recovered, yet, from Katrina. Peace, Pastor Anne
***************************************************
From Lutheran Disaster Response

Sisters and brothers in Christ,

We are all watching anxiously as the oil from the sunken BP platform continues to spread across the Gulf of Mexico and now is reported to have reached parts of the U.S. Gulf Coast. Many people fear the ways that this oil spill could affect the already delicate environment of the coastal marshlands and impact the livelihoods of fishermen and others who depend on the waters and native wildlife.

I met today with Peggy Hahn, Assistant to the Bishop of the ELCA’s Texas-Louisiana Gulf Coast Synod, and we discussed ways that this oil spill may affect the lives and ministries of people there. At this time, your prayers are requested for all those who may be affected. Please pray for the people of Louisiana and the other Gulf Coast states. Please pray for the pastors and people of Lutheran congregations in these areas as they minister to their neighbors, especially those in places still working to recover from Hurricane Katrina.

Our office will continue to monitor the effects of the oil spill and will share ways that we might minister together among those affected by this event.

In Christ’s service,

Rev. Kevin A. Massey
Director

Serendipity in Sunday morning worship this week:

Lighthouse for Christ, a chorus of young people from local churches came to sing at St. Paul last Sunday, April 25th. Their leader, Amy Prichard is a talented young woman, who started the group with a few of the youth at her church, the Cape Ann Bible Church. They didn’t have enough numbers to make a full chorus, so they opened the group up to the whole community. Other young folks from other churches joined. Their name derives from where we live, an island dotted by lighthouses, in Annisquam, Rockport, and Gloucester Harbor, to name a few. And the Light does shine right out of Lighthouse for Christ when they sing.

During the last couple of weeks Amy and I, and our music director Susan Taormina, have been swapping emails about what the group would sing, and what would work for Sunday morning. We found some appropriate service hymns, and left the rest of the music choices up to Amy, since she and her group were our guests.

Then, all week I struggled with the sermon. Here’s why: I went to visit St. Francis House in Boston last week with some of the other clergy. And the visit was mind-blowing.

St. Francis House is a day drop-in center for people who are homeless, jobless, or otherwise impoverished. The House is on Boylston street, one block from the corner of Tremont and Boylston, at the beginning of Chinatown. It offers comprehensive wrap-around services to its guests. Our visit took several hours, and the guests who enter there, and the people who serve there as staff and volunteers were breathtaking witnesses to the power of God’s love, and goodness.

I’ll write more later, about that visit, but that’s what I wanted to preach about on Sunday morning. It seems to me that St. Francis House is the kind of place that lives on resurrection hope, and even practices resurrection–much as Peter does in the lesson from Acts for this last week. Peter raised Dorcas from the dead. St. Francis House offers the resurrection hope of possibility for people who have reached the last end of their resources. That’s what I wanted to preach about, but even after writing it out, and working with it during week, I wasn’t satisfied. Something more was going on. It was one of those times when the scripture readings really wouldn’t leave me alone, a sort of wrestling, tentatio , Luther called it.

So all week, it was back to the drawing board. Finally, I settled on the Revelation reading and the Gospel. This Easter, our readings in Revelation are phenomenal–lyrical passage after lyrical passage of praise and hymns of thanksgiving, angels and all peoples, nations, and tribes, and in every langauge gathered round the throne with the Lamb at the center. Those are the readings that won’t leave me alone–so no matter how I tried to move away from them to write about St. Francis House, I had the experience of being drawn back again to the book of Revelation. I’ve been a Christian long enough to know the prompting of the Holy Spirit, and to know also, that obedience is the only option. (Sometimes being a disciple is to perpetually feel like you’re being led where you don’t want to go). So Revelation and John is where the sermon landed.

I wasn’t comfortable with it. And yet, on Sunday morning, the Revelation lesson was exactly the right focus. Because: along with all the other lovely moments in worship, Lighthouse for Christ sang their hearts out in praise using the very text we heard that morning: Rev. 7: 9-17. One day, they sang, God will wipe away every tear, and we will drink at the springs of the water of life. And of course, they sang so beautifully that the language came alive in that moment: the beauty of God is in our midst now, already. We have been delievered already from the great ordeal, and we live already in the center of that unending fountain of praise.

Amy and her group did not know we were reading Revelation, this week, and they didn’t know I would be preaching on the text of their song. But in one of those beautiful moments of sacred serendipity, it all came together, orchestrated by the unseen hand (one hopes) of the Spirit. At least that’s one way of thinking about what happened.

Does God actually tend the moments of worship in a small church in an obscure corner of the world, even when there’s so much else happening, like earthquakes, volcanoes, war, and oil rigs exploding, or tornados, or 2 million people displaced from their homes in Haiti? Does the Holy Spirit actually have time to pay attention to the worship details and the spiritual needs of the people in our humble, hidden, hard to get to church?

Apparently so.

The most high, transcendent and mysterious, wild and strange, loving and just, all merciful, compassionate God, Lord of space and time, is also immanent, and apparently had time and energy for us, enough to take a strong but gentle hand in fine-tuning Sunday’s worship in a wonderfully invisible way, all through the power and wisdom of the Holy Spirit, a gift of our Savior. Welcome to the risen life. Amazing.

“Like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither.”–Psalm 1:3.

Last winter, when we were in the midst of construction of the new addition, some of us grew worried about our large ash tree in the front yard of the church. It’s a beautiful shade tree, with wide open spreading branches. We have an arborist, David Adams, who has been looking after the tree for some years now. He keeps us advised on the health of the tree, what needs to be done, and always responds when we need him. Some neighbors stopped me on the street every now and then, to mention their concern for the tree, as well.

Even a tree can preach about the kingdom of God.

The biblical writers often used trees as symbols of life and hope, as an image of God’s care or of the depth of spiritual life: the deep-rooted tree, for example, that can withstand all weather. Trees, being important sources of shelter, of beauty, of sanctuary, of abundance, of shade, of water or signs of water, of food, and construction material, are all over the bible.

Without looking all the citations up, here are some of the ones that come to my mind: the tree of life, the tree of knowledge of good and evil, in the Garden of Eden; the fruit-bearing trees to feed our first parents, the Oak of Mamre where Abraham and Sarah camp; the cedars of Lebanon; the fable of the trees in Judges; terebinths–love that word; the broom tree under which Jonah sat; the righteous person as a tree by the stream in Psalm 1; the olive groves on the sides of Mount Olivet near Jerusalem, where Jesus and the disciples walked; Jesus’ parable of the fig tree, and the fig tree Jesus blasted; Jesus’ metaphor of the people of God as fruit-bearing trees; disciples “known by their fruit;” the great sheltering tree in the parable of the mustard seed; the palm branches of the palm trees on Palm Sunday–(ours specially collected and sent from a parishioner in Florida); the tree as the Holy Rood, the Holy Cross, the tree of life growing by the river in the City of God, the leaves of which are for the healing of the nations, the healing of world in Revelation.
(We’re reading the great praise texts of Revelation during Easter so that came quickly to mind).

And then there is our ash tree that preaches silently about steadfastness and beauty, about shelter and hospitality, gentleness and strength, fragility and sturdiness, all at the same time.

What I love about our tree: even though the neighborhood people who have asked me about our tree do not come to church on Sunday morning, they have a concern for the tree. They have a connection to us, to God, however tenuous, through the branchs of our tree that reaches out to them. The children in the neighborhood play under the tree in spring, summer, and fall. In the fall, they make piles of leaves before we have raked them all, and jump into them. In spring they play catch. In the summer, after church, we gather under the tree for coffee. During our annual church fair, almost everybody takes a moment to rest under the tree and chat with old and new friends.

Recently, a lovely couple came to ask if they could be married under that tree. “Just us, and you, and the tree,” they said, intuitively understanding the symbol of life, roots, depth, branches, and hope that reaches to the sky.

Yesterday, I went to check on our tree after church. The buds are there, a modest swelling on the tips of the branches. Life is there, and will flower and bear fruit in God’s own time. It’s a good tree, that one.