Last week, when it was hot, hot, hot, I wanted to go to the beach. I had spent the money earlier this summer on beach passes for myself and a friend, and yet hadn’t gotten myself down to the water. There was always a good reason, and some beyond my control: poor air quality, too much bacteria in the water. Beaches closed for lifeguard training. My own schedule too busy.

And on the day I was absolutely positively going to do myself a favor and go lay in the sun for a while, read a book, and take a dip, I cleaned my condo. Took my dog on a playdate. Had a nap.

But something in me – maybe it’s the part that takes external accountability super seriously – prompted me to go anyway, because I’d told a few people I was going to. I remembered that, last summer, during a similar heatwave, I packed up some things, drove Zoe down to the beach with me, waited for the lifeguards to leave at the end of the day, and then went for a swim.

So that’s just what we did.

We waited, cautiously, until all of the Parks Department staff had left, the “no lifeguard on duty” signs were up, and much of the crowd dispersed as twilight settled in. We watched for signals of other dog owners bringing their companions onto the beach, and lurked by the entrance with some other unsure pet parents. And finally, one brave man tucked his little chihuahua under his arm and strode confidently onto the sand.

That was all it took. Zoe and I raced out into the fast-emptying beach. I threw down my towel, took off my cover-up, hooked up her long leash, and dove into the water.

I remembered what I love so much about the beach at night.

As we played in the waves, and watched other dogs run around, chasing balls, sniffing at the water, digging in the sand, I felt so free.

I noticed other people coming onto the beach, now that the crowds were gone. People like me, coming by themselves. People who might not have had companions to come with earlier in the day, or who weren’t comfortable baring their skin before harsh sun or critical eyes. People who wore headscarves or hijabs instead of bikinis, or had a kid who behaved just a little differently and needed extra space and permission to just be, and not be explained or excused.

It was a community of the quirky, the different, the “others.”

And it felt so good. So welcoming, and accepting, and free.

We splashed in the water, Zoe running in and out and across the beach and as far as her long line would let her, me trying to dive in to the water while the waves got higher and faster as a storm crept in. And when we finally came up onto the sand, and sat on my towel, watching the lightning move east, I breathed my deepest breath in days.

I remembered that I love these nighttime swims, because they are always ultimately about more than getting Zoe into the water on a hot day.

Because they remind me, in a surprising way, of what the church is, at her best.

That welcoming, beautiful, accepting space of everyone who might not fit somewhere else. Who might be “too” something or “not enough” something: too big, too loud, too talkative, too direct; not accomplished enough or rich enough or smart enough or connected enough.

There is space for everyone. Perhaps especially those that the world rejects, or ignores.

Of course, this isn’t always how the church behaves. But it is who and what we’re called to be. And at our best, this is very much what we look like: like the crowds at the beach at night. Where everyone is welcome and no one is turned away.

I hope, in these complicated and divisive times, that we can continue to pursue this way of being. This holy and welcoming space in the world.

And if you need to see an example – well, come find me and Zoe some night. We’ll take you to our beach. And remind you of what could be.

-Pastor Jen

I’m not a “get up early person” unless it involves the prospect of a little white ball or the start of a vacation. No, usually waking up about 7, I love to keep hitting the snooze button and wade in and out of sleep for another hour or so. This is true especially with the years adding up!

But lately our yellow Labrador Retriever will have none of it. He sleeps hard and wakes up fast. No snooze button in the morning’s early on. It’s usually around 445 or 5 if I’m lucky, and here’s how it goes. I’m a side sleeper. If I’m on my right hip, facing the bed’s middle, I get a sudden paw scrape on my back and shoulder. If I’m on my left hip, facing outward, the scrape gives way to a face lick or even worse when bear find my ear canal before I can protect myself! I roll away from him, as if to say no, and within a minute he is standing at the door letting out a roaring bark. UUGH!

“Rise and Shine!” he says clear as day. Who says dogs can’t talk? So down we go for food and back yard relief. Mumbling my disapproval and rubbing my eyes, I am greeted by nature’s wonder. The birds sing louder it seems, or maybe it’s just that the busy world isn’t on the move quite yet. Rabbits and squirrels and chipmunks scatter, already fast into their day’s work. I face the sun most days these days rising early, regally, and that unique early morning color starts its show. before long, with a steaming cup of coffee in my hand, my spirit is fully awake and alive, and I’m grateful to be up. (Just to clarify, I am NOT grateful at the start of this process, but I am later on!)

I find I need no text or hymn or prayer to worship the One who is my Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. My heart and mind, my spirit is already full for the gift of another day, and the green beauty, and holy time to sit still and reflect on God’s presence and promises.

Don’t get me wrong, I seriously hope this trend will not continue into fall and winter’s diminishing light and cold. I hope Bear will sleep longer because of the darkness. But for now, it’s ok, it’s even a good blessing — that is, once I’m up.

Love from here!

Peter Hawkinson

(Guest blogger is Sam Paravonian. Thank you Sam!)

Occasionally on Saturday mornings my father would take my brother (about a year and a half younger than me) and me for little over a mile walk to visit a shirttail relative of his from the old country. The man and his family lived in a two story building on Belvidere Street near Jackson Street. The family lived on the upper floor and owned and operated a neighborhood “convenience store.” Even though the morning business was light but steady, we always had opportunity to chat a while and even have some candy and/or gum which my brother and I thoroughly enjoyed.

I thought the contact between two long time relatives would be more overtly joyous, friendly and warm with more loud laughter and back-slapping rather than the more sedate, polite, and outwardly civil behavior which I observed. Furthermore, the mother never came down to the store to see us, and even more disappointing to me, she would not allow their son who was my age to come down to play with me and my brother. What’s going on here? I wondered.

Well! I learned the answer much later; I fact about 30-35 years ago when my wife and I drove to New Jersey to visit my sister Adrien (thirteen years older than me) and her family. While talking about our good old days and experiences in Waukegan I just mentioned that I never figured out the coolness and distance among our family and my father’s shirttail relatives. My sister was very surprised that I never knew and said, “Let me tell you.”

Shortly after my parents’ marriage and my mother came to Waukegan and became settled, she and my father invited his relative and wife to have lunch or some meal them in their home. After conversations and whatever, my mother invited them to the dining room. When my father’s shirttail relative saw the table all set, he said, “Mrs. Paravonian sets a fine table!” His wife then resentfully and bitterly said “All these years and every day I prepare a table for you and you never say that to me!” After that she stayed away and the relationship cooled.

I think about the missed fun times and joyful experiences our families could have shared but have missed over the years.

Good advice from apostle Paul: “Get rid of all bitterness…..”
Ephesians 4:31

Sam Paravonian

A couple of weeks ago, I attended the ECC Annual Meeting as a virtual delegate. One other member of our church attended virtually, and two others made the trip to California to attend in-person.

Since then, I’ve had many conversations about the events of that meeting, reflected about it, prayed about it, even preached about it.

The truth is, bad news travels fast. And because of years of evolution, hard-wiring our brains to perceive threats and react to them, we all have something called a negativity bias which is built in to our psyches. Which means that even when receiving positive and negative feedback or information in equal measure and intensity, we will focus on the negative. We can’t help it, in a sense. But we can be aware of it and mindful that this dynamic goes on in our brains.

Which brings me to my thoughts for today: there was still a lot of good at the Annual Meeting.

This delegate summary details some of that good. Thirty-nine people we ordained, two individuals were honored for their lifetimes of service to the church, one as an outstanding layperson and one for outstanding urban and ethnic ministry; fifty people were awarded Clergy Vocational Service recognition, forty-one lives were remembered of pastors, global personnel and spouses. Ten new churches were welcomed into membership, seven church planters and three new global personnel.

Camp ministries were celebrated, along with institutions of theological education; ministries to older adults were highlighted and congregational vitality programs.

There is a lot of good, God-honoring work happening in our church, even within and among the heartbreaking news that was also on display: one church involuntarily removed, ten withdrawn, eleven closed. Nine clergy-people gave up their ordination, and three moved to other denominations.

That’s what makes this all tremendously complicated for a lot of us. We know the good that happens in the Covenant Church; we’ve experienced it firsthand, many of us for our whole lives. And we also see the hurt and pain caused by this church right now. Both are true. Both are important. And both make it impossible to write the church off, or turn a blind eye to its actions.

I hope you’ll read the delegate summary, and take some of the good news in. And I hope you’ll find grace and space enough to hold it in tension with the troubling news, too.

Know that your pastors are here and ready to talk about all of this with you. And that we are all held by a God whose hands are big enough for the good, the bad, and everything in-between.

Yours,

Pastor Jen

(a long post — sorry!)

This summer I am wrestling with the idea that scriptural authority, though it be front and center in our faith and theology, does not preclude us from new understandings of the Triune God. In fact, the opposite is true. We believe that “Indeed the scripture is living and active” as Hebrews has it. The long season of Pentecost begs us to engage the text with the living and active Holy Spirit pushing and pulling us into new dimensions of understanding and experiencing the grace and mercy, the love of Almighty God. This was the center of Jesus’ own ministry, an on-going dialogue with the religious establishment about new commandments, new realities, and new life. It was costly to him. Suffering and death costly. “Blasphemer” is what humanity shouted at him. Jesus was right. They had little idea of what they were doing.

For many in the church, this idea of “continuing revelation” is blasphemy all the same. Scripture itself seems to say so — via Moses, who when giving Israel holy commandments from God says “You must neither add anything to what I command nor take anything away from it..” Yet our struggles reveal we still have much to learn about murder, and coveting, and keeping holy the sabbath day. We have not arrived friends! Or right there at the very end of Revelation, we read an ominous word, it seems: “I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to that person the plagues described in this book; if anyone takes away from the words of this book of prophecy, God will take away that person’s share in the tree of life and in the holy city.” Yowsah!

In my thinking, our fatal flaw is our assumption that we actually have in our possession a clear, full and final understanding of God and God’s ways, evidenced by the line we often throw out at one another: “I’m going to stick with what the Bible says.” We see, but dimly. We have much yet to learn, as Paul encourages the church: “I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ…”

Which brings up another most important point about biblical authority and continuing revelation. That is Jesus, who is the Word, capitol W, who is the holy sounding board, the One sent from God by which we interpret and understand all scripture. Jesus IS the scripture embodied. Watch and listen to him. Follow him. Allow him to interpret scripture, and follow his way. Our tendency in the Church, because we give scripture authority, is to make an idol out of it, even replace Jesus with it. This always leads us to become afraid and sectarian, to lose our impulse to love, and to call those who are pushing us to wonder and learn new things blasphemers all over again.

I was reflecting on all of this while sitting out on the seemingly endless strand of ocean beach of Nantucket sound on Cape Cod just a few days ago. Sitting with my father-in-law, I asked him if it seemed that from the far right to the far left horizon that we could actually see a bit of the curvature of the earth against the brilliant blue sky. He said, “It seems so.” Proceeding into the deliciously warm water arriving from the tropics, I thought about Galileo. Yes, Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), who was investigated by the church in 1616 for sitting out on some such beach strand under the night sky with his invented telescope to discover that the universe was not geocentric (everything revolves around the earth, a long held view rooted in scriptural interpretation) but rather heliocentric (earth revolves around the sun). He was put on trial by the church and convicted of heresy on June 22, 1633. To avoid being tortured, he recanted his claims though he knew them to be true, and was given instead a life sentence of house arrest. It was not until November of 1992, 359 years later, that Pope John Paul II officially declared that Galileo was right!

Reading the Bible in a more literal sense than was intended found the church threatened and so unable to accept new important learnings. New ideas, new insights were threats rather than possibilities, and their perpetrators were dangerous and so deemed heretics.

From all this, here are some thoughts to ponder:

First, we need to return again and again to a humble posture of openness that is rooted in our acceptance that we see dimly and have so much new biblical/theological territory to explore. We need not be afraid but are in fact encouraged (with the help of the Holy Spirit and discerning spiritual community) to do so.

Second, the progression of humanity through time adds to our learning and understanding. To give scripture authority should not put us in opposition to or make us fearful of all that our human development is revealing to us about the wonders of God’s beauty and love.

Third, we must root our biblical and theological understanding and interpretation of scripture in Jesus and the Kingdom of God as we find it in the gospels, who embodies all truth and goodness and love.

Fourth, We must recognize our constant tendency in and as the church to reject new thoughts and ideas, and their messengers. In so doing, we may well be stifling some new dimension of God’s love and truth that the Holy Spirit wants to teach us.

Fifth, We must repent of our constant sin of limiting God, of seeking to border the wonder of God for our religious purposes which are often rooted in our desire for power and control over others. Our God is in fact much too small.

Sixth, and flowing from all these other thoughts, we must relinquish our fear-based religious framework and journey with God — Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer — who is all about always making all things new.

We always, involved in life, have a litmus test. The Risen Christ invites us into life, and a love that transcends every human limit, boundary, and judgment. Such is the radical call to the radical Christ.

I could go on here deep in my wrestling, and I’d love to wrestle along with you in the Spirit’s reach. Let me know what thoughts you have. I know I most of all see dimly!

Ending with a prayer for the back of ur hymnal, #921, from Herbert Brokering:

Lord, call us into the church. Call us in often, and teach us the old words and old songs with their new meanings. Lord, give us new words for the old words we wear out. Give us new songs for those that have lost their spirit. Give us new reasons for coming in and for going out, into our streets and to our homes. As the house of the Lord once moved like a tent through the wilderness, so keep our churches from becoming rigid. Make our congregation alive and free. Give us ideas we never had before, so that alleluia and gloria and amen are like the experiences we know in daily living. Alleluia! O Lord, be praised! In worship and in work, be praised! Amen.

Love from Here!

Peter Hawkinson

Like many of my friends and colleagues in ministry today, I am somewhat at a loss for words.

It was a hard, hard weekend at the Covenant Annual Meeting. In what is becoming something of a pattern, heartbreakingly so, the gathered assembly voted this weekend to expel another church for its policies of inclusion toward the LGBTQ community.

That alone is plenty.

But on top of it, the Supreme Court also handed down their slate of decisions for this session before going onto summer recess, among them the repeal of affirmative action policies, or “race-conscious admissions” for institutions of higher education, and another allowing a web designer to refuse services to LGBTQ couples.

Oh, and if that weren’t enough, we’re heading into the July 4th holiday. A time that, historically, I could jump into with full abandon: fireworks! Hamburgers and hot dogs! Strawberry shortcake and flag t-shirts! But now I’m left a little lukewarm, recognizing that the America which has treated me so, so well as an upper-middle class, heterosexual, Christian, white woman, does not exist for many others.

So I’m sitting on my porch, enjoying the first really beautiful (smoke-free, blue-sky, not-terribly-humid) morning we’ve had in days near Chicago, and ruminating.

I’m thinking about institutions, which as someone pointed out this weekend, were never meant to love us. And yet I have – we have – looked to them for so much: for reflecting our values, for implementing policies that reflect them, and that pursue justice and wholeness. We have trusted in them. We have supported them. Some of them, even, (like the church), we have loved.

But they have failed us, in ways. They have broken some of our hearts.

Perhaps because we know and recognize what they could be. What they have been. What they are capable of.

Like watching a loved one squander their talents or go down an unhealthy path, it pains us to see these institutions do the same.

It was reported this weekend that, after the vote to expel Awaken Church from the Covenant, a member of the denominational executive board called it “a victory for Jesus.”

I cannot think of any words less true.

Instead, the words that I keep returning to this morning are those of Father Gregory Boyle, who said, “You know you’ve created God in your own image when you discover God hates all the same people that you do.”

Boyle talks and writes extensively about this, about our human propensity to draw lines and circles and decide who is in and who out. And he is abundantly clear on this: that is not the way of Jesus. In an interview given to The Work of the People, Boyle said, “Our God is so huge and so welcoming, and Jesus was only about dismantling the barriers that excluded, he was only about expanding the circle of compassion, hopeful that no one would stand outside of it.”

Hopeful that no one would stand outside of it.

I wish I had a solution for us this morning. I wish I knew the exact way forward. Or could offer words of certainty and hope.

But perhaps these thoughts of Father Boyle are enough, for now.

The reminder that God is always bigger, and greater, than us and our ideas.

The encouragement not to fall into the trap of making God in our image.

And the call to find ways of expanding the circle of compassion ever wider. Hopefully, some of that work can take place within the institutions we support. But it must never be limited to those, either.

That’s all for now. But just for now.

-Pastor Jen