Make a joyful noise to God, all the earth; sing the glory of his name; give to him glorious praise. (Psalm 66:1-2)

All together now– applause for God! Sing songs to the tune of his glory, set glory to the rhythms of his praise! (The Message)

Bear is all of a sudden singing! The first time it happened we were on our way home from the dog park, and when Tom Petty’s tune “Free Fallin‘” came on, and I turned it up (a required action with that tune!) Bear leapt from the back set to the front, sat down, stuck his nose up into the air, and started to sing. No Kidding! When the song ended, and Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” took over, back to the back seat he went.

I thought maybe it was some kind of coincidence, but soon Sarah related a similar experience. And then this past Tuesday, late afternoon while washing windows with Seals and Crofts blaring, Bear came into the middle of the living room and howled away with “Summer Breeze”. I wanted to include the video here but can’t, so you can find it on my Facebook page.

The point of it all is that Bear is reminding me that all creation gives thanks, and that despite all of life’s stresses, strains, and challenges, we can and ought to turn up the music of our lives and sing for joy to the Giver of all life and every good and perfect gift, including these gorgeous last blue days of summer.

Sometimes we just need to stop and sing. For me, that involves turning up the volume and singing along with a throated passion, in the spirit of Bruce Cockburn’s Lovers in a Dangerous Time — “Don’t the hours grow shorter as the days go by? We never get to stop and open our eyes. One minute your waiting for the sky to fall, next your dazzled by the beauty of it all…” Sometimes we just need to stop, and sing, and praise the Healer of our lives.

And sometimes for me it’s “Amazing Grace, How Sweet the Sound“, and “Lord, I Lift Your Name on High”, and sometimes its “All You Need is Love” and “Jesus is Just Alright”, or a personal favorite, “The Great Gig in The Sky” thanks to Pink Floyd — want a heavenly, glorious moment? Check it out. Or “Something’s Coming” from West Side Story or Edward Elgar’s Nimrod or Eric Whitacre’s Lux Aurumque. The point is that wherever I am, and whatever is going on, I can stop, mark the moment, turn up the music, and sing, which expresses the deepest parts of my soul.

Music, Plato said, “gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything.” and Shakespeare said, “If music be the food of love, play on.”

And singing, or humming, or “making a joyful noise” as the psalmist says it, attaches our spirit to that creative and beautiful offering someone else has concocted. Even bear has figured that one out!

So I challenge you. Sometime today, put on your headphones — sorry, I’m dating myself, earbuds — and turn up whatever connects with your soul, and join in the singing, and direct your soul’s gratitude to od, sing songs to the tune of his glory.

“We hear the bird-song ringing a many throated laud: shall not our tongues be singing our praise to Father God? My soul, lift up God’s greatness, a hearty song employ, to him who wills to find us and bring us endless joy.” Covenant Hymnal, 646, v. 2

and my “Bear Inspired” verse, NOT hymnal worthy:

“I have a singing partner, and his name is bear, he teaches me to stop, and sing the music everywhere. There is no inhibition, he lets his yelping sing, with him I praise my Maker, Giver of everything!”

Love From Here!

Peter Hawkinson

“Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.” (Ephesians 4:13)

“For you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28)

Last Sunday after worship Sam Paravonian left me an article to read, from The Wall Street Journal entitled “Houses of Worship Shouldn’t Mirror the Class Divide” by Ryan Burge, pastor and Political science professor at Eastern Illinois University. The summary of the article are these words: “If churches, synagogues, and mosques were once again full of people from across the economic and political spectrum, it would help build bridges not just in the congregation but in the larger community.” Wise words to ponder in an exceedingly challenging cultural and political climate in our country, where the goal of unity has lost its “hutzpah” and the pursuit of uniformity seems to shout out loud!

Where the church ought to be and has a chance to re-insert unity’s witness and power, too often we have followed the cultural and political trends along that are doing great damage to us individually and collectively.

Though both words are so similar and sound benign, both pack a punch!

Uniformity is all about holding the same views, beliefs, and standards, and there is no room for differences. It seems impressive and might be easier to manage, but it only creates a false sense of unity. Instead of tolerating differences, we are out to eliminate them.

Unity is all about harmony between different people and groups. It comes to life when people who are different in all kinds of ways are able to coexist peacefully and respectfully. It is fueled by tolerance, and it requires maturity.

Uniformity does not require grace, but unity does. The key difference between unity and uniformity is the acceptance of differences. When there is unity, people accept or at least respect each other’s differences, but uniformity implies that everyone is alike, or must be, so there is no room for differences. Uniformity leads to fights for control.

So what of it? How are we doing, Church? The author reflects: “If someone walked into an average Protestant or Catholic Church in the 1980s, they were just as likely to sit next to a Democrat as a Republican. That’s no longer the case…” We, like the culture, have siphoned ourselves off into essentially republican churches and democratic churches, just as the landscape of our country has becomes more clearly defined as red or blue. Our theological differences in this climate valuing uniformity over unity have found us dismissing each other as we splinter further and further into places where “everyone thinks like me.”

But it seems that Unity is clearly what God is after and hoping for, and where our energy and effort should be as Christians in community. It should be our deep longing and hope and the focus of our prayers as we seek to live together. And while our culture, driven by our politics, is certainly pulling us in a different direction toward the TV stations and newspapers and blogs and rallies that reinforce our views and disparage those “others” we see, the Church really does have an opportunity to show a better way, that it is still possible to be tolerant and respectful of one another in our differences.

The problem is that as we become more monolithic we become more dogmatic and assured “that I am right and you are wrong”, etc… and less tolerant, even intolerant of one another. The extreme ends of our “side” fuel the fire, and get all the press. As the author says, we know so well: “When religion becomes so politically uniform, it can have corrosive effects on democracy. In general, Americans, are becoming less tolerant from people who are different than us.” Sad, but not surprising, given our collective broken relationships and painful experiences. The Church doesn’t seem to be helping the situation.

Maybe the answer, at least in part is to seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness (which leads toward unity) rather than quench our spirit in the political and cultural climate which is forever pushing us toward uniformity, and while we’re at it, to limit our intake of favorite news outlets while we make new plans with neighbors, wondering how we can bless them.

Unity is hard courageous work. But God’s Spirit and the love of Jesus make it possible!

Love from here

Peter Hawkinson

This week’s guest post is written by Val Hausman. If you are interested in writing for our blog, please contact Pastor Pete or Pastor Jen!

How lucky are we at WCC that we have had so many ways to support women and women’s ministries… Covenant Women, women’s groups, women’s retreats (one at Covenant Point this fall, and our WCC women’s retreat returning early in 2024!), women in leadership. So many ways to connect and support each other! I had the great pleasure of worshiping at Kingdom Covenant a couple of weeks ago, and couldn’t help but notice the many ways in which women contribute to the ministry there. In September they plan to hold a retreat for women called “She Walks”.

The price for participation is $75 for two days, a cost that may be prohibitive for some. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if every woman who wanted could participate? For each to take a step to join in the fellowship without the worries of finances?

The step I am asking women of WCC (and the people who love them) to make is to help support this ministry. Here’s how you can help:

Go to kingdomchicago.org

Click on “Give” and “Give Now”

Select “Women’s Day Weekend 2023”

This will hopefully help to defer the cost of someone attending or reduce the overall amount.

Thank you!

Valerie Hausman

Brian McLaren, one of my favorite sages, talks about two ways of thinking about God. Kataphatic tradition experiences God as describable, image worthy, and dealing in certainty. God is our fortress, a burning bush, a potter, a Heavenly Father. God is the same, yesterday, today, and tomorrow: The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want…” (Ps. 23)

Apophatic tradition finds human language and imagery failing. God is a mystery, wholly other, mystical and on the far side of human experience. Silent wonder is faith’s greatest expression: O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgements and how inscrutable are his ways! (Romans 11)

The obvious question is, “Which of these traditions is more compelling to you?” And though indeed our spirits lean toward one tradition more than the other, As with so many “one or the others”, wisdom is found in the strengths of each, and especially the art of navigating between the two. I’m reminded of one of many occasions when my dad was offered either cake or pie for dessert, and just said “YES!” — in other words, some of both is best. Both ways of seeing and experiencing and talking about God are biblical, and each serves as a counterpoint and even sometimes as a check and balance to the other.

In those moments when I’m so sure about God, it might be good to watch an approaching thunderstorm in silence and humble myself a bit. And on those days that my spirit is unsettled and shaken, I might meditate on an image of God that comforts me — for instance, God is like a mother hen who gathers me under her wing where I find refuge. (Ps. 91).

My seminary professor Kyle Snodgrass talks about a life of faith as a life of holding the tension between this and that, between two things that are true…He says, “One of the best contributions which Christian thought can make to the thought of the world is that life is complex. It is part of the Christian understanding of reality that all simplistic answers to basic questions are bound to be false. Over and over, the answer is both-and rather than either-or.” (Between Two Truths, Zondervan, 1990, p. 29).

We are saints and sinners. Pride and humility dance together. Hold in tension strength and weakness, authority and submission, faith and works, grace and law, freedom and responsibility. This is where maturity takes shape, when we are able to see truth and value in each, even as they offset each other. We are able to embrace the tension of life and faith and find our way through with joy and peace, rather than always being fearful of the other and different.

What I’m thinking about is the challenge former Covenant Church president Glenn Palmberg used to give when tension was present in the church: “Move toward your opposite.” For me, as one more comfortable living in an apophatic world and church tradition, it’s important for me to befriend and respect and value kataphatic writers and thinkers and friends, and the strength of their images and certainties.

Mclaren concludes: “God is the wind in the sail (apophatic) and the sea we sail upon (cataphatic). We are embarked.“

What do you think and feel about this?

Peter Hawkinson

This Sunday was a very special day for our church. In lieu of gathering to worship at our building, we drove as a group down to Kingdom Covenant Church, a partner congregation of ours on the south side of the city, to worship and eat lunch together.

Kingdom is a much younger church than ours, a relatively recent church plant. And that’s just the beginning of our differences, really: they serve a primarily lower-income, predominantly black neighborhood; we serve a primarily higher-income, predominantly white area. They just purchased a building two years ago, in the midst of COVID, an old Lutheran church that was in need of lots of TLC. We’re a year away from paying off our mortgage (!!) and encountering the TLC needs of a building we’ve been in since its construction in the post-war years.

Our services are primarily traditional; with songs out of a hymnal sung to a piano and organ and a choir in robes; theirs are much less traditional, with a praise band, drums, singers leading the congregation in music that you have to listen to, to learn – no songbooks, or projections, or handouts.

I could go on and on, but you get the picture: we are pretty different.

And yet.

We are united in the things that matter. We love Jesus, we want to serve God by serving our neighbor. We want meaningful work, safe places to live, nourishing food to eat, good healthcare when we’re sick, high-quality education and opportunities for our kids.

Still, visiting each other’s churches can be an uncomfortable endeavor, because of some of those differences I mentioned.

This Sunday, Pastor David (Kingdom’s lead pastor), began his sermon by saying: “Winnetka folks, we’re going to make you uncomfortable today.”

He went on to explain: “if you talk to me while I’m preaching, it won’t distract me, it won’t derail me, if anything it will only put gasoline on my fire. If you don’t talk, I’m not sure if you can hear me. And I’ll probably just preach longer!”

Those of you who’ve worshipped with us at Winnetka know this is a far cry from how we experience the sermon. As a pastor, I’m used to people coughing during my sermons, a cell phone going off, maybe a baby crying – but certainly no one talking to me. No one clapping, or yelling “amen” if they agree.

But that’s exactly what Pastor David asked of us this week. To engage a different practice that was normal for his community.

In essence, to choose discomfort for their sake.

And it got me thinking.

So often, we are in our comfort zone at church. We can often pick a church to attend based somewhat on that comfort zone – we like the preaching, the theology, the worship style, the programs. Some of that is good and useful; we need to be at least moderately comfortable to engage consistently.

But sometimes we can get a little too used to being comfortable, and that’s usually when we stop growing.

That’s when it becomes especially important to stretch ourselves; to choose some discomfort intentionally. Like going to worship with Kingdom Covenant, yes, but there are also options right at our own church.

Like attending Wednesday night worship in the Upper Room. It might not be your style, but it is the style of singing beloved by many of our kids, and so for the sake of relationship with them, choosing to be uncomfortable and go sing some rowdy camp songs.

Choosing your discomfort by serving in leadership, or by taking on a local service project.

Choosing your discomfort by pursuing relationships with people across the political divide from you.

And always, always, remembering that we do these things for the sake of each other. To be reminded, as the worship leaders as Kingdom sang with us on Sunday: “I need you, you need me, we’re all a part of God’s body […] I need you to survive.”¹

Sunday was a great opportunity to practice this idea: choosing to be uncomfortable for the sake of relationship with each other. But I pray it won’t be the only opportunity.

As we gather together again in a few short weeks, to kick off our fall season, I hope you’ll join me in looking for ways to intentionally choose some discomfort, that we might grow together and grow in our faith.

-Pastor Jen

1. https://genius.com/Hezekiah-walker-i-need-you-to-survive-lyrics ↩︎

“As soon as the Gospels were written, speech without experience began to dabble with the new facts by the existence of the Church…people tried to think the new life without being touched by it first in some form of call, listening, passion or change of heart.” Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy

I must have been ten years old, and it must have been this late summer kind of time. Sitting between mom and dad (no choir in the summer!) in the sweltering balcony of North Park Covenant Church, we listened to pastor Wiberg preach with passion, returning again and again too the phrase, “We still need Jesus!” As if unplanned, the sermon ended with him coming down from the platform and beginning to bang on the piano, and we sang:

“Just as I am without one plea but that thy blood was shed for me, and that thou bidd’st me come to thee, O Lamb of God, I come, I come!” (Covenant hymnal 331).

It was as close to an “altar call” as I’d ever seen in our church, because we didn’t have those, where we would be asked to get up and come forward and accept Jesus publicly as Savior and Lord. But I was familiar with it, from visiting my friends’ churches, and from those Thursday night camp bonfires. There the speaker would invite us somehow after leading up to it all week, to do something — raise a hand, or stand up, or throw a stick into the fire “if you want to give your life to Jesus, or re-commit your life to him.” Peer pressure ensued, but beyond that I really was touched by the gospel’s good news, even as a child.

Well, I must have just returned from one of those tender camp experiences, when on the way home from church I remember asking my dad why pastor Wiberg didn’t ask people to come forward. Not exactly remembering, my dad responded with something like this: “Well, Peter, it’s a good question, and we respond, we come to Jesus, but that’s not the way we do it.” And I knew at least part of what he meant, evidenced by the tears I often saw flowing in the sanctuary. A deep experience of God’s love and response to the call of Jesus to come to him were readily apparent, absent the more evangelical approach.

I’ve thought about that day now fifty summers ago and that question I asked. It was a good and important one. Still is, especially for those of us who carry on a more nuanced and less confrontational way of asking each other to “get saved”, to “give our hearts to Jesus”, to “find new life in Christ”, to “accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior.” Though we don’t ask for raised hands or stand-ups, nevertheless we ask (I hope!). Because as pastor Wiberg said it, “We still need Jesus!”

In spite of all the guilting and shaming attempts at manipulation the church has a history with, and despite our more Lutheran, sacramentlist ways, we are a revivalist people. Our Pietist forebears would ask each other “So are you alive in Jesus?” And then the next time they saw each other, “Are you STILL alive in Jesus?” Ours is a tradition deeply steeped in conversion experiences and the constant process of repentance, of turning away from our selves and opening up to God’s Spirit. Our history takes shape in “strangely warmed hearts” and tears for joy and testimonies, and that real experience shapes the way we speak, and act, and love, and serve, and pray.

Ours must be a faith of experience first, and over and over again, before it is anything else. The grace of God needs to touch us, and change us, and form us, once, for the first time, and again and again, when we come to this: “For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 3)

I still need Jesus, and you do too! Everyday, every hour, every minute. And Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.

Though our tradition these days is a bit more modest and relational and welcoming rather than confrontational (a good thing!), let us never lose the gospel’s call, which is to come to Jesus. If yours is a religious experience that is boring to you, try opening up and really trusting Jesus with your journey. Try giving your life to Christ and set out on an adventure of following him. An adventure it will be!

Are you alive in Jesus? Are you STILL alive in Jesus?

Love From Here

Peter Hawkinson

Then he (Jesus) told this story to some who boasted of their virtue and scorned everyone else:

“Two men went to the Temple to pray. One was a proud, self-righteous Pharisee, and the other a cheating tax collector. The proud Pharisee ‘prayed’ this prayer: ‘Thank God, I am not a sinner like everyone else, especially that tax collector over there! For I never cheat, I don’t commit adultery, I go without food twice a week, and I give to God a tenth of everything I earn.’

“But the corrupt tax collector stood at a distance and dared not even lift his eyes to heaven as he prayed, but beat upon his chest in sorrow, exclaiming, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner.’ I tell you, this sinner, not the Pharisee, returned home forgiven! For the proud shall be humbled, but the humble shall be honored.”

(Luke 189-14, Living Bible)

Recently I was asking a friend who found a new church home about what drew them there, and she said, among other things that “It was the only church could find that offered me the gift of confession.” I’ve been thinking about her phrase “the gift of confession”. It doesn’t capture the way I usually think about that word or process — you know, of “coming clean”, of getting honest with the Living God about my living days and broken ways. And then I reflect on these words:

“Remember that our Lord Jesus can sympathize with us in our weaknesses, since in every respect he was tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with boldness approach the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” (Hebrews 4:15-16)

How I need mercy and grace! Though sometimes I lose sight of these when I lose touch with my own frailty and opt instead for the delusion of self-righteousness, that old, primal temptation given to humanity way back in the garden of eden: “You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” What a delusion, and what a temptation still.

I think I need a daily time out to start over again with this God of mercy and grace, who I’m told is not waiting with anger but filled with what Israel calls “Hesed”, that is, steadfast love, with mercy and grace in the moment when I desperately need just such. The trick is that grace is only my experience when I’m up front and honest about my need for it, and why. And here is where my honest confession to God becomes a gift. I can begin again with a clean heart and mind, with a new chance to love up and out; I can renew the day with a lightened burden in the presence of the risen Christ who bids me to come and find rest.

Maybe that gets a little bit at what my friend meant when she talked about “The Gift of Confession”. Maybe honest confession, though not easy, though often painful and embarrassing, really is good for our souls. For we come home even in our sins to the One who has loved us with an everlasting love, and whose grace to begin again is always abundantly flowing like a rushing summer river.

I think the prayer of the tax collector is a gift too, because it’s short and sweet and easy to own: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” It’s easy to repeat with the cadence of every breath, a constant plea, an unburdening of sorrow, an expression all at one time of utter despair and trust in the One who I know loves me. I can fill in the blanks, I can find the details in my secret heart. And in this honest confession I find again and again a word of release, and a lightened burden, and surprisingly, a distinct sense that all is well again.

A daily time out is what I need, to come back home to God’s grace and mercy in my time of need. How about you?

Peter Hawkinson