Today’s blog post is written by Pastor Jen.

Last week was the annual Midwinter Conference of the Covenant Church, which I spoke about a little during yesterday’s sermon. It’s a big conference, which means big plenary sessions, and this year one of the speakers was Ruth Haley Barton, who led us through a session on sabbath-keeping (one of my favorite topics).

Now, there are many, many blog posts I could happily write about the practice of keeping sabbath, but what struck me about Ruth’s talk wasn’t just the content – it was the way she started it, telling a story about Episcopal priest and author Barbara Brown Taylor.

Barbara had been invited to preach at a church, and she asked the minister who invited her: “what should I preach about?”

And he said something like this: tell us what is saving your life right now.

I can think of no better reflection point for this, the 512th day of January. A time of the year when the holidays are long gone, spring is still far away, and everything that involves getting up and leaving home feels a little too hard to comprehend.

So what is saving my life right now?

First of all, the sun.

I stood outside in the sun for an hour this afternoon while my dog played with one of her neighborhood buddies, and I would be lying if I said it didn’t help me re-evaluate all of my former funk. Over the last ten or so days of bitter cold, then gray skies, pouring rain, heavy fog and slush and mud, I have sunk deeper and deeper into the winter blues. But even just a taste of sun and mild breezes today reminded me that this won’t last forever. I’ll sit on my porch again in short-sleeves, drinking cold seltzers.

Sometimes that reminder is all I need.

The next thing saving my life right now is reading. I’m knee-deep in a novel by Richard Russo which follows the life of a diner owner in small-town Maine, and it’s tender and beautiful and painful and compelling. But it communicates all those things through the lives of very ordinary people in a very ordinary place, and exactly because of that it keeps reminding me that ordinary is beautiful and powerful.

Getting into the kitchen is also saving my life: getting out of my head and into chopping and mixing and stirring and folding. I tried chocolate granola last night, and tonight I’m baking for the start of Bible Study tomorrow. These aren’t “project bakes” or “showstoppers,” but they’re a way of nourishing myself and those I love. They’re a dance around the kitchen that helps me feel sure of my body when it’s still hard to drown out the diet-talk-blitz of January. They’re a reminder of what is holy and sacramental: God feeding us. Us feeding each other.

So that’s me. Not even to mention the clean sheets I put on my bed today, or the dog snuggling next to me, who saves my life every day.

What is saving your life today?

-Pastor Jen

“Thanks for Roses by the wayside, thanks for thorns their stems contain.” (Hymnal, 657)

There are two roses remaining on my desk corner in a parched vase. It seems that just overnight they shriveled up. It seems that their beautiful purpose is lost, and they ought to be disposed of. But I’m sitting with them for a bit, looking at them and contemplating the beauty of their expression, even now — at least in their witness to life’s sorrows, sadness, grief and losses.

The old hymn, “Thanks to God for My Redeemer” (Hymnal 657) reinforces this. The late J. Irving Erickson writes that “there are very few songs of Swedish heritage that have been more popular than ‘Tack, O Gud, for vad du (som) varit.’ The lyrics were written by August Ludvig Storm, a Salvation Army officer in 1891. Each line of the four stanzas begins with the word “thanks” and states one thing for which the author expresses gratitude to God. But in the words of Oscar Lovgren, ‘There are no cheap commodities in the thirty-two thanks found in the song.'” Indeed! Storm thanks God for “dark and dreary fall” as well as “pleasant, balmy springtime”; for “pain” as well as ‘pleasure”; for “thorns” that roses bear as well as their lovely flowers. Such is life, no?

Erickson goes on to relay that the context of this hymn is a sudden and severe back ailment that left August painfully and permanently crippled. He must have sat and seen one hard day what I do now, that thorny stems are much easier to notice — they claim my attention — when the flower and fragrance have faded, and the leaves lay limp.

Why does he say “thanks” for thorns, and why should I? It simply can’t be that he couldn’t be thankful for his accident, or that it left him crippled and in constant pain. But what then could the thanks be about? Maybe that somehow the thorns on the stems gave him an image to help him express his pain and sorrow, AND, AND along with that lament a deep abiding sense that his Heavenly Father was with him in his grief and sadness.

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 finds Paul writing to his church friends: “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” He does not admonish them to be thankful FOR everything, but IN everything find a reason for rejoicing — and that “thanks” need not be any schmaltzy kind of denial of reality, but instead gratitude for the chance to be honest about the circumstances of life at the moment, and through it all God’s presence and promises to hold us.

So, at least for a little while, the roses will remain. And I will seek after a thankful heart, come what may.

Peter Hawkinson

Thanks to God for my Redeemer, thanks for all thou dost provide! Thanks for times now but a memory, thanks for Jesus by my side! Thanks for pleasant balmy springtime, thanks for dark and dreary fall!  Thanks for tears by now forgotten, thanks for peace within my soul!

Thanks for prayers that thou hast answered, thanks for what thou dost deny! Thanks for storms that I have weathered, thanks for all thou dost supply! Thanks for pain and thanks for pleasure, thanks for comfort in despair! Thanks for grace that none can measure, thanks for love beyond compare!

Thanks for Roses by the wayside, thanks for thorns their stems contain! Thanks for home and thanks for fireside, thanks for hope, that sweet refrain! Thanks for joy and thanks for sorrow, thanks for heavenly peace with thee! Thanks for hope in the tomorrow, thanks through all eternity!

Words: August Living Storm, 1862-1914, translated by Carl Backstrom, 1901-1984.        Music: J.A. Hultmann, 1861-1942

“The way God designed our bodies is a model for understanding our lives together as a church: every part dependent on every other part, the parts we mention and the parts we don’t the parts we see and the parts we don’t. If one part hurts, every other part is involved in the hurt, and in the healing. If one part flourishes, every other part enters into the exuberance. You are Christ’s body–that’s who you are! You must never forget this. (1 Corinthians 12, The Message)

It’s that time again, soon, you know it when the Super Bowl comes calling. The WCC Church Annual meeting is at hand! For us it will be Wednesday, February 7 — pizza at 5:30, meeting at 6:30.

The central document we grapple with at this meeting is the proposed budget for the coming year. It is attributed to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. that he said “a budget is a moral document.” The point is, at least in part, that a budget lays bare the mission and values of an organized community, or in our case, the budget sets us off as Winnetka Covenant Church into another year of life and ministry, this one being our 97th!

The proposed budget to come will be what we call a “deficit budget”. That is, that we expect our collective giving will not be enough to fund our ministry for the year. To a great extent this is no surprise. I think I’m right in saying that in my 23 years here we have never begun the year with a balanced budget. We begin with the finite figure of our collective pledges and we make assumptions about non-pledge giving and these together usually form 60 to 70 percent of our proposed budget. At our annual meeting we have conversation, and maybe make a few adjustments, but our budget always ends up being a deficit budget. We pray and commit ourselves toward that other 30 percent, and on we go. Welcome to the quirky world of faith based budgets! A more positive way to say it is that a deficit budget is a faith budget. We are people and a community of faith, believing that God is with us and will help us forward. Our mission remains. On we go.

Just now I’d like to also say that while a budget is a moral document, and for us rooted in our faith, ours is also a “body budget”. That is to say that it is our collective coming together, our together work. St. Paul talks about how critical it is to a body that all the parts are functions, participating as they should, are healthy in their contributions to the whole. The whole idea of a church body, biblically and theologically, is first that we all as members and friends of the church participate in it’s ministry — with our gifts of time, talent, and treasure. The second idea is that this giving of ourselves and our resources is our primary, or best, our most substantial giving, because this church is our body, our primary community of faith and spiritual growth and life, the place and people with whom we live out our faith in the world.

It is embracing, each of us, our central part in this body of Christ, this Church, that we catch a vision — that if we can come together in this way, we need not have a deficit budget, that our collective work of giving can set us free to more boldly pursue the mission of God and neighbor love that is our witness to the world.

A few practical thoughts:

Participate in giving to the church. Pray about saying yes when you are asked to serve. Pray about your most substantial giving being to your church.

Make an effort to study the proposed budget, and join the annual meeting on February 7. We need everyone’s voice and energy!

Commit yourself as a part of the body to its health and flourishing.

The budget is a body document!

Praying with you

Peter Hawkinson

Today’s blog post is written by Pastor Jen.

I don’t know how I did this, exactly, but for the second year in a row I was due to write a blog on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

And for the second year in a row, I opened my planner yesterday, looked at my note to “write blog” and groaned a little.

Because what, really, do I have to say about the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., or about the work that remains to be done?

It feels tone deaf at best, and hypocritical at worst, as a white person to tell you all about MLK and how we should understand him.

So, for the second year in a row, I will not attempt to do that.

Instead, I will share a thought that other people – BIPOC leaders who I respect and learn from – shared with me yesterday: Which is that, before we do any quoting of MLK, we should re-read his letter from a Birmingham Jail. You can find the full text here, and at many other places on the internet.

It’s especially important for those of us who style ourselves as moderates to do so, and as white Christians, because his words were particularly addressed to white church leaders who criticized his work; who might have agreed with his goals but denigrated his methods.

He writes beautifully in this letter about civil disobedience, about faith, about unjust laws and the way of nonviolence, about a deep love for the church and a deep disappointment in its response.

Perhaps most compellingly, he writes these words that I think deserve our continued reflection:

“There was a time when the church was very powerful—in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being “disturbers of the peace” and “outside agitators.”’ But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were “a colony of heaven,” called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be “astronomically intimidated.” By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests.

Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent—and often even vocal—sanction of things as they are.

But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.“

So what will it be – thermometer or thermostat?

As anyone in the greater Chicago area (perhaps the entire Midwest) knows right now, we are in a terrible cold snap. So cold that certain things stop working…like my thermostat yesterday.

And let me tell you, when it went from being an effective thermostat to being a thermometer, I got COLD. I got uncomfortable. My sweet dog woke me up because she too was uncomfortable, and demanded something be done about it.

I had to turn that thermometer back into a thermostat – and thanks to God, some electrical tape, and the internet, I’m happy to report that I did.

But I’m not often in the place of being uncomfortable and forced into action like that.

To get back to MLK’s letter, I am one of the people most benefitted by the status quo – white, straight, non-disabled, middle class, college educated. So things as they are work for me, in general.

But they don’t work for a lot of people. And part of our call as Christians is to be the family of God; the body of Christ, and to recognize that when one part of the body is hurt or sick then all of us suffer.

That is when things will change.

When we realize that we’re all affected by injustice, and it hurts everyone. Then we, the comfortable, will be moved to act. I pray that day is soon. That maybe even it is now.

I don’t have much more to say that hasn’t been said many times, more eloquently, and by people with much more credibility and experience than I. But I will leave you with this question, which remains as urgent for us now as ever:

What will we, the church, be: thermometer or thermostat?

yours,

Pastor Jen

“Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; let the sea roar, and all that fills it; let the field exult, and everything in it! (Psalm 96)

“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. (Psalm 19)

Friday morning, and we’re hunkered down! Kind of. Hope you are safe and warm somewhere too.

As you must know by now, and are likely tired of hearing me say, “Winter is not my thing.” I won’t go on about it, but I love heat, sun (much too too much for my dermatologist!) green grass, floral and fruitful air, and warm nights to sit out under the stars around a fire. Today the fire is here, inside!

When I think of all those scriptural moments when writers are celebrating creation and sense it giving thanks, I think about green, lush summer, about endless fields of crops growing toward fruit, about water sparkling in the sunshine, seeming to beg me to go ahead and jump. What does NOT normally come to mind are bare trees, wind chills, and what’s going on today.

Until today. I was taught a lesson by the creation and the critters, and at the Spirit’s bidding. Here’s the narrative so far. About 530 Bear, our yellow lab, began licking my face to wake me up, a sure sign of his intentions to eat breakfast and do his biological work. So down the stairs he led me, thundering with excitement, I still waking up and being careful not to fall. After the usual 30 second breakfast, he lunged toward the sliding door to the backyard as I opened it, and sprinted out into the blizzard, his tan body blending in by the back fence. After a few minutes hs spoke again, “Let me in!” he said. And I turned on the news with anticipatory fear of what’s just beginning to come our way. Snow blower and roof rake are ready.

But Bear would have none of the usual pattern of morning news and coffee. No, he said under no uncertain terms, “I want you to take me back outside. And now.” Bark, bark, bark, and a look straight into my eyes of longing, of “please, please!” And so I put on my new Christmas boots, bundled up, and out we went.

The first thing I noticed was the loud silence and stillness. The lack of school buses and commuters and any people, anywhere. Because of this, I became aware of the crunchy walk of my feet, and the wind, oh the wind singing a song. As we turned down the old abandoned path where train tracks once were, I did something I rarely do — unhooked the leash, to Bear’s astonishment and delight, and he began about two minutes of what we call “zoomies”, of dead sprints back and forth past me, all around me, stopping only long enough to roll in the snow. It was for me a pure expression of his joy and delight. I felt as though his spirit was bidding my summer into thanksgiving for creation’s wonder. A red cardinal I would never have noticed on another day watched from a branch above. Lightning and thunder and even a fired up transformer had something to say (yikes!).

I stood for a good while until I could not deny the absolute beauty and wonder of the day, and I began to consider on the way home how limited my view is of creation’s glory, and how the Creator’s praise for it all is muted by my preoccupations.

So hoping it’s not sacrilege, I’d like to add a verse to meld in with all the others: “Let the snow fly, and the winds blow, Let the creatures play and let the icicles form.” Today will always live on in my memory as a blessed day.

Now Sunday it’s going to be 4 degrees with a stiff north wind, minus 25 wind chill. Full disclosure, that I’m not yet ready to proclaim that this too represents a thankful creation. But I hope to get there when I see you on Sunday.

I hope today and tomorrow as nature rages with power you will rejoice and give thanks, taste and see that the Lord is good. You can take bear for a walk if you need help to do it!

Love from Here

Peter Hawkinson

(This blog is written in memory of our first beloved Yellow Lab, Silas, who filled four lives with joy from 2007-2021, and in celebration of all our beloved pets who show us life’s wonder).

Hello Friends! With great joy I can share with you the news that Dr. Tom Tropp will be joining us as our Music Director effective January 15! Tom comes to us from the First Presbyterian Church of Lake Forest, where he served for a number of years, and North Park University, where he continues his work as a choral director and music professor. Tom, Wife Anne, and daughter Katie (7th grade) live in Lake Forest. Welcome to Tom and the whole Tropp family!

This would be a wonderful time to consider joining the choir!

Tom takes the baton from our dear friend Mary Gingrich, who has served us in an interim capacity since Dimitri German’s leaving. She has led us through this past season with boundless energy, passion, and grace, and brought renewed life to our choir, corporate worship, and music ministry. She now looks forward to taking her place once again in the choir’s alto section.

Just now, though, we pray for Mary, who has recently been diagnosed with cancer and is having surgery tomorrow. Pray for Mary, and Dan, and Dawn during this time a deep sense of God’s peace and presence.

Love From Here

Peter Hawkinson