Archive for May, 2012

In worship this summer, we will have candid conversations with people who are trying to live out that rule. Together, we will celebrate examples of simple living that leads to deeper understanding. We will struggle with the complex challenges of following Jesus’ 1st century teachings in a 21st century world. And we will seek answers to questions like: Where is Jesus relevant today? What does it mean to be reconciled in/because of God? How do I make time for prayer (and how do I pray at all)? Can what I love be what God loves? How do I follow Jesus authentically in a city filled with people of many different faiths? What is my choice and my responsibility?

We want you to get involved in the conversation also.

Through conversation groups, team meetings, or just going out to brunch after service, our hope is that you will dig deep with other members of our community and talk about the issues being raised during Sunday worship.

Here are some opportunities to Continue the Conversation.

To make it easier to join in on the conversation, we are offering three ongoing groups this summer that will be devoted to continuing the discipleship conversations.  While all three groups will continue through the summer, you don’t have to commit to attending every session.  Join in when you can or visit a different group the next week!

Theology on Tap – Mondays, 7:00 pm
Theology on Tap will be held every Monday at 7:00 pm at The Hidden Shamrock on the corner of Diversey and Halsted.  This group is expanding to meet weekly during the summer.  Rev. Matthew Johnson will continue to serve as a conversation leader and will also be joined by Rev. Polly Toner.

Vespers in the Park – Wednesdays, 7:00 pm
Vespers in the Park will be held every Wednesday evening at 7:00 pm in parks throughout the city starting on July 11.  Each week, the location will be announced via Facebook and the weekly newsletter.  We’ll come together for a time of prayer and then we’ll gather around for a a picnic and conversation.  This is a great chance to explore some of Chicago’s best green spaces.  Rev. Matthew Johnson and Rev. Polly Toner will serve as conversation leaders.

Coffee and Conversation – Saturdays, 9:00 am
Coffee and Conversation will be help every Saturday morning at 9:00 am beginning June 10 at a location to be determined.  Stop by for coffee and muffin and spend some time talking about grace, forgiveness, and biblical authority.  Conversation leaders include Rev. Polly Toner and Rob Rawls.

Women’s Group – Sundays, 5:15 pm
In addition to these drop in conversation groups, Holy Covenant’s Women’s Group will continue to meet bi-weekly on Sunday evenings at 5:15 pm at Pompei Restaurant at the corner of Wellington and Sheffield.  The next Women’s Group meeting is on June 10

Libby and I walked into the Brown Line station by her school yesterday afternoon and, probably much like you, found a large crowd of people who were stranded. Among them were tourists feeling lost in the enormity of this city, children trying to figure their way home alone after school, and angry white collar professionals yelling at Chicago Transit Authority employees about being late for this or that. A fire in one building, a choice of one person, and the mistake of another ground everything to a halt. How, in a city of this size, can something this happen?

In a culture that says we can be anything we want – and that our individual needs are always most important – this is a hard reality to face. But I choose to see something beautiful in it.

For the better part of yesterday, the whole north side of Chicago was inconvenienced with the truth that humanity was not created for isolation. Coming to the surface, we saw how many we are. And we also saw how fragile what we have made really is. Ultimately, what we have made is a handsomely crafted facade – an ambitious attempt at perfection, but a facade nonetheless. A fire in one building, the choice of one person, and the mistake of another brings it all crashing down. They leave us exposed. They leave us vulnerable. They leave us remembering how, in a world of solitary cars, shiny, and sanitary stainless steel trains, life is deep, distorted and often dirty.

And, as a Christian, this makes me remember that I need redemption, that I cannot be whole by myself, and that we have a long way to go before the reign of God becomes all we can see. We are not yet saved, but we are being saved. I am thankful for the hot and unexpected walk home which gave me a chance to remember that.

Peace and Love,

Pastor Matthew

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Sunday, May 27, 2012
Holy Covenant UMC
Rev. Matthew Johnson, preaching

Acts 2:5-21

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In our lesson from Acts today, people from all over the world were gathered in Jerusalem for the celebration of first fruits and the Torah. They were all going about their business, having a great time on the holiday weekend, when they suddenly, they couldn’t believe their ears. All around them were bunch of people from out in the sticks who were speaking their languages. They were not of the same cloth as these world travelers. These were Galileans. The shadow people. The working poor from a as rural a place as there was in Judea. They had enough trouble with their native tongue.

So the things they were saying … and the way they were saying them … was so impossible and implausible that these pious, religious people dismiss them as babbling drunkards. The only way to explain this, they said, was that these people had each consumed a box of wine before lunch. That is the only way this was possible.

Little did they know that something dramatic had happened earlier that morning. A gift arrived … packaged in a wind that sounded like a storming sea, tied in a bow made from tongues of fire. It was a gift that, by Old Testament accounts, was given only to great prophets and those who had achieved wisdom beyond the understanding of commoners. It was never something that had been given to Galileans. But on Pentecost, that gift is placed upon a few fishermen and some other guys who couldn’t cut it at their old jobs. It was the gift Jesus had promised his followers so they might carry out his commandment to be witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the earth. At first, nobody noticed this, though. These religious elite insisted that these followers of Jesus were drunk on cheap booze.

It is easy to make assumptions about the faith of others. It is easy to miss the point in an attempt to maintain stereotypes, dogmas and fundamentals. Too much religion can do that to the best of us.

On a hot day like this, about seven years ago, a band I formed at my first church out near Rockford was playing at a teen center in Waukesha, Wisconsin. We were second on the bill after a band from Harvard … a rock group cut from similar cloth as us. On the back of the bill were two local screamo-bands … heavy, hardcore and really, really loud. Jet-engine loud … heart-restarting loud.

And, as we loading-in our gear, we noticed the crowd that had gathered looked like they identified more with “them” … the loud bands … than us. We paraded through a gauntlet of black fabric draped over tattooed arms and necks. Cigarette smoke hung low over all our heads in the humid night air.

Heavily colored hair often hid the rows of holes in their faces, plugged with bits of silver and steel. This was not the kind of crowd that enjoyed our music, an assumption that became a reality when only a handful of them came inside to listen to our set.

After the set, we repeated the same process of running the goth gauntlet with all our gear. Near our car, there was one girl sitting on the curb. I walked by her a couple of times … doing my best to be friendly but stay focused on the task at hand, I nodded and smiled. She took a short drag off her cigarette and flipped the ashes on the ground with a quick stroke of her darkly decorated fingertips. Her name was Gwendolyn. She was a pretty typical 17-year-old in my estimation. Awkward, heavier than her friends; quiet, yet-capable of speaking like a sailor.

As I carried out the last armful of stuff, she had her head hung a bit, allowing her hair to obscure her eyes. “You really believe that stuff?” a voice said from beneath her veiled exterior. “I know about you,” she said, “I know what you’re about. So tell me, do you really believe all that stuff?” I thought that she may have been drinking.

Apparently, she had taken the time to check out the bands on the bill before the show, and had discovered that we were a group of Christians. Now, we had never marketed ourselves that way … the Christian label was something others put on us … so she evidently heard something in the music that led her to this conclusion.

“Believe what?” I said as I closed the tailgate, making sure she was talking about what I assumed she was talking about.

“All that God and love stuff,” she replied, pulling her head up to draw one last time from her cigarette.

I smiled and said, “Well, secretly, it is all just an elaborate hoax so we can play in front of huge crowds like we did tonight.” (more…)

“And on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, they began gathering together in one place for the summer. And they did so at 10:30 in the morning, because they loved community; and because by July it gets crazy hot come noon, and the city called them into its streets to be the church together at its festivals, beaches, marathons, bicycle rides and dining patios.” – Acts 2:1 (Paraphrase)

Yes friends, beginning May 27 (THIS Sunday), we will be returning to one morning worship service at 10:30 a.m. Shout it from the tops of the your apartment or condo, lest your neighbors show up before service and be forced to consume copious quantities of bagels while waiting or, even worse, awkwardly walk in near the end as final song is being sung. Remember Proverbs 136:2 … “Thou shall not cause thine neighbor to have an uncomfortable ‘why didn’t you check the website?!’ moment with their friend or partner. Tell of the time change wherever ye go.”

And Vespers will be going outside for Chicago’s summer nights. Beginning in July (after a June hiatus) we will pray and picnic our way around the city on Wednesday nights at 7 p.m. We do so in the spirit of Jesus, who said “And you will be my witnesses under the skyline in Grant Park, on the beaches of Lake Michigan, and where the Red Line ends.” (Acts 1:8) If you’d like to host in your neighborhood, contact Pastor Matthew. Indoor Vespers will continue through May.

Fear not, for not everything is changing. Sunday Evenings will continue at 7 p.m.

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Sunday, May 20, 2012
Holy Covenant UMC
Nora Kahn, preaching

John 14:1-7

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In this verse, Jesus gives his disciples, he gives us, a lullaby. “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. I do not give as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” At this point the air is thick with tension and fear – Jesus announces that one of the disciples will betray him, that one will deny him, that he is leaving and going to a place where the disciples cannot follow. Fear sets in, and Jesus can feel it, because it’s heavy in the room.

The disciples have been traveling and teaching and witnessing for months; they have seen miracles and given hope to thousands of people and had their feet washed by the human hands of God. And now it’s all slipping away, like a passing dream.

Being human, Jesus knows fear, and so he takes the disciple’s anguish seriously and comforts them. He knows the feelings of anxiety and anticipation, the rapid beating of a troubled heart and the tingling in your fingers. He can preach it because he knows it. So he delivers a message that addresses three of what I would call the darkest and most pervasive, human fears: the fear of being left out or left behind, the fear of being alone, and the fear of being lost.

I don’t know if any or all of these fears resonate with you, but I have been able to claim each one at various points in my life, and it can be the most isolating thing to be afraid or to be anxious. So I hope to break the silence around fear and talk openly about the deep longing and uncertainty that is part of fallen, human life, because I believe Jesus understands us and wants us to be whole. And this passage, I think, is a sign to us in our seeking wholeness. (more…)

Last Wednesday, before Vespers, we held a meal for those at Holy Covenant who had just finished final exams of various sorts. Our hope was to offer sustenance and to celebrate the completion of good, hard work by young, strong minds. As we pulled chairs around the great new tables in the gallery, though, it was a small crowd. I joined Emily and Libby Johnson and Ann Hillman (hoorah!) at the table. Our other students continue to have busy and unpredictable schedules!

After a few minutes, we heard footsteps and looked up expecting to see another of our scholars, but in walked Kokomo Joe with a big smile and stage hands. He joined us at the table and the conversation became a bit livelier, with a lot more rhyme. Once Joe was settled and we began to eat our meal, another gentleman appeared in the Gallery. Pete was one dollar short on his CTA card and needed to get back to Hyde Park after a long day’s work. I just happened to have a few extra dollars on my pass left over from “Friday Free Grace for All.” As I searched my bag for the card, we showed him all of the extra lasagna and pizza (we planned for 10) and invited him to join us for a meal. After a bit of hesitation, he, too, pulled up a chair. I was smiling to myself recalling words from Field of Dreams, “If you build it, they will come.” If you cook it…

Just then, there were more footsteps in the sanctuary. I walked around the corner hoping to greet someone who had come early for Vespers; Pastor Matt was close behind me. It was there that we met Gene. You may have gotten to know Gene, short for Eugene, from Matt’s sermon on Sunday. A new resident of his retirement facility, Gene had wandered too far and was very lost and very tired. While we contacted the staff at his home, Gene, too, joined the table for some dinner. He especially liked Emily’s key lime pie and requested the recipe.

We talked about music, construction work and publishing for Steven King. We chatted about growing up in the Chicago area, what has changed and what has not. We compared used book stores and musical instruments. It was our own version of the Great Dinner from Luke 14. The intended guests were not available, and so those in need were invited “so that my house may be filled.”

I was touched by the way our best and organized intentions are sometimes replaced through grace by even better outcomes. I felt the privilege of communing with such a diverse and unique gathering of the children of God. I was struck, yet again, by the great potential of this space on Diversey at the El to be a true sanctuary, a safe place, a healing place to share the love of God.

We share the Sacrament of Holy Communion around a fabulous table several times each week. It is a symbolic meal, a tidy meal, pointing us toward God’s grace. For me, this Wednesday night supper was Holy Communion in all its messiness, the passing of drinks and the wiping of spills, the comments about too much green stuff in the food, and the small talk among strangers. I imagine this was a bit more like the meals Jesus shared with his disciples than our formal Sunday rituals. I am confident that Christ was present. God invites all to his table, and gives us the opportunity to do likewise. Let’s keep the invitations coming, and the doors open!

Polly Toner

Ministry Associate

P.S. By the end of the evening, there were not any leftovers!

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Sunday, May 13, 2012
Holy Covenant UMC
Rev. Matthew Johnson, preaching

John 15:9-17

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Today is Mother’s day…or as it was unofficially known back in the suburbs: “Get guilted into going to church as a family because that is the one thing that will make mom happy, and she doesn’t really ask for much does she?” day. It never failed…every year, it was as if Norman Rockwell lithographs would file in together uncomfortably and sit in the pews.

Eye contact with each other was rare. Squirming was guaranteed. And while mom would sit there with a big grin…smiling like she had just pulled the biggest con in the history of the world … the kids would look so glum it would make me chuckle. There was no way their eyebrows could do that naturally.

There was the occasional dad who managed to get me laughing so much that I’d have to hide my face in my hymnal. They were obviously there against their will. They would stand with arms folded during the singing, lips clenched tightly and their brows curled like rumble strips on the shoulder of the highway. “Paroled for another year?” I would share with them as they walked out the door. They didn’t really understand it…these guys who had been inconvenienced…what being in church on Mother’s day meant.

They’d walk right by the couple who watched their teenage son die in the ICU a few years prior. And they’d shake hands with two older women — inseparable lifelong friends — who never had any kids of their own because that would be taboo. And the young couple who had been trying to add to their family by adoption for three years, but were still waiting for their son to be released by the Sudanese government. Mother’s day was hard for them, but few really noticed.

After service, a few of the youth would try and bend my ear…for most of them, I was the last person they had spoken to from the church at their confirmation, so they felt like they could trust me. “I cannot believe my mother,” they’d say. “She is such an amazingly selfish person.” Then they’d regale me with a story about how they really wanted to be at a friends house, or in the city, or at a concert. “Yeah,” I’d say in a very sympathetic tone, “All we kids ever want is for our parents to let US be selfish, right?”

“Seriously, though, I know your parents pretty well. They love you more than you will ever know. They don’t just give you a home…they are your home. Accept their love and you will probably be a little happier.”

It was hard not to say these things to them because I did know their parents, and I knew many others, too. As I’d remind them of how their mothers, fathers, or both, did exemplify love, I would remember all the kids who had entered my life and didn’t actually know their parents. Or the kids who had been taken away from their parents and now lived down the street with grandma and grandpa. Or the kids who still lived with their parents but came to church alone because their folks were too strung out to get up. Mother’s Day was hard for them, too. But their peers didn’t really notice.

Likewise, scripture like the one we heard from John’s gospel was hard for them…as is the parental language that Jesus uses to refer to God in the whole of John’s writing. (more…)

I grew up on evangelical praise choruses. I cut my musical teeth playing them at church. As a young adult I found a home in a more liturgical church, and I turned against choruses with a vengeance. I adopted two go-to arguments: worship isn’t about me and my personal-relationship-with-Jesus, and its purpose isn’t to pump me full of arena-rock enthusiasm.

I’m still not a big fan, but I’ve softened a bit on choruses. Time has dulled my reactionary, know-it-all edge. I’m also aware that, while outsiders lob the same old criticisms at praise bands, sharper and more attentive internal critiques have been made and heard–resulting in some better, less individualistic, more substantive songs. Most importantly, I’m less prone these days to speak in restrictive terms about what worship is and isn’t. Instead, a decade of observing the liturgical calendar has formed me to think about worship as rightly containing sharply different ideas at different times–especially as defined by the church year’s cycles of seasons and readings.

So lately, I’ve stopped bemoaning the boyfriend/buddy Jesus of popular evangelicalism and thought instead about how there might be some value there. Some of the time. And expressed through better, less derivative music. While I’ve worked in church music in a wide variety of contexts, I’m fairly new to the idea of repurposing great, nonreligious music for worship. Andrew Collins, of course, is a pro at this–and I’ve been studying his past programming, along with going through my music collection for ideas.

Among other things, I’ve been seeing with fresh eyes the old trope of love songs directed to Jesus. I’m particularly interested in the sad ones, in songs of loss and lament. Maybe because these are a larger departure from the schlocky love-ballad choruses I left behind; maybe just because in general I find sad songs more interesting. But also because this reflects how I experience the life of faith: the highs I experience in community, at times when personal-relationship language seems inadequate. The lows I experience as personal abandonment.

This past Sunday, Matthew preached on my favorite story in the gospels, the road to Emmaus. There’s a lot going on in that story. (Friday night my wife Nadia preached on it and covered none of the same themes Matthew did.) When I read Emmaus, I’m struck by the two disciples’ sense of abandonment. So for offertory at the evening service, Nora, Josh and I played a sad love song, one of Hank Williams’ greatest hits.

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It’s a heartbreaking song. The lyrics reach toward the apocalyptic–dying wildlife, the sky turning colors–but they aren’t anxious or angry, just deeply sad. It’s how I feel when God seems far away.

More and more I’m convinced that the power of worship is its ability to both go to such places and refuse to stay there too long. Like the psalms collected in the Hebrew Bible, Christian worship language can express the whole breadth of our good and bad experiences as the family of God. Perhaps at some point I’ll even find a place for the flimsy puppy love of the most stereotypical praise choruses.

Steve Thorngate
Evening Worship Leader

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Emma CushmanWood is currently a student at DePaul University. She is studying Religious Studies with a concentration in social justice and English with a concentration in Creative Writing. She loves to write poetry, discuss theology and play her baritone saxophone in the DePaul Screamin’ Demons Pep Band. She is president of DePaul Interfaith and DePaul’s chapter of Amnesty International. In her own words, “In my dictionary, the words ‘faith’ and ‘activism’ are one word.” She believes that as a United Methodist, it is her calling to promote peace and secure social justice for all. She is passionate about combining her love for Christ and her love for social change. She believes that Holy Covenant truly lives out its mission–Seek God, Love All People, Change the World. This is Emma’s first church where her father was not the pastor and she is excited to find that Holy Covenant is truly a new spiritual home.

Sunday, May 6, 2012
Holy Covenant UMC
Rev. Matthew Johnson, preaching

Luke 24:13-35

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I’ve often dreamt what it would be like to be in Jerusalem while the events that surrounded Jesus’ death and resurrection unfolded. A few years ago I was having coffee with a biblical scholar and archaeologist and shared that dream with her. She smiled at me and shook her head. “I’d imagine if you were there, you’d describe it as more of a nightmare,” she said with a chuckle.

What she went on to describe made Jerusalem during the Passover festival sound like Lollapalooza, the Marathon, the Pride Parade and Taste all rolled into one. Tight quarters on all the streets and in all the hotels. Markets so full that new merchants would pop up on residential streets to meet the demand of all the pilgrims. The line at the Temple would wrap around its walls. Walking the streets, one would hear many different languages being spoken, representative of all the cultures that the children of Yahweh had adopted as their own since the exile. “It was easily sensory overload, and likely bordered on chaos,” she concluded.

I get the feeling that may be how the two from the story we just heard from Luke’s gospel experienced it. How could they be in a place that was still partying after all that had happened? How could they even imagine celebrating God’s victory for their people when their cause was seeming over, their rabbi dead and his body now missing? While they were likely invited to stay with the other disciples in the city, Cleopas and friend had to put some distance between themselves and this mess.

In Jesus death, Cleopas and friend heard the trumpet call to retreat. Their family lost its lifeblood. The one who sat at the head of their table was gone. They had invested their life in Jesus for almost a year, and they saw all the hope they ever had for freedom and justice in his teachings and actions. They believed they understood their purpose in him. But now, there was no reason to continue the movement. (more…)