Reflections

Dear Holy Covenant Community,

We are a Reconciling Congregation, celebrating the full inclusion of all persons in the life of the church, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. In fact, in 2010 we celebrate our 20th anniversary of being Reconciling, which we will celebrate throughout the month of June. What a joy to be part of a community that models Jesus’ love for all people.

However, we lament that The United Methodist Church has laws in place restricting the full participation of GLBT families in the life of the church, including prohibiting the celebration of same-sex marriages by clergy and on local church property. Therefore, over a year ago, Holy Covenant formed a Taskforce on Christian Marriage to explore how we could bless and recognize all covenanted relationships-both gay and straight. After study, discernment, prayer, and faithful work, the taskforce has created a DRAFT policy on Christian marriage.

This draft policy proposes that no marriages, gay or straight, will take place in the Holy Covenant sanctuary, nor will they be performed by the pastor. The exchange of vows, rings, and/or legal marriage will happen outside of our property. Then, a worship service that reaffirms the covenant will take place in our sanctuary, with our community.

We want your feedback on this policy. Please sign-up for one of 12 listening sessions happening in the city in small group formats. Take a moment to sign-up here, right now.

Your input, perspective, and prayers are integral to this church community and to this process. At each session, you will be able to read the draft policy, discuss, ask questions, and pray. The goal is to gain feedback and for you to be heard; no policy will be adopted or voted on at this time. We want to make sure all people in the church are able to voice their perspectives. We will have an all-church conversation on the policy on Sunday, April 18, after the 11:15 service. Please mark your calendars and join us for this conversation.

Many thanks to David Braden, who leads this taskforce with Christian witness and strong leadership, and to the members of the taskforce. If you have any questions, concerns, or feedback, please don’t hesitate to be in touch with David or me. I want to be a resource for you during this time of discernment and am here to provide a safe space for you to be heard. Most of all, please be in prayer for our church (both local and global) during this process.

See you on Sunday, and think about who you can bring with you.

Grace and Peace,
Kate

Dear Holy Covenant Community,

A week into Lent, I already find myself struggling to keep the covenants I made with God. The early resolve that marked the beginning days is giving way to temptation and frustration. It felt self-righteous and smug to deny sweets on Saturday, but last night I was grumpy and wanted some chocolate to fill me up. On Thursday and Friday I rose early for my prayer practice, eager to dive into Scripture, but today I’m straining to fit the Psalms into a busy schedule.

How’s your Lent going?

It’s easy to feel guilty or not religious enough when we are tempted to waiver, or do waiver, during this season of spiritual practice. But as I was reflecting on our theme this year, Search Me, Know Me: Practicing Intimacy with God, and my own practices, I reencountered an old book that has become my friend. Henri Nouwen’s The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming is a book I first read at 17, over 11 years ago. Each time I read it, in different stages of my life, the words speak fresh. I offer this excerpt from the book, in hopes that you will befriend the insights this Lent:

For most of my life I have struggled to find God, to know God, to love God. I have tried hard to follow the guidelines of the spiritual life-pray always, work for others, read the Scriptures-and to avoid the many temptations to dissipate myself. I have failed many times but always tried again, even when I was close to despair.

Now I wonder whether I have sufficiently realized that during all this time God has been trying to find me, to know me, and to love me. The question is not “How am I to find God?” but “How am I to let myself be found by God?” The question is not “How am I to know God?” but “How am I to let myself be known by God?” And, finally, the question is not “How am I to love God?” but “How am I to let myself be loved by God?” God is looking into the distance for me, trying to find me, and longing to bring me home.

As we practice intimacy with God, we can be assured that God desires intimacy with us. Lent is NOT a time to feel guilty; Lent is a time to open ourselves to God. So next time you are struggling with a practice or tempted to give in (or DO give in!), join me in stopping the self-criticism and asking yourself: How am I to let myself be found by God? How am I to let myself be known by God? How am I to let myself be loved by God?

For the remainder of Lent, let us practice intimacy, free of guilt and open to love.

See you Sunday and think about who you can bring with you to share the Lenten journey.

Grace and Peace,

Kate

Dear Holy Covenant Community,

On this Ash Wednesday, as we begin Lent together with a service at 7pm, read these words from our Psalm of the day, Psalm 51:

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and sustain in me a willing spirit.

It seems odd that our Psalm includes joy, for we don’t typically think of Lent as a joyous time. Lent is the time in the Christian year when we prepare for the death of Jesus on the cross. It’s a time of waiting-waiting in the wilderness. We spend 40 days in reflection and repentance. We focus on our sins and the sins of the community that crucified Jesus. Tonight we will receive ashes on our forehead, as a sign that we came from dust, and to dust we will return. Tonight we are reminded of our mortality, and we wear a mark of our mortality on our bodies, proclaiming our death to all who look upon us.

So why would we read this Psalm, one that speaks of joy and a willing spirit?

The Psalm begins, not with joy, but with vulnerability, saying: Have mercy on me, I know my transgressions are before me. Ash Wednesday, and all of Lent, is a time for us, with the psalmist, to admit our vulnerability before God. To acknowledge our need for mercy and grace

Admitting we’re vulnerable isn’t easy to do. We live in a society that tells us to always look outward, to be busy, to ignore our inner lives. We think that joy comes when we ignore our brokenness and focus on everything else. But when we ignore our inner most selves, our brokenness, we ignore the parts of us that help us recognize we need God. When we have the courage to be vulnerable, we will find joy. Not a shallow joy based on temporary pleasure, but the joy of growing closer to God, to ourselves, and to our neighbors.

Our Lenten theme this year is: Search Me, Know Me: Practicing Intimacy with God. This Ash Wednesday, join me in considering what you can take on for these 40 days of Lent that will help you create a clean heart and grow closer to God, and/or what you need to give up that is keeping you from God.

During Lent, be sure to read Holy Covenant’s blog each day written by members of our community who have covenanted not only to take on a spiritual discipline for 40 days, but to share it, in vulnerability and love, with all of us.

So in this season of wandering in the wilderness, the journey won’t be easy, but if we take it seriously, we will find joy in Lent: the joy of intimacy with God.

See you tonight at 7, and on Sunday.

Grace and peace, dust and ashes,

Kate

Dear Holy Covenant Community,

This week, we conclude our worship series on the Lord’s Prayer. Over the last weeks, we’ve explored the ancient words Jesus taught us to pray and how they speak fresh to us today. As I mentioned on Sunday, biblical scholar N.T. Wright writes that the Lord’s Prayer is something we breathe in and then breathe out. We breathe in God’s holiness, experiencing intimacy and awe; we inhale the promise of God’s kingdom, when pain will be no more and justice rolls down like waters; we consume the daily bread of God’s abundant provisions; and we receive God’s unconditional forgiveness.

When we breathe in the prayer, we can’t help but breathe it out, sharing it with the world: living relationally with God; actively building a more just and peaceful community on earth; sharing material and spiritual bread with others; and forgiving our neighbors.

On Sunday, we’ll explore our final phrase together: Deliver us from evil. How do we breathe in this final phrase of the prayer, and then breathe it out? It’s easy to believe that evil is all around, from the things we can’t control, like cancer and natural disasters, to human made injustices of war, poverty, and oppression. The question of evil looms large in our theological imaginations, and the realities of evil hit home in the particularities of our lives.

As I wrestle with evil this week, and God’s role in the world, I have many, many questions. I’m sure you do, too. As we prepare for Sunday, I encourage you to read part of our Scripture from Romans 8, below. Sit with it. Argue with it. Meditate upon the words. Breathe them in, and then breathe them out:

22We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; 23and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. 24For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? 25But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. 26 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. 27And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. 38For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

What questions do you have about evil? God’s deliverance? The love of God that will not let us go?

Join us on Sunday as we delve deep into our hearts and the heart of God, who promises to always be with us, in love.

See you then, and think about who you can bring with you.

Grace and Peace,

Kate

Dear Sisters and Brothers in Holy Covenant,

I often think that the beautiful song “In the Bleak Midwinter” falls too early in our liturgical calendar. Christmas doesn’t happen in the bleak midwinter. Here in Chicago, we know the bleak midwinter. And I’d say it’s setting in right…about…now. For some of us, February falls like a blow, reminding us it is really truly is winter, in a northern city, meaning we’ve got a good few months to go.

On the other hand, there is something precious about this down time, this ordinary time, that comes after Christmas and before Lent. Without the full bore scheduling of our brief summers or the holiday season, it’s easier to simply be with one another. We have the opportunity to hunker down and tend to ordinary tasks: eating meals together, cleaning the apartment, getting back to the gym. This is true in our households and at Holy Covenant too. Pastor Kate’s sermon series on the Lord’s Prayer points us back to the very center of our faith: blessing the name of our God, breaking bread together, and forgiving one another. Let’s dig in this winter and prepare ourselves and our community for what’s next.

There are lots of opportunities to dig deeper this winter, to build community and relationships. This week, many Winter Small Groups are starting. Several still have room for you. You may have noticed that we seem to be having more longer term groups. As a congregation, it seems like we’re ready for this. We also continue to need and have shorter term groups in order to focus on specific topics, or so that people who’ve never been in a small group can get their toes wet. Visit our site for more information on all the groups. Note especially Matt Kuzma’s new group (Wednesdays at 7, at church) designed to introduce newcomers to each other and to give some basic information about Holy Covenant, the United Methodist Church and the Christian faith. Drop in once or regularly. Note too that there is still room on Thursdays in Freed-up Financial Living. It’s not too late to budget faithfully, however daunting that is during tax season! We can support each other as we get our priorities in order.

It turns out that Holy Covenant, and even Chicago, isn’t too bad a place to spend the bleak midwinter. Not when we’re in a community that recognizes and celebrates the truth that, as the song says, heaven can’t contain our God. Instead, our God is breaking into ordinary human lives again and again. Come to worship, join a small group, come to the congregational summit this Saturday, stay for pizza after the February 14th evening service. You may find out that while, yes, “snow has fallen, snow on snow,” underneath the cold, the ground we are standing on is holy and ablaze with God’s presence.

In the deepest ways, stay warm!

Rebecca Anderson
Minister of Small Groups

Dear Holy Covenant Community,

I’ve been thinking a lot this week about bread. Daily bread.

What comes to mind when you pray: “Give us this day our daily bread”? Actual bread? Other material needs: shelter, clean water, nourishing food? A call to give to others? Or perhaps daily bread resonates as a desire for spiritual food, asking God to fill up our emptiness. And what does it mean to ask for “this day’s” nourishment, not tomorrow’s or next year’s? What kind of longing is this part of the prayer addressing in your life right now?

This small phrase is packed with richness and meaning; there is no definitive answer to the questions above. Join us on Sunday as we continue moving through the Lord’s Prayer and explore what Jesus meant by “daily bread”. As we continue to meditate on this phrase, I leave you with this thought-provoking prayer by biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann:

Waiting for Bread…and for God’s Future

We are strange mixtures of loss and hope.

As we are able, we submit our losses to you.
We know about sickness and dying,
About death and mortality,
About failure and disappointment.
And now for a moment we do our
Failing and our dying in your presence,
You who attend to us in loss.

As we are able, we submit our hopes to you.
We know about self-focused fantasy
And notions of control.
But we also know that our futures
Are out beyond us,
Held in your good hand.

Our hopes are filled with promises of well-being, justice, and mercy.
Move us this day beyond our fears and anxieties
Into your land of goodness
We wait for your coming,
We pray for your kingdom.
In the meantime, give us bread for the day.

See you Sunday, and think about who you can bring with you to church.

Grace and Peace,
Kate

Dear Holy Covenant community,

Thank you for your generous response to Haiti, through prayers and gifts. We will continue to collect items for health kits through The United Methodist Committee on Relief. You can bring toothbrushes, soap, and combs to the church. There’s a box in the gallery for donations, and you can bring items Sunday and throughout the week. If you’d still like to donate to UMCOR, you can give online.

We continue to move through the Lord’s Prayer in Sunday morning worship, and this week we explore the line: Your Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. When we think about the “kingdom of God,” it’s easy to picture a bejeweled throne holding a man with a crown, staff, and long white beard, ruling the world with absolute power. This is not the kind of kingdom Jesus is talking about. As we discussed on Sunday, God is beyond gender, not a man in the sky. And God is intimately with us, not solely over and above distantly sending us orders.

Why, then, do we use this phrase to describe God’s reign? In fact, some choose to use the word kin-dom instead of kingdom, to reflect our human relatedness as God’s beloved community. Kingship was the way the world was run in Jesus’ day…ultimate power and authority rested with the king. Jesus came to completely subvert the ways of the world and bring the good news of God’s ways, God’s power, and God’s authority, which are antithetical to the world’s. For God’s power comes in vulnerability, giving instead of getting, love instead of laws, peace instead of violence, mutuality instead of hierarchy, and life instead of death.

So by using the world’s word, “king,” in reference to a completely different kind of power, Jesus was radicalizing the term and taking ruler-ship away from human systems of legalism and oppression.

Come on Sunday to learn more about what this kingdom looks like, how we can help bring about the kin-dom, and live into God’s reign instead of the world’s reign. This is government we can all believe in (no crowns or beards in sight).

See you then, and think about who you can invite to come along.

Grace and peace,
Kate

Dear Holy Covenant community,

What’s in a name?

If a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, would God, by any other name, be as holy? On Sunday, we begin the first of five weeks exploring the Lord’s Prayer. This is the prayer Jesus taught us to pray, and the central prayer of our Christian life and practice. The prayer begins: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

Hallowed be God’s name: God’s name is holy. But what, exactly, is God’s name? The Bible and the Christian tradition are full of diverse images and names for God. Including:

Mother hen, wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting father, prince of peace, Jehovah, YHWH, Lord, savior, creator, redeemer, sustainer, shepherd, , lover, shield, defender, ancient of days, alpha and omega, Word, king, eagle’s wings, helper, giver, healer, liberator, refuge, strength, deliverer, rock, ruler, forgiver, righteous judge, just ruler, teacher, light, companion, womb of life, mother and father, protector, guider, caller, observer, hearer, keeper, source, nourisher, sower, restorer….

This innumerable list of images and names, which I’m sure you can add to, speaks to the human inability to capture God in a word. What a gift, that we can name God in so many ways, in so many times and places, from our diverse human experiences and locations. But how humbling, too, to know that whatever names we place on God are ultimately limiting. For God is beyond human categorizations. God is indeed holy. Consider, this week, as you prepare for worship, what names and images you use for God, and why. What images make you uncomfortable and what images help you find a home in the divine?

I hope that as we dig deeper into the Lord’s prayer, we can all deepen our own prayer lives. Our congregational care committee has begun a new prayer ministry, receiving your prayers as offerings each Sunday during worship, and praying for you throughout the week. Inspired by this prayer team, may we be a congregation of prayer…looking for a place to start? Begin by saying the Lord’s prayer each day throughout this series, and then see how your life is transformed.

Join us on Sunday as we worship, sing, read Scripture, offer our gifts, and pray together, in the name of the One who is beyond all names. See you then, and think about who you can invite to come with you.

Grace and Peace,
Kate

Dear Holy Covenant Community,

New Year’s greetings to you in the name of the One who makes all things new! As I return from vacation, a time of Sabbath and renewal, I’m filled with gratitude for the time away. Rest, though, gives me much energy to be back with you, in a community I love, who shares love so generously with others. I hope in this holiday season you have found time for fellowship and renewal and I look forward to being in ministry together in 2010.

As I reflect in this new year on my first 6 months at HCUMC, I am continually overwhelmed by the new ways this church spreads the Gospel of love and hope. We are a community who participates in fresh ways of offering faith-including ALL, especially the LGBTQ community whom many churches reject; justice through feeding the hungry and clothing the cold; advocating for the least of these; creative and engaging small groups that deepen faith and relationships; caring for those in our congregation through prayer, meals, and rides; I could go on. As we participate in new ministries, we must ask ourselves: Why do we share God’s love anew? Because we are connected to a very old faith. The ancient words of Scripture, prayer, and tradition have shaped who we are as Christians and the old words shape our new ways of spreading the Gospel. So this winter, we are going to go deeper as a community and explore the ancient tenets of our faith that ground us, provide the roots, for the new ways we are in ministry each day.

Fresh from the hope of Advent and the joy of Christ’s birth, this week we begin a new sermon series: Wade in the Water: Wellsprings of Faith. As we live into the deep days of winter, we’ll dig more deeply into our spiritual lives, wading in the waters of our faith. We’ll ask: Who are we as a Christian community? What do we believe? In whom do we believe? How do we pray? What are the foundations of our faith? For five Sundays, the Lord’s Prayer will shape our worship life, as we examine this powerful prayer that Jesus taught us to pray, and meditate on how these ancient words speak freshly to us today.

We’ll begin our wading into the waters of faith by celebrating the Baptism of Jesus. We’ll join with Christian churches all over the world who remember, this Sunday January 10th, the way the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus and marked him as God’s beloved. In remembering his baptism, we also remember our own baptisms, and remind ourselves that God claims us and calls us beloved. In preparation for this Sunday, I invite you to take some time this week to remember your own baptism, if you can, or to ask others about the details of your baptism. If you are not baptized, please know that our service is open to ALL, and you are welcome-as we remember the baptism of Jesus, we will all equally participate by touching the font and reminding ourselves of God’s continual love that washes over us like water.

In 2010, we’ll wade in ancient prayer as we worship in new ways through a God who is alive and acting anew like waters pouring forth:

“Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” Isaiah 43:19

See you Sunday, and think about who you can bring with you.

Grace and Peace,

Kate

Dear friends in Holy Covenant,

Here we are, on the brink of another year. Some of us are getting ready to host parties, or planning our outfits for dancing through the night. Some of us will spend quiet New Year’s eves at home, around game boards, watching movies, or over pots of Hoppin’ John. Whatever your celebration style, it’s hard to avoid taking stock at this time of year, hard not to think back about where you were this time last year, or this time a decade ago. It can be exciting, frightening, promising, and overwhelming to consider where you’ll be next year. But you are not in this alone.

Just past the longest night of the winter, our days are already getting brighter. As we come back together from travels and holiday commitments, let’s move into the new year together. Let’s dream and plan about who we’ll be this time next year. What visions and hopes do you have? What new faces will have joined us? Who might you, in fact, invite to Holy Covenant this year to share what’s going on here? The light of a new day is breaking over the horizon; let’s bask in it together.

As this new year dawns, hear the words of the prophet Isaiah as God’s promise to you, here in this time and place, as part of this community:

Arise! Shine! For your light has come
And the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.
For darkness shall cover the earth
and thick darkness the peoples;
but the Lord will arise upon you
and his glory will appear over you.
Nations shall come to your light
and kings to the brightness of your dawn.

God’s blessings on you as you consider where you’ve been and where you’re going. God’s blessings on you as you travel to gather again around the Communion table. We’ll see you soon.

Peace,
Rebecca Anderson
Minister of Small Groups