Category Archives: restored

Daily Office, Musings, Neighborhood, Prayer, restored, Scripture, Suffering

Daily Office Reflection: “The restorer of streets to live in”

If you would like to read through the Daily Office, complete with prayers and hymns, I use this almost every day. (It looks like the site was down earlier this morning, but should be up now)

February 6, 2017

Epiphany V (Psalm 80; Isaiah 58:1-12; Galatians 6:11-18; Mark 9:30-41 )

Isaiah 58:1-12

Shout out, do not hold back!
Lift up your voice like a trumpet!
Announce to my people their rebellion,
to the house of Jacob their sins.
2 Yet day after day they seek me
and delight to know my ways,
as if they were a nation that practised righteousness
and did not forsake the ordinance of their God;
they ask of me righteous judgements,
they delight to draw near to God.
3 Why do we fast, but you do not see?
Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?
Look, you serve your own interest on your fast-day,
and oppress all your workers.
4 Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight
and to strike with a wicked fist.
Such fasting as you do today
will not make your voice heard on high.
5 Is such the fast that I choose,
a day to humble oneself?
Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush,
and to lie in sackcloth and ashes?
Will you call this a fast,
a day acceptable to the Lord?
6 Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
8 Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator shall go before you,
the glory of the Lord shall be your rearguard.
9 Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.
If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,
10 if you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday.
11 The Lord will guide you continually,
and satisfy your needs in parched places,
and make your bones strong;
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water,
whose waters never fail.
12 Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
the restorer of streets to live in.

Wow. It was hard to decide which passage to reflect upon today. And this one from Isaiah is so rich.

I had the chance to participate in a prayer vigil/information session yesterday afternoon at a church in our neighborhood. It was organized in response to some recent events of violence against our Latino brothers and sisters and the growing distrust and fear from many within immigrant communities of law enforcement. It was a beautiful and educational time for all of us as we heard from police, city agencies, and organizations who all seemed to be saying one thing: your livelihood is important to all of us–here are the tools and resources for you to navigate life here and thrive. We are fighting for you. We see you and we want you to flourish in our city. You matter.

As we walked from the church to the place where the most recent violence took place for a candlelight prayer vigil, I began to speak with one of the other clergy. We discussed the overall state of the church in their particular denomination in our area, and the word “burdened” kept coming up. But the churches were not burdened as much by the realities of their neighborhoods as they were with buildings and budgets and inactive/apathetic members. And, I would add, also burdened by political debate and theological hair-splitting and arguments. (this is true for too many churches/denominations, so I level no judgment at all against this particular tribe)

We both discussed how we are grateful for those churches and leaders who are finding themselves burdened by the plights of their neighbors, of the prevalence of injustice and its consequences, and the daily bread of every one of us. We had mutual friends who are in the trenches, doing the work of ministry in, of, and for the neighborhood.

In reading today’s texts, I am wondering what modern-day “fasting” looks like (the fasting Isaiah condemns). When Isaiah spoke against the fasting which does not please God, I wonder if today he would bemoan our aging church buildings which sit empty most of the week but have pristine sanctuaries. I wonder if he would speak up at the budget meetings or church council and ask where the money is going to feed the hungry and to work against injustice, as they vote to start yet another capital campaign. I wonder…

What if we believed that, when we care for those whom God cares, that God will rebuild and restore all of us? Is there a freedom awaiting us as we move from “institutional survival mode” into risky and radial hospitality? Is there provision for us as we shift from finger-pointing and fist clenched in anger to open hands offered in service? What could this look like?

If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,
if you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted…Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
the restorer of streets to live in.

Finally, I think the Collect prayer for this week is apt for today:

Set us free, O God, from the bondage of our sins, and give us the liberty of that abundant life which you have made known to us in your Son our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

 

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church, church planting, Musings, restored, theology

Restored: What I’m Learning about Church Planting from HGTV

My wife has successfully converted me to watching HGTV.

It started simply and subversively; where she would tell me about the shows she liked or the ideas she got for our house while watching. I would draw back at first, thinking, “Oh great…we can’t afford to do that to our home!” or “Is this kind of like home decorating porn?” Then I would watch an episode of Fixer Upper and would fall in love with Chip and Joanna Gaines (“It’s like they are our friends and we would hang out!”) or an episode of Flea Market Flip, where someone made $300 off of an old, dirty window frame, a can of spray paint, and an old milk bottle.

Particularly, one of the shows Kara loves is Rehab Addict. For those of you unconverted or uninitiated to the HGTV faith, the host of Rehab Addict, Nicole Curtis, is obsessed with finding historic houses and returning them to their original glory and beauty. She always tries to use original features and materials where she can find them. The idea is not simply to flip a house and make a profit. It is a labor of love, spanning months and months, whose end result is to place back on display the original beauty and splendor of houses as they were originally built.

I compare this to how I’ve noticed houses are often “rehabbed” today. In our neighborhood, houses are being bought, redone, and sold for a huge profit margin. The house that we recently bought in Highlandtown was done similarly—modern feel, new kitchen, recessed lighting, etc. But I wonder: what could we be losing in this obsession with what is new and modern?

This has been an idea that I’ve been sitting on for awhile now, and it’s related to my own story. Part of my own motivation in getting involved in church planting (starting a new church) was because I felt like the Church was in need of renovation. How many of you have lived in a house while noticing all of the little issues with it? And you long to fix what’s wrong, but as you dig deeper, you start to notice the wiring is bad, and the wood is rotted, or that ugly, fake wood-paneling has to go—and before you know it, you’ve ripped the house apart?

In my idealism and younger days (though I like to thing I’m still kinda both!), I was convinced I was right and that finally, we were going to get the church right. And I had pretty much one tool: a sledgehammer. As a church planter, you can decide what you want to do and how you want to do it without the nuisance of other people in the church telling you what they think or questioning it. So I felt like we were starting with a gutted house; a clean slate. We didn’t sing at first because I was so burned out on the worship music machine, that if I heard one more song by Chris Tomlin or Hillsong, I was going to scream. We met in an Irish pub to worship, mostly because it was free and the food was amazing, but also to make our Baptist friends nervous. I would find myself talking a lot about what we weren’t, rather than what we were. I was proud that we were stripped down; I was proud that we didn’t sing.

It wasn’t until I started actually studying the history of the church with more depth and a little more humility, and I started to read about the world-wide movement of the Church, that I started to realize, in horror, what I’d done: I had smashed it all to pieces-I’d deconstructed the whole thing. The baby was out with the bathwater, but so was the old claw-foot tub and the tile in the bathroom. And as a result, I had severed the line between me and brothers and sisters all over the world and across time.

In the past few years, I have come to see the value of re-examining the things that the church has done and still does; the things that we share with those who share our faith. Not just the beliefs, but the practices which both arise from and inform those beliefs. So that is what this series is about: I want us to re-examine some of the core elements of our ancient faith. I want us to fight against the desire that we often have to think that we are somehow more enlightened or advanced that those who have come before us.

So, I decided to try to teach on this and explore this in our church family, because I often teach to learn. We will be talking about Word, Prayer, Sin/Confession, and Table in the coming weeks and how we can restore them to practice and use in our community and life together. Check out the latest podcast stream on my page here and let me know what you think.

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