For the last few months on Communion Sunday, we have slightly changed how we offer communion to children. We have invited the children to return from Craft/Play time and sit with their parents in the Worship Hall in order for them to take communion with their parents/caregivers. In the past, the children have come in for Communion, lined up with their peers, received the elements and then have returned to Craft/Play time in the Christian Education wing. Why this simple change?
Each time we come to the Lord’s Table, as we receive the concrete symbols of bread and wine (grape juice), we reenact the Last Supper of Jesus and his disciples. Through this act of eating bread and drinking juice, we remember Jesus’ life, death and resurrection and we remember Christ anew.

Children develop and construct their understandings of God with the help of symbols. They use their imaginations (root meaning of imagination is the “power” of “forming”) to help discern what the symbols mean. When children begin to ask questions about the rituals and symbols of faith they observe and experience, we know their imaginations are grasped by the symbol and that they are working to create meaning for it. These moments are the perfect time to tell the child the story of the ritual’s meaning and to tell how you meet God in the ritual or how the symbol reminds you of God. For symbols of faith to contribute to and enhance the child’s inner images of faith and for adults to be able to share the meanings of the symbols, children and adults need to be regularly together in the presence of those symbols and participating in the rituals which includes the ritual of Communion. (Joining Children on the Spiritual Journey by Catherine Stonehouse.) This is an important reason why we encourage children to be with their parents in the taking of Communion.

One of the unexpected joys of working in this building for the last 11 ½ years has been sharing space with Madison Mennonite Church. In particular, I’ve been touched and blessed by my friendship and working relationship with their pastor of the last 11 years, the Rev. Tonya Ramer Wenger. Tonya is moving this week to take a new position with First Mennonite Church of Hutchinson, Kansas. She and her husband and three children are excited and eager for this big transition.
I’ve been a colleague with Tonya longer than any other colleague I’ve had here. We’ve shared worship services, retreats, potluck dinners and a meaningful and relaxed friendship. I’ve marveled at her blend of activism and contemplative spirituality. I’ve been inspired by how much she lives out her values. I’ve confided in her and she in me as we’ve faced various issues, challenges, quandaries and joys serving two partner congregations. I’m looking forward to meeting their interim pastor, but will live with a linger sadness at the loss of an ‘on location’ friend.

I’ve come to value our partnership with the Mennonites more and more. For those who don’t know, they meet in our building on Sunday evenings (they are AMAZING singers). In fact, they have been meeting her for 18 years, and consider this their church home too. We’re grateful that they also made a significant pledge to our Seeds for the Next Generation campaign.

We’ve shared Ash Wednesday and Good Friday services together, seasonal retreats and other programs. We held a joint trip to the Dominican Republic 3 years ago, working with Habitat for Humanity. I find the people in their congregation friendly, faithful, activist, and full of goodness and humor (what’s not to like about a congregation that has a softball team named “Pacifists with Sticks”!) I’ve often joked that if I weren’t UCC, I would probably be a Mennonite.

I encourage you to come over to the church on a Sunday evening around 6 p.m. You’ll encounter a lively, inter-generational congregation spilling into the yard and Friendship Hall. Join in their worship, sing four part harmony with them and give thanks for the breadth of God’s people.

All religions the same?

The Dalai Lama, who just celebrated his 75th birthday, often refers to the ‘oneness’ of all religions, the idea that all religions preach the same message of love, tolerance and compassion. Historians Karen Asmstrong and Huston Smith agree that major faiths are more alike than not.

But in his new book “God is not One,” religion scholar and On Faith panelist Steve Prothero says views by the Dalai Lama, Armstrong and Smith that all religions “are different paths to the same God” is untrue, disrespectful and dangerous.

Who’s right? Why?

Click to read the two responses to the question  Are All Religions the Same that we will discuss this Sunday in Java and Jesus.

Creator God,
open our eyes so we can see you in the eyes of our immigrant brothers and sisters,

eyes downcast for having lived so long in the shadows,
eyes challenging us to join them in the streets or picket lines,
eyes lifted looking for the Christ light in us.

Compassionate God, who has come to dwell among us,
open our ears to hear the cries of your children,

children being separated from their parents,
rounded up in raids,
led to detention centers,
silently giving up dreams.

God of Justice, who crosses all boundaries,
give us courage to resist, to say NO

to unfair labor practices,
to unjust laws and contracts.

Give us the strength to stand with and for

your inclusive love,
faith to believe,
another world is necessary and possible.

Let it begin with us.

Throughout the summer, we’ve been preaching on the Phoenix Affirmations, a series of affirmations for Progressive Christians articulated a few years ago by some Arizona pastors[See the sermon section of the website for more information].

The exercise has helped me clarify some of my own thoughts about living as a Christian in a climate where so much harm has been done by organized religion. An author and friend who I admire deeply has written about his own struggle with Christian language. Reflecting on a 30-year journey and his changed relationship with Christianity, he writes,

“My squeamishness(about the Christian faith today) has little to do with any fundamental change in my beliefs. I still understand myself as a Christian and many traditional Christian understandings still shape my life. But…I find it hard to name my beliefs using traditional Christian language because that vocabulary has been taken hostage by theological terrorists and tortured beyond recognition…I would be lost in the dark without the light Christianity sheds on my life, the light I find in truths like incarnation, grace, sacrament, forgiveness, blessing and the paradoxical dance of death and resurrection. But when Christians claim that their light is the only light and that anyone who does not share their understanding of it is doomed to eternal damnation, things get very dark for me. I want to run screaming out into the so called secular world, which is I believe, better named the ‘wide wild world of God’ – where I can recover my God given mind.

“Out there, I catch sight once again of the truth, goodness, and beauty that disappear when pious Christians slam the door on their musty, windowless, lifeless room. Next to a Christian eclipsed by theological arrogance, an honest atheist shines like the sun. Next to a church profaned by its exclusion of ‘otherness’ a city of true diversity is a cathedral.” (Parker Palmer, The Promise of Paradox)

I suspect his words ring true for the experience many of us have had. The quickest way to uncover that in ourselves is to gauge our reaction when we hear some traditional concepts come out of the mouths of those we find exclusionary – wonderful, useful, powerful words like ‘evangelism, salvation, grace, discipleship, and others. Words that in the context of their biblical use are NOT exclusionary, not weapons towards those who believe differently. But we live in our time and it our place and we know how these words have been co-opted.

Palmer coined another very useful phrase – “standing in the tragic gap” – or “living between reality and possibility, between what is and what could and should be…If we are willing to actively ‘hang in there’ with (others) holding unresolved tension between reality and possibility and inviting something new into being – we have a chance to participate in the evolution of a better reality.” (Promise of Paradox)

Maybe as progressive Christians, this is what we do – hold the space and live in the tension for an ever more creative understanding of faith. We bring our whole lives to bear on the universal truth of faith and the particular path called Christianity. Living as agnostics, as Zen Buddhist Christians, as Gardener Christians, as Christians in progress, lovers of culture and lovers of faith, as people of faith in a world torn apart by faith – we stand as witnesses to both reality and possibility. We hold space for ourselves and others who need space to make sense of the craziness of their lives; who need and long for the experience of grace (even if they don’t call it that); who find in our love incarnation – a concept hard to explain but easy to know when we see it; and who will benefit from our collective willingness to point to a light in the darkness.