Our sewing saints!

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by Pam Tinsley

Each Sunday at worship, Naomi, an internationally renowned organist and musician, blesses our congregation with her gift of music. And prior to the pandemic, she regularly performed locally, nationally, and internationally. Music is not only her profession and passion – it is her vocation. Naomi’s faith radiates whenever she interacts with others, be they musicians, choir members, or parishioners. And the love for Jesus that she has instilled in her four-year-old son, both at home and in church on Sunday, is recognized by all.

With concerts cancelled because of the pandemic, Naomi discovered another way she could serve Christ in her daily life. Naomi has close contacts in her home country of Japan, which led her and her husband to become an aunt and an uncle to students at an orphanage school in Osaka. Once the pandemic has passed and it’s safe to resume gathering, Naomi hopes to do some fundraising concerts and events with the pastors at the church that runs the orphanage.

A thank you letter sent by one of the Osaka school children, along with a gift of his origami art made with special colors reserved for special occasions: a boy in gold, a crane in orange, and a cicada in silver.

In the meantime, Naomi learned that the school had a need for masks. Without hesitation Naomi offered to make 100 masks for the children! Unfortunately, after sewing just a few masks, her sewing machine broke – at a time when inexpensive sewing machines were sold out everywhere.

And then Naomi experienced God’s work first-hand. A friend gave her a sewing machine – a super fancy one at that. And then, because she was a beginner seamstress and also making masks of all sizes, she realized she needed help – at a time when many people were tiring of making masks. That’s when the sewing saints appeared! Two women stepped up and, with their help, Naomi was able to send 100 masks to Japan in less than two weeks!

Now the kids wear them when they go outside and when they are in class. The principal wrote that the kids think their new masks are the coolest. Not only are they handmade, but their aunties in America made them for them! (And they came with American candies.)

‘Walk worthy of your vocation’

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by Demi Prentiss

http://dtlifecoach.com/vocation/

The writer of Ephesians urges us to “walk worthy of the vocation to which you’ve been called.” (Eph 4:1) In the midst of daily life, that can be a challenge, especially in our daily work. In a recent blog, Bob Robinson offered six markers that distinguish a “job” from a “vocation.” He thinks the distinction is important.

Robinson founded the non-profit Reintegrate to equip “God’s people to reintegrate the Christian faith with vocation so that they can participate in God’s mission on earth.” He understands “vocation” to be “something bigger, something more meaningful, something that makes us want to get up in the morning.”

Robinson names six distinguishing factors of having a vocation:

      1. We are responding to a “calling” from a power greater than ourselves.
      2. We are tapping into our uniqueness, regardless of whether we’re paid for the work.
      3. We can engage some aspect of that “calling,” wherever we find ourselves.
      4. We are participating in a mission whose scope is larger than ourselves.
      5. We are aiming to manifest God’s love in life-giving ways, both large and small.
      6. We understand our mission to be increasing others’ experience of love at work in the world.

Participating in God’s mission of reconciliation can take many forms, expressing the nature of God whose name is love. Our vocations, sometimes manifested in our occupations, also show up in our home life, our hobbies, our service to others, and our relationship to the wider world:

      • While our job might be framing houses, our vocation might be creating homes.
      • While our job might be caring for children, our vocation might be shaping young people to be kind.
      • While our job might be driving a truck, our vocation might be safely delivering what people need.
      • While our job might be mopping the floor, our vocation might be providing clean, safe spaces for people.
      • While our job might be writing contracts, our vocation might be assuring fairness for all parties.
      • While our job might be serving restaurant meals, our vocation might be feeding the hungry, in body and in spirit.

Each of us, in our daily life and work, can touch the lives of those around us in ways that are liberating and life-giving, whenever we claim our vocation. In some ways, those of us in “ordinary” occupations are positioned to have even greater impact than those who are working as pastors and faith leaders, and not only because there are more of us. Often, seeing God at work through “ordinary” people speaks more clearly to those who are hungry for connection.

Find your vocation: change the world, starting from the inside out.

Same mission, new name

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by Fletcher Lowe 

Partners for Baptismal Living: PBL.   That’s the new name for Episcopalians on Baptismal Mission (EBM).

Why the change? We feel it is more inclusive. After all, all the Baptized are partners.  We feel it makes our group more accessible by inviting all the Baptized – including the ordained – to become partners with us, in claiming the dignity and the power of our baptism.

“Assembling the tents at Base Camp” by markhorrell is licensed with CC BY-NC-SA 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/

One of our important metaphors is a base camp.  If you give it some thought, a base camp is not the destination. It is a way station for the hikers whose destination is beyond.  The base camp is there to empower, equip, guide, heal, support, and encourage the hikers.  Translated to the local congregations, like the basecamp, it exists for the members, not vice versa.  It is not the destination, but a fueling stop on the way to the members’ real mission in their daily lives of work and community and home.

Let me share PBL’s recent statement of who we are and what we are about, from the upcoming edition of the Episcopal Church Annual, aka “The Red Book”:

A partnership dedicated to the ministries of all the baptized in their daily lives. Formed in 2006 as Episcopalians on Baptismal Mission (EBM), PBL’s mission within the Episcopal Church is to recognize, affirm, and empower the Monday through Saturday ministries of baptized persons, grounded in the Baptismal Covenant; to explore common ground and natural alliances with other Episcopal, Anglican, and ecumenical groups; to assist congregations, dioceses, provinces, and seminaries in planning and implementing educational events focused on the calling of all the baptized ; and to provide a communications link among partners through our email listserv and blog, www.livinggodsmission.org.  PBL is led by a steering committee of laypersons, priests, and bishops. Membership is open to all. Contact: Rev Cn J Fletcher Lowe Jr at jflowe@aol.com.

If you’re interested in learning more about us, check out the other pages here at Living God’s Mission, and feel free to send us a comment or question using the response form.

Stay safe, stay well and stay grateful.

Who do you say that I am?

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by Demi Prentiss

“Who do you say that I am?” Jesus asks (Matthew 16:15, Mark 8:27, Luke 9:18). And how do we answer? The response that we express through our daily life speaks more loudly than any creed or prayer or promise that we might read or recite.

And what might God say if we were to ask the same question? “Dear God, who do you say that I am?” That’s a question that launches many a quest and walks alongside us on the spiritual journey that is our life. “Who has God made me to be? How do I live into that calling?”

Brother Geoffrey Tristram, SSJE, provides encouragement to all the baptized, guiding us to listen with the ear of our heart:

If you have been baptized, then you have a vocation!  So what is a vocation?  Some people think it must be something that you suddenly get.  You’re walking along quite happily one day, and God suddenly “zaps” you with a vocation!  I don’t think that’s quite right.  I believe that your vocation is that which lies at the very heart, the very core of your identity.   It is discovering who it is that you most truly are.

There are particular moments in life, perhaps when you experience something, meet someone, hear some words, which touch that deep core within, and it resonates.  And you say – “Oh – that’s who I am,” or “That’s what I want to do or be in life.”  Sometimes you forget it, or you try to put it out of your mind, if it doesn’t fit in with other plans.  But it usually comes back, and deep down, you just know that it’s truly who you are meant to be.

The Creator’s call can be powerful and persistent. Some would even say that God calls everything and everyone in Creation – baptized or not – to walk God’s Way of Love.  Baptismal living embodies our choice to live the truth that God proclaims in each person, so that through our God-given identity we are blessed to be a blessing.

Ministry of the first order

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by Fletcher Lowe

Baptism

Over two thousand years ago, Paul said it this way: “equip the saints for ministry….” Ephesians 4:12

Sixty-six years ago, the Second Assembly of the World Council of Churches, fleshed it out:

The real battles of faith today are being fought in factories, shops, offices, and farms, in political parties and government agencies, in countless homes, in the press, radio and television, in the relationship of nations.  Very often it is said the Church should “go into these spheres,” but in fact the Church is already in these spheres in the persons of its laity.”

Anglican lay leader Mark Gibbs 49 years ago put it in the context of clergy and laity:

“The laity are not called by God to any lower standard of discipleship than clergy or churchy laity. They are not limited to any less standard of Christian life and witness. They are, indeed, God’s first line of agents in the world.  [God] has placed them and can use them in secular structures where the clergy can seldom penetrate.”  (Mark Gibbs, October, 1971)

Ordination to the priesthood

So now Episcopalians in their Catechism ask and answer the question:

Who are the ministers of the Church?

The ministers of the Church are lay persons, bishops, priests, and deacons. (BCP p. 855)

Notice, the first order of ministry in the Church is lay persons.  Notice also that the remaining three are in-house orders whose function is within the institutional Church.

In defining the ministry of the laity, the Catechism states it this way:

The ministry of lay persons is to represent Christ and his Church; to bear witness to him wherever they may be; and, according to the gifts given them, to carry on Christ’s work of reconciliation in the world; and to take their place in the life, worship, and governance of the Church. (BCP, p. 855)

Notice that the laity’s calling is beyond the Church doors with one exception – the last one, participating in the governance of the Church. Notice too that in the world of daily living, lay people exercise many of the functions the church asks of bishops, priests, and deacons.

    1. Lay persons are bishop-ing in the wider world. Often, they are called to oversee their workplaces, their homes and their communities, to work for unity and reconciliation, to make efforts to build up their organizations. That’s bishop-ing.
    2. Lay persons are priest-ing in the wider world. Often, they are called to give and receive forgiveness (pardon), to offer blessings with food and friends and family, to teach and to guide. That’s priest-ing.
    3. Lay persons are deacon-ing in the wider world. Often, they are called to serve others in countless ways. Most everything we do has a serving opportunity with it, be that in business or garbage collection or clerking at retail or fast food or medicine or homemaking or parenting or whatever. That’s deacon-ing.

Within the wider world the lay people, commissioned by their Baptism, are the front-line bishops, priests, and deacons.  The Dismissal sends them out from the Church building to be the church, to live into their ministries wherever they live and more and have their being.  Thanks be to God!!

Feeding God’s people with love

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by Pam Tinsley

“Food is Free” says the sign.

When feeding our families, many of us choose “farm to table.” My friend from church, Reberta, just recently discovered a new connection: “front yard to table.” Early this spring she decided to convert part of her front yard into a garden. She had just learned about a community food-sharing program, Food is Free 253. Food is Free’s mission is to nurture community and grow food while helping to gain independence from broken agricultural systems.  A key purpose of the gardens and sharing tables is to help nurture stronger communities by providing opportunities to gather and share stories. Reberta realized that her corner lot would be ideal for such a ministry.

Reberta and her neighbor signed up for the program, acquired two large vegetable planter boxes, bought veggie starts, and began planting. As the vegetables grew, they began harvesting them and setting them out on a sharing table for neighbors to pick up as they pass by. Not only do Reberta and her neighbor set out the produce they’ve grown themselves, they’ve also received donations from local farmers, including an allotment from the Washington Potato Growers who donated 200,000 pounds of potatoes to local communities. Reberta uses cash donations to purchase canned goods, powdered milk, and dry and canned soups.

With her Food is Free ministry, Reberta is feeding God’s people in two ways. Certainly, her neighbors are being fed with healthy, nourishing vegetables directly from the source. But Reberta also is providing a way that neighbors can connect with one another over a table of vegetables — a real gift during these times of isolation. By combining her love of gardening with her love of people, Reberta ministers in her daily life and shows her neighbors how Christ’s love feeds her and all of God’s people.

Discovering what’s holy

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by Demi Prentiss

It’s not uncommon, especially for those of us in the church / non-profit world, to think of our work as our ministry, or at least a major part of it.  While much of the time the work is life-giving — sometimes even empowering — all of us face times when there’s more tedium than uplift. The results seem to stagnate and the issues seem insurmountable.  The sense of call to our work can fade, and motivating ourselves can get harder.

We all know how the spiral starts on its downward path. The lack of enthusiasm starts to slide toward irritation — minor, at first, because of drudgery or overload or sheer weariness. And, as the irritation grows, the frustration builds, as we notice that the harder we push, the less we accomplish. Soon, the frustration upgrades to actual pain – the pain of not seeing results, or not completing what seems so easy for another, or suddenly recognizing that none of our work is any good at all. Ever. To anyone.  And there we are, trapped in anger and sadness at simple mistakes, hearing every innocent remark as targeting our failings, unmasked as the pitiful, incapable wretch we really are.  We begin to believe that Genesis spoke truth in identifying work as the curse of humanity.

Brother Lucas Hall, SSJE, recognized this pattern in himself, as he struggled writing a sermon highlighting the story of Mary and Martha. His reflection on the story and on his frustration led him to an insight:

Work is not bad. Even the most contemplative among us must work. But work serves an end. Even the holiest work of your life is not your purpose. It facilitates your purpose, and your purpose is encounter. The welcoming of the eternal, living God into your midst.

The good news is that each of us, in our daily work, inside and outside our home, has the opportunity for such an encounter. In every person we engage — and deep within our own hearts — we have the opportunity to meet Christ. Expanding our hearts to respect the dignity of every human being liberates us from focusing on what we believe we need to accomplish.

As Thomas Merton wrote to a young Jim Forest:

Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything.

—Thomas Merton, “Letter to a Young Activist”

Where’s the church?

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by Fletcher Lowe

You may have heard the story of a recent conversation between the Devil and God. Gleefully the devil says, “Well, God, looks like I have beat you this time.  My virus has shut down all your churches just as I planned.”  God replies, “You are correct that the church buildings are closed down. But the church is not, for the church are the people and they are very much alive, some doing extraordinary things to protect my people.”

That reminds me of a conversation I had with a person driving into the town where I began my ordained life. When he saw my clerical collar, he rolled down his car window and asked where the Episcopal church was.  I hesitated a moment and then said, “Well, the church is the teller in that bank over there, and down the road  the owner of the radio station and back there is the mayor in city hall and over there is the salesman in the hardware story.  That’s where the church is. But if you want to know where the building is it’s two blocks over on the left.”  I’m sure I gave him more information than he wanted, but it does follow God’s rebuke of the devil.  The drawing says it all!!

Jesus in Matthew 10 put it this way:

5 These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, 6but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

To paraphrase: “GO, partner with me in my mission, not to some foreign place but right here in your community.”

That call comes to us, again, to “GO, Proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ,” as the Episcopal Church’s Baptismal Covenant states.

A new favorite hymn of mine says it well:

Go my children with my blessing, never alone.

Waking, sleeping, I am with you; you are my own.

In my love’s baptismal river, I have made you mine forever….

Go my children, fed and nourished, closer to me,

Grow in love and love by serving, joyful and free….

Amen.

Pandemics and baptismal living

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Photo by Katie Sherrod

by Edward L. Lee, Jr.

COVID-19 is, of course, THE pandemic of our time, and quite probably for a longer period than we would like to contemplate. Already it has altered our patterns of living, some of which could be permanent. We don’t know yet, and it’s that rub of uncertainty which clouds our thinking and unsettles our well-being.

But in the wake of COVID-19 I believe there are three other pandemics that, while disturbing us, yet posit the possibility of initiating long-overdue changes in American life and living. I believe the church should look and listen carefully and welcome them for their possible outcomes that coincide with God’s purposes, Jesus’s mission, and our baptismal ministries “on earth as it is in heaven.”

These other pandemics are:

      • our battered economy;
      • the reckoning of systemic racism engendered by white supremacy, privilege, and power; and
      • the rescuing of our strained democracy from the political clutches of a presidential administration gone amorally amok.

Some folk who practice their faith in the variety of American denominational churches will accuse this kind of thinking as being just too political, too secular, and not religious, nothing sacred, at all. To which I quote Mohandas Gandhi: “Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means.”  I agree, because the opposite of secular is the eternal; the opposite of sacred is the profane.  Our pandemics are giving us the unique opportunity to deal with some of our chronic medical, economic, cultural, and political profanities.

This portion of a sermon that appeared in an April op-ed piece in The New York Times captured what this opportunity could be:

This is a powerful moment in human history in which we can examine, individually and collectively, the unnecessary decadence and cruelty of our contemporary society that we have accepted without sufficient scrutiny. …

 

Having tasted a simpler life (in the pandemic shutdown), perhaps we will shift our values and patterns. Having seen the importance of community, maybe we will invest more in the well-being of the collective and not just the individual. Having seen the suffering of others anew, we may find it impossible to ignore it in the future.

 

And having seen the ease with which the forces St. Paul called the ‘powers and principalities’ can mobilize to defend entrenched interests, maybe – just maybe – we as a people will feel empowered to demand the same urgency of action on our planet’s climate, domestic and global poverty, the health and education of all people, and the myriad pressing problems for which future generations will judge us harshly for tolerating.

Steven Paulikas, rector

All Saints’ Church. Park Slope, Brooklyn, NY

Might this be an agenda for the Church and all its baptized ministers? I think so. I hope so. May it be so.

Editor’s note: June 23, 2020, the date this blog was posted is the 85th anniversary of Edward’s baptism – June 23, 1935, one week shy of his first birthday. Edward writes, “My parents told me it followed the 11 o’clock Morning Prayer service (’28 BCP of course) in our home parish, officiated by a much beloved rector (and deservedly so). So began my baptismal journey in TEC. It’s been a wonderful and interesting ride.”

Trinitarian ministry in daily life

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The Most Holy Trinity, St. George Church, Guke near Pljevlja, Montenegro

by Demi Prentiss

Trinity Sunday – observed across many Christian denominations last Sunday – usually focuses on the ineffable trinitarian identity of the God we worship. “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God almighty” is often the theme song of the day’s observances.  It’s unusual to hear any reference in Trinity Sunday liturgies to the oh-so-everyday-ness of living out our Christian faith each day, in the daily activities we pursue.

So I was delighted to read this “God Pause,” a lectionary-based devotional series from Luther Seminary.  “Every baptized person is incorporated into the realm of God’s powerful gifts” – every baptized person not only bears the imprint of the Lord God, they are also empowered to exercise the gifts of God for the people of God.

Devotion

Three small waterfalls on one’s head: one for the Father, one for the Son, and one for the Holy Spirit. That also means: one for the Creator, one for the Redeemer, one for the Sustainer. This important Trinitarian expression reminds us that in baptism, every baptized person is incorporated into the realm of God’s powerful gifts—the power to create, the power to redeem us from our sins, the power to sustain us in all things we face in this world. The promise is all there in the Word combined with water. First John declares, “God is love.” In the Trinitarian confession we might expand this to say that God our Creator is Love; Jesus is Love; the Spirit is Love.

 

Prayer

Triune God, you come to us in many forms, but you are always Love, surrounding, entering, and sustaining us. Lead us to know that you are with us in our highest celebrations, in our deepest times of despair, and in the ordinary times of growth. In your love we pray. Amen.

Sandee D. Kosmo ’89, M.Div.

Pastor, Grace Lutheran Communities, Eau Claire, Wisconsin