Whose miracle?

Posted on by livinggodsmission
Pixabay – music4life

by Demi Prentiss

This past Sunday was the Feast of Pentecost, and many Christian churches celebrated “the birthday of the church,”reading a passage from Acts 2.  That story tells of tongues of fire lighting on the heads of Jesus’ apostles, and amazingly the apostles were understood by a crowd drawn from across the Mediterranean world, as though in their own language.  I’m always surprised to be reminded that that story is not Gospel. It’s not part of the four books of the Bible – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – that recount the story of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. It’s told by the Gospel writer Luke, who leads off his Gospel sequel – the Acts of the Apostles – with that amazing tale.

I’m surprised because I think of that story as foundational to God’s dream for us as children of God. Eric Law’s understanding of that story offers a lens that inspires me to see multiple levels in familiar Bible stories and in many moments of life as a Christian. In his book The Wolf Shall Dwell with the Lamb, Law offers the insight that the Pentecost story reveals two miracles, not just one.

Most of us see the “miracle of the tongue” right away, as the text says the apostles “began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.” (Acts 2:4) And then the text goes on to reveal that the crowd “was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each.” (Acts 2:6) A “miracle of the ear”! Between the apostles speaking and the crowd hearing, who could say which miracle was operating?

Law is clear that for those of us who are often silenced, and whose voices too often go unheard, the miracle that God unleashes is the miracle of the tongue – the gift of strength and courage to speak God’s truth. And for those of us who hold power and are accustomed to exercising it, the miracle of the ear is the true gift – the miracle of truly hearing those who speak, even though they may tremble to say the words out loud. Discerning which miracle we might pray for – or claim – is the work of a lifetime. As we live our lives in response to God’s covenant with us – sealed for us in our baptism – may we seek to discern when God urges us to claim the power of the tongue, and when to exercise the receptivity of the ear.  And may our choices be guided by the incarnate God known as the Word.

Pick your ‘Pathway’

Posted on by livinggodsmission

by Fletcher Lowe

 “Throughout my career, I have heard lay leaders and professionals yearning for affordable, accessible education, training, and resources to support their ministries,” WOW!! Those words come from Dr. Julie Lytle, the Director of Distributive and Lifelong Learning, speaking of Pathways for Baptismal Living, developed out of the Episcopal Bexley Seabury Seminary. “We’ve created Pathways as a resource hub in response. It is designed for people to enter where they want and need so they can discern, explore, and deepen their faith and respond to God’s call.”

Over 20 courses, workshops, events, and activities are available and can be taken in the order that best suit personal interests and needs. There are programs for discernment, personal enrichment, licensure in cooperation with the local bishop, and ways to meet church-wide imperatives. The programs are designed with opportunities for personal reflection as well as live and asynchronous online interaction with the instructor and other participants.

One of Pathways’ signature offerings is coming Sunday, February 14, 6:30-7:30pm, Eastern. “Sharing Stories of Baptismal Living” will air live, featuring Byron Rushing.  Known as a politician, public historian, community organizer, and Christian, Rushing has said, “If Jesus was not in the legislature, I wouldn’t be there either.”  He currently serves as vice president of the Episcopal Church’s House of Deputies and spent 25 years as a representative in the Massachusetts state legislature.

Register here to participate in the Feb. 14 conversation.  I hope to “see” you there and then.

BISHOP TOM RAY — Pt. 2, In His Own Words

Posted on by livinggodsmission

by Edward L. Lee, Jr.

http://www.ecfvp.org/vestry-papers/article/49/revolution-brews-in-the-baptismal-font

Tom Ray, bishop of the Diocese of Northern Michigan from 1982 to 1999 died in early February this year. He was 83. In his episcopacy he pioneered and implemented what he called Mutual Baptismal Ministry whereby congregations of any size and location could be fully and canonically empowered by the raising up from within all the ministers and ministries needed to be an asset-based community that was, in his words, “baptized into mission through ministry.”(Total Ministry is its short-hand title.) This especially included the identifying, training, and ordaining of parishioners to provide all the sacramental needs of the parish without depending on a retired or bi-vocational or Sunday supply priest who, in Tom’s words, “confects the sacraments for the parish instead of them being sanctified by the baptized community itself.”

In some Anglican/Episcopal circles this model of doing mission and ministry could and does rattle the ecclesiastical sensibilities of what it means to be the church. It challenged, and challenges, the traditional institutional order grounded and steeped in what Tom identified as “debilitating patriarchy, hierarchy and clericalism.”

In his own words: “Baptism is the transformational event. That’s what changes you. But we have taken all the solemnity of baptism and squeezed and squeezed and squeezed everything out of it and put it into ordination so that now ordination means everything and baptism means very little.” Tom once observed, “I have often thought that if baptismal formation took three years, and preparation for ordination took only three skimpy sessions, then we would indeed be experiencing and participating in a revolution.”

Stated more bluntly by Tom Ray, “Mutual baptismal ministry pushes back against the hierarchical infantilizing of adult Christians who are considered second class citizens if they are not ordained.”

But what characterizes this model and form of total ministry rooted in baptism? Again, in his own words: “My experience of renewal and transformation within the church comes in congregations that take responsibility for their own life and mission and ministry whereby collaboration replaces delegation by a designated usually ordained authority; where decisions are made by consensus, not rules of order; and where leadership is mutual and circular, not hierarchical.”

However, a baptismally alert and alive community that functions through collaboration, consensus, and circular leadership is not an end in and of itself. It’s not just a different institutional construct for its own sake. It exists for the full realization of what it means to do ministry in daily life.

In Tom Ray’s own words: “Christians imbued with the call to ministry as a result of their baptism, not their education or ordination, can bring all that to help and energize our lives so that we can live thoughtfully, sacramentally, diaconally, priestly, and apostolically—at home and at work and in  the neighborhood—then all of a sudden our Christianity is not something we do on Sunday, but it touches us everywhere at all times and in all places.”

Name it, claim it

Posted on by livinggodsmission

by Fletcher Lowe

“I really like my work here.” the dental assistant said as I sat patiently waiting for the dentist to appear. “I like what I do and the people I work with and the patients—at least most of them, including you,” she continued.

Francesca Balajadia, Red Cross volunteer, is participating in the Red Cross Dental Assistant Training program. (U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Alesia Goosic)

I said, “It sounds like you have a real ministry here.” There was a pause, and then she said: “Really?  I never thought of it like that, but maybe what I do really is ministry.”

“Well.” I said,” it certainly sounds like a ministry to me.”

This is not an isolated event.  There are so many people working so many jobs that really are their ministry.  We just need to help them name and own it.  In so doing we put another dimension in what they do: That it is more than a job, really a ministry, God-given, through which they live out their faith in their work.

Christians of all sorts and conditions are doing ministry in all kinds of places and positions.  Our role is to help them name what they are doing as ministry and to help them own it.  What about the Uber driver or the ER nurse or the cleaning person in our office building or the receptionist in that office or the teller at our bank or the clerk in the clothing store…. The very act of affirming what a person does, thanking them for their work, can begin a short conversation that leads to naming what they do as ministry.

So often we limit the use of words like ministry and vocation and calling to those who are ordained, whereas all the Baptized are called to live into their Baptism in their daily lives, which is their ministry.  We need to help folks make that connection by naming it, so they may own it.

As Martin Luther once remarked, “The housemaid on her knees scrubbing the floor is doing a work as pleasing in the sight of the Almighty as the priest on his knees before the altar saying Mass.” We have a mission: To help the “housemaids” whose lives intersect with ours—even briefly—to own their work as ministry.