I would feel nothing...

This week, when Jeannie asked if I would do the Children's Message and parade the kiddos around the sanctuary palms in tow, I confess I was rather excited. As a child, the Palm Sunday story was so exciting to me. I loved parades; I loved going to baseball games and cheering with the crowds {true confession: I still love those things}. I knew immediately that I would ask the kids what it would feel like to have a Jesus parade in Fort Mill, and I thought I would get excitement, and happiness, and celebration.

 

Rookie. Mistake.

 

At the 8:45 service, when I asked the kiddos how they would feel if Jesus came to town for a parade, the first little girl said, "I would feel pretty scared." The second little boy said, "I would feel nothing." Of course, this was humorous, and of course, we did celebrate with our parade, and of course, next week, kiddos will feel lots of joy and excitement as they don their Easter best, and join the pastel throng entering our worship space to celebrate Jesus' resurrection from the grave.

 

But this sentence, "I would feel nothing" has been haunting me.

 

 

Absence

As spring wears on, I am conscious of the fact that we are missing lots of youth at lots of events. Soccer games, Lacrosse tournaments, dance competitions, musical rehearsals, piano recitals, track meets, and of course...oodles and oodles of homework. The list could continue on and on and on. On church staff, it is hard for us to let go of our congregation and let them pursue the clean, warm air and golden sunshine; it is hard to feel as though the church at times was like the 1,000 piece puzzle my parents kept in the den: there to pass time on a rainy day. Of course, this is also a necessary piece. If we build disciples who never go out being Christians at soccer games or Lacrosse tournaments or dance competitions or musical rehearsals or piano recitals or track meets or of course, in high school classrooms, then the name and love of Jesus Christ remains unknown or unexplored in those places. Our goal, of course, is to raise up disciples who can live out the gospel in the world around them, not spend 90% of their time within the walls of our church. If y'all never choose other things over church, the community of Jesus Christ remains closed off and cloistered, which is not something God calls us to. So, difficult though it may be, we let go, and we pray.

 

On Thursday, at the meeting of Providence Presbytery, Sara Hayden, Southeast Associate for 1001 New Worshiping Communities, said that one of the definitions of church is that the community would actually feel and grieve its absence. If by some force of nature, the church was taken out of a particular community, that community would mourn its loss. This made me think about our church and our people. Surely people in this community would miss Unity Presbyterian Church if it weren't around, right? What would they miss? What would they ache for? What could they get here that they could get nowhere else?

 

We who work in the church miss you when you are absent from us. Perhaps you miss the church when it is absent from you.

 

The feels...

 

I think about this a lot during Holy Week because it is my favorite part of the church calendar. There is no other place in the church calendar where we feel as much as we do in the week leading up to Easter. We feel the hope and excitement of Jesus entering Jerusalem as a king. We feel the fear and bewilderment of Jesus' enigmatic words on Maundy Thursday. We feel the humility of having our feet washed by Jesus. We feel the hot sting of betrayal as Judas hands over Jesus to be arrested. We feel the frustration as we watch year after year, Jesus beaten, Jesus tortured, knowing that he could have, perhaps should have saved himself. We feel the aching sorrow as Jesus breathes his last. We feel the anxiety of the tomb. We feel the doubt of Thomas. We feel the fear of the unknown. We feel the joy of resurrection. We feel the energy of new life. We feel and we feel and we feel.

 

And yet, I wonder, do we feel?

 

When I was in Middle and High School, my family fell out of love with the church in which I grew up, and we stopped going altogether. When the movie "The Passion" came out, I was in high school, and my family decided to go see it together on Good Friday. As we entered the movie theater, my dad proceeded to order the largest popcorn available. As we all sat in the theater, the pregnant pauses and moments of silence in the film were punctured by the crunching of my dad eating his popcorn. We still tease him about it to this day. For our family however, that night marked a moment of feeling. I can't remember a time before that when I actually felt anything but indifference and bitterness toward Holy Week. You see, my family didn't eat meat on Good Friday, which meant cheese pizza or fish sticks for dinner, both of which were just wrong. That step out of the ordinary shook me out of my daily routine and made me really think about why we celebrate Good Friday in the first place.

 

It's little things like that:

 

 

A 3 hour Good Friday Service at the local African Methodist Episcopal Church followed by one heck of a luncheon.

 

Prayer stations for reflection available during the afternoon on Good Friday.

 

Celebrating Passover with the Jewish community at my college.

 

 

These special moments from Holy Week transformed the way that I view and relate to the actions of Jesus Christ on the cross, but they were only available to me because I recognized my own hunger for them. I went to the AME service when I had had 3 hours of sleep and a migraine. I made time to go into the Prayer Stations, when I had a myriad of other things to do. I had to stay up until 3:00 am finishing a paper because I chose Passover instead of homework.

 

Other years, I haven't felt the story; I have neglected my spiritual hunger and the same old story of Jesus on the cross becomes stale and boring.

 

This Holy Week

So I know when we look at this week's schedule there will be soccer tournaments and preparations for Spring Break vacations. There will be dinners to get on the table and bills to pay and taxes to file and dog-sitters to find. There will be swimming lessons and karate ceremonies and NCAA tournament basketball to watch. But I challenge us to take some time to seek the story of Jesus Christ throughout this week, to seek to feel the raw emotion of the Passion, and to allow it to interrupt our lives. This just might be the year that changes everything.

 

Some stuff:

 

Maundy Thursday worship

7:00 pm, Sanctuary

 

Easter:

7:30 am: Worship (Sanctuary)

9:00 am: Worship (Sanctuary, Nursery and CIW available)

11:00 am: Worship (Sanctuary, Nursery, and CIW available)

No Sunday School

 

Holy Week for Doubters

 

We Wish You A Busy Easter

Pine Straw: Abundance and Anxiety

It's Wednesday morning, and last night was the first night in 2 weeks that I have not had a dream about pine needles.

The Pine Straw Fundraiser was an immense success; we delivered over 2,000 bales to 70 homes around the Fort Mill, Rock Hill, and Tega Cay region, and we sold over 3,000 bales when all was said and done. We had new families and visitors placing orders and people walking up to us from the street wondering about our Pine Straw.

It was a day of abundance. At the end of the day, many of us hoped never to see another pine needle again. The bales being piled up in trailers and trucks was a beautiful sight. We had an abundance volunteers, an abundance of delicious Starbucks coffee (Thanks, Jim Wasson and Baxter Starbucks!), an abundance of energy, an abundance of enthusiasm, an abundance of warm sunshine, and an abundance of generosity. We raised a lot of money which will go toward our summer mission and conference trips. We are grateful and humbled by the abundance of the day.

When I think of scripture and abundance, I think of Jesus turning the the 5 loaves and 2 fish into a feast for 5,000. I think of the Israelites marching through the dessert to the land "flowing with milk and honey." I think of God's faithfulness to God's promises; I think of the abundant love of the cross. This type of extravagance should cause us nothing but comfort and joy; it should alleviate the fears we harbor and give us inspiration for our future.

But...anxiety

Behind the scenes of Pine Straw day is a ton of work. Orders need to be organized on a spreadsheet; forms filled out; payments documented; delivery drivers organized and directed...it's a full time job for the 2 weeks leading up to the event. This is anxiety.

As the Pine Straw company misunderstood our order and nearly gave us half the straw we needed, I feared what would happen. As I organized the deliveries according to their locations in Fort Mill, a town with which I am not incredibly familiar, I worried about getting things wrong. As I took down the names of volunteers who would be coming, I panicked that we would have enough. As I recorded payments, I feared that I had miscalculated. 

I was like the disciples who wondered how they would feed the crowd. I was like the Israelites who wondered when they would make it out of the desert. I was like Thomas who wondered how a resurrection miracle could really be possible.

God calls us out of anxiety and into faith. God calls us to work together so that our worries and anxieties are cared for. God gives us abundance when we are afraid of famine.

Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap, or store away in barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

...But seek first the kingdom of God and its righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

Matthew 6.25-27, 33

What are the worries of your heart this week? What anxieties are holding you back from experiencing God's abundance? I pray that you would seek the Kingdom of God and bask in its glory, now and forever.