hi Beloved,
It’s one of those all-church-all-the-time weekends in our beloved community. Maybe you are one of the 50ish people coming on our 7th annual All Church Retreat to Friendly Crossways! If you are, I can’t WAIT to see you in just a few hours! To relax, restore, re-friend, re-meet God in nature and rest and each other, and re-learn what power we have to bless one another and everything that God has made.
If you’re not coming with us, pause on your way this evening, strain your ears, and hear us singing around the fireplace. Hum a few bars with us. The Holy Spirit transcends time and space to hold us together. This is real.
Saturday evening, our Mexico mission team (20 strong! 15 adults and 5 kids) gather in Dorchester to make tamales for Eastern Service Workers’ Association, tamales they will sell to raise money to support their families. This is a warm-up act for our more dedicated service to the Casa, T minus 2 weeks away!
Sunday morning, good sabbath. It’s Communion Sunday and the occasion of the fifth sermon in the Recovery series: Step 5 is, “We admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.” Emily P (yes, that’s my sister!) is our first-time liturgist. Pray for her! Pass me a hanky! This will mark, I believe, the first time I have shared the chancel with my own flesh and blood, at First Church. I will preach, on the power of confession. Pastor Jeff will pray with us!
After worship, mingling and joy at coffee hour, our second hour of prayer, before our church staff (there are 9 of us now!) gathers for our own mini-retreat, to build connections and support each others’ work. Pray for us!
Our third hour of prayer on Sunday begins at 6:30 EST with the Superbowl kickoff. We’ll be worshipping in diaspora, gathered in twos and threes in front of screens (or big bowls of seven-layer dip, for the less athletically inclined) all over the region. We will, of course, be praying not for our own preferences, but that God’s will be done. We are that mature, as Christians. Yes?
God be with you!
Molly
Hello Beloved!
Well, winter finally found where we were hiding, yes? Ok, you can stay, Winter. Only for a few weeks though, you hear? Just till the novelty wears off.
We are deep into Epiphany now, the time of Jesus’s initation into public ministry, and his hazing, I mean calling, of the disciples. I’ll be preaching Sunday, on the calling of the first four who would grow to be twelve, and how you and I are implicated. Matthew is our able liturgist. Jeff Mansfield will be worshipping with our beloved kids, downstairs!
After worship, we will gather for our 136th Annual Meeting as a beloved community. We will hear a presentation about the proposed capital campaign, review and vote on a budget for the new year, and look ahead to what’s coming. It all sounds terribly dry, but in practice it is the most remarkable thing, to watch all these people who have nothing in common but Jesus Christ hash out how to keep calling an enterprise like our church into being and thriving. It’s democracy! Without PACs and subterfuge and namecalling and abuses of power and miscarriages of justice! I’m thinking of inviting the presidential candidates to show them how it should be done, with kindness and deep mutual respect, and lots and lots of hope and idealism.
Beloved, I missed you! and can’t wait to see you.
Christlove
Molly
Merry Beloved!
Harold reminded me of a few Januaries ago, when I came back from Hawaii and preached about swimming with the dolphins, as you slogged the snowy slog. How unfeeling of me! Just for you, I have ordered this, if not quite Hawaiian weather, at least, northern Californian weather? At least until Christmas. After that, you’re on your own.
Maybe it’s the unseasonable weather that makes Christmas seem extraordinarily early this year. Or maybe Christ just.can’t.wait to be born in our hearts? In any case: here we are!
The Longest Night service last night was lovely, led by pastors and laity from 6 area churches. Solemn and soulful indoors, ending in light and laughter outdoors as we lit a blazing fire in the evening rainy damp, and watched the Holy Spirit playfully blow out our candles.
We’ll take up those candles again Saturday night, on a different occasion. Christmas Eve Candlelight Carols begins at 7p. Silent and chaotic, joyful and solemn, all at once. Lillian S. stars as Baby Jesus, with her parents Tom and Michelle in supporting roles. You are invited to bring Gifts for Christ that the mission team will bring to the Casa in February: new socks and underwear, toothbrushes, and/or art supplies/puzzles for sharing. We’ll sing the old songs, we’ll have a moment for children around the manger, there may even be a mini flash mob. Bring parents, friends, roomies, grandchildren!
We could use a hand or two for setup and crowd control: if you’d like to help out, would you RSVP to me, and plan on showing up about 5:30 or 6:00 pm on Saturday?
On Sunday morning, the once-every-six-years-or-so Sabbath Christmas happens. Because it is a sabbath among Sabbaths, because Mother Mary herself could hardly have been expected to get dressed in an ugly Christmas sweater and hurty shoes for Christmas morning, you are invited to come in PJs and/or slippers to church. We’ll have bagels for breakfast at 9:30am if you’d like to come be our company. Worship is at the usual 10:00am hour–LOTS of carols, and no confession, as it’s a day when we rest from the shadow side of life. Toni S. is our able liturgist. Jeff will pray with us. Hugh plays. I will share a wonderful Christmas parable from Barbara Brown Taylor, before the kids, Peter and I duck out for California and Hawaii. We will pray for you while we are away! Please pray for us, that we aren’t eaten by sharks while swimming with dolphins!
A note: there will be NO formal child care in the nursery, on Christmas Eve or Christmas morning. The nursery is available if you need a quiet place to take your children, but we don’t mind if they make noise in the sanctuary: all that business about baby Jesus being quiet as a lamb, I’m sure, was nonsense concocted by a bunch of monastic church fathers who never held a baby in their lives.
God rest ye merry gentlefolk,
Molly
Beloved,
Today dawns darkly: the shortest day of the year, and therefore the longest night. If you want to holler the light back to this hemisphere, if you need healing, want to pray for the world, or just don’t want to be alone, come join us for The Longest Night service! With Taize music, good bread, anointing for healing, and a fire pit. Here are the details:
The Longest Night Service, Wednesday, December 21, 7pm. A spiritual-but-not-necessarily-religious service for the shadow side of the season. We’ll gather to watch, pray, and light the night with folks from other churches and no church at all. Effect a catharsis of the spirit: we recognize that these holy days are also long and dark, and come with a host of feelings.
Cheerio Beloved!
Why does this time of year always make me feel vaguely British? Is it because Dickens ‘invented’ the modern mood of Christmas, with his famous little story? Some years I think: “we should really cover the sanctuary with sand and palm trees, to get into the REAL mood of a middle-eastern Christmas.” But every year, some wise deacon or other talks me out of it.
Nonetheless, we will try to bring the spirit of Bethlehem into our midst, in several ways, this weekend.
Tonight: Flash Mob: Occupy/Bethlehem! Marlin our PR guru has alerted the press. They are coming. You need to come too! So we have a flash mob and not a flash fizzle! We’ll meet at 6:30pm at church to get the lowdown, head to Davis Square at 7:30 to make it happen, and be on our way home to our jammies (or out on the town) by 8pm. There will be no dancing–I repeat, no dancing–only a little mild carol-singing, and witnessing to Christmas breaking out everywhere. Email Jeff Mansfield if you have questions or want to RSVP!
Tomorrow: Cantata dress rehearsal starts at 4:30 in the sanctuary. If you are not in the choirs, no peeking! In the evening, Jenny Utech’s annual holiday party. It’s a lovely fete, a mellow chance to make friends or really feel Christmas. Jenny lives at 37 Hall Ave, a short walk from the church.
Sunday: Christmas Cantata and Festival Worship. This is our *big* chance to be together before the holidays scatter many of us back to where we came from, other places we still call home (for newbies: Christmas Eve is big too, but a different crowd: neighbors and extended family). We will open worship with the lighting of the fourth advent candle by Carol and Calla Taylor. It will continue with an audio postcard from Jeff Von Wald and Julie Rossate, our servants of Jesus living in Bethlehem, of all places, to help us arrive emotionally where Jesus is. Jeff M, Rebecca H, Reebee G and others will help us lean into the story, with readings. The children will sing, the adult choir will transmit the Holy Spirit through songs we have been practicing for two months (Sweet Honey in the Rock!), and new members Seth and Tracy Wispelwey will break our hearts open with Tracy’s original music. But wait, there’s more! Resounding Joy bell choir, and Go Tell it on the Mountain with double bass, trumpet and percussion!
After worship leaves us breathless (literally), we’ll head downstairs for old-school Christmas fun: hot brunch, sweet treats (can you bring a sweet to share?), children’s book exchange and Christmas carol singing at the top of our lungs (this is your chance to feel like a diva: get practicing O Holy Night in the shower this morning).
Beloved, bless you on your way today, whether your head is in Bethlehem or stubbornly staying here, in the bleak early winter, frosty wind made moan.
Molly
Were you raised in church, and kind of miss the rituals and mood-making that happens this time of year? Were you not raised in church, and wonder what all the fuss is about? We invite you to join our progressive, warm and open community for Advent and Christmas festivities this year.
Christmas Carolling to Occupy/Boston: We’ll sing old Christmas carols to new justice words with our brothers and sisters in the Occupy movement, Sunday December 4 at 1:00 pm.
Advent Morning Prayer: A quiet, candle-filled start to the day, in our downstairs chapel, every Thursday morning at 7am.
Rest and re/New: Intimate worship for the whole brain, in our downstairs chapel, every Wednesday evening at 6:15pm.
Christmas Carolling in Community: Saturday, December 10, 6:30pm. Call or email church office for details.
Occupy/Bethlehem Flash Mob: Friday, December 16, 6p. Place TBD!
Christmas Festival Worship: Sunday, December 18, 10am. Our bell choir, children’s choir and a supercharged adult choir will shake the rafters, including music from Sweet Honey in the Rock! We’ll hear an audio postcard from Jeff and Julie, our ministers working with Palestinian Christians in modern-day Bethlehem. Following worship: Fabulous brunch, children’s gift books, and singing carols at the top of our lungs.
The Longest Night Service, Wednesday, December 21, 7pm. A spiritual-but-not-necessarily-religious service for the shadow side of the season. We’ll gather to watch, pray, and light the night with folks from other churches and no church at all. Effect a catharsis of the spirit: we recognize that these holy days are also long and dark, and come with a host of feelings.
Christmas Eve Candlelight Carols, Saturday, December 24, 7pm. For all kinds of families, couples, singles; for gay and straight; black and brown and white; rich and poor; regulars and newbies; and everyone in between. A brand-new Baby Jesus, plenty of candles, beautiful music, and a star will remind us what it is to be a human being fully alive.
Christmas Day Worship, Sunday December 25, 10am. Don’t be alone: come for breakfast at 9:30am, stay for carols, community, and preaching that makes you laugh and cry (you’re invited to come in PJs!). Bring your children, your roommates, your parents who are visiting from out-of-town!
Beloved,
…jes’…waking up…from a turkey stupor…*shmloglibr* (rubbing face). I know that tryptophan-causing-sleepiness myth has been debunked, but it sure does seem that way, doesn’t it? That Thanksgiving induces restfulness? I especially love having what feels like 2 weekends in a row.
But now it’s time to Wake Up. We *think* from advertising that Christmas is about gifts, I mean stars, I mean babies, I mean wise ones, I mean…well. Yes. It’s about all of those things. But before it’s about any of that, scripture and our lectionary text tells us, it’s about Waking Up. I’ll be preaching tomorrow on the other side of Advent: Christ coming not just as a baby, but as a cosmic world-rattler at the end of time. He cautions us to stay awake, and keep doing Godly work, because He could come back at any minute!
Josh will be helping with the sermon–back by request, for Jubilee Sunday. Masha S is our first-time liturgist! We’ll be singing some rollicking classics, like Children, Go Where I Send Thee. The Ledgers will light the first candle on the Advent wreath. You can go home with this year’s alternative Advent calendar, complete with a crown for anointing “king/queen for a day” and jester bells. After church: children, then bells, prepare for our Christmas cantata, only 3 weeks away!
If you’re travelling, our mercies go with you. If you’re here, hope to see you!
blessings
Molly
Beloved! It’s a beautiful, beautiful day. When I was pretending I might be a journalist someday, I always wondered at the words, “hard news,” being more of a Features gal myself (you’re shocked, I know). Well, after the last couple of weeks, I understand. The news has been very hard to listen to. So, why not take a little sabbath from it? Not stick your head in the sand, the Gospel doesn’t advocate that. But it does speak of a time for everything under the sun: a time to listen to NPR, and a time to turn it off, which Gianna just reminded me of last night at office hours. This is the day that the Lord has made, for making plans to see friends or family, buying tickets or buying squashes, getting your face in the sun as much as possible (even if you get a little windburned doing it), for wrapping up things at work or school and preparing for some well-deserved extended sabbath. Lord knows you need it. This Sunday at First Church! It is Reign of Christ Sunday, Twenty-Third Sunday in Pentecost, Proper 29, Stewardship Sunday, Thanksgiving Sunday. (my there are a lot of choices in the UCC) It is the day when we will dedicate our sacrifices pledge cards on the communion table, as we bless the offering. Tom and Michelle Scholfield will offer the stewardship testimony. John Olson is our able liturgist. I will be preaching the lectionary story, Jesus’s vision of the last judgment, between the sheep and the goats, “…when did I see you hungry, Lord?” and making it all about me, in a sermon on the perils of narcissism. Choir is singing Taize! And we’ll have a time for children. In addition to pledge cards, we will be blessing our Thanksgiving ingredients on the communion table. If you’d like, bring your apples, squash, other raw Thanksgiving foods that you plan on serving family or friends (no raw turkeys please!), marked with your name, to the sanctuary before the worship hour begins, and Heather Erickson will transform them into a beautiful cornucopia. We’ll bless it and you can take it home with you after church, supercharged. After church: Big Meeting Brunch. Eavesdrop on the work of mission and justice, or children’s ministry, in our beloved community. Also: the Grand Tour will happen at the same time. If you’re interested in membership, or just want to see what skeletons are in our closets, meet me up in the sanctuary about 15 minutes after worship ends. But before that, a chance to make it all about God: tomorrow is our Design Day, 2-6pm! Child care is secured, with the wonderful Myla, one of our former babysitters. Heavy snacks will be provided, exciting dreaming, laughter and hope. RSVP if you’re coming here. Beloved, have a great day! love Molly
Hello Beloved,
Yesterday afternoon I was at the Bless! worship conference, a national conference of the UCC that is happening right here at home, at Old South Church in Copley Square, when the UCC Director of Communications J. Bennett Guess announced that we had just exceeded 1,000,000 on food donations to the Mission:1 offering! We did it!
It was funny meeting Ben for the first time, when I went up to introduce myself during the nametag-and-cheese-cube opening moments of the conference. I’ve seen his face for years on the UCC website, seen him in short videos and webcasts from our biennial church synod. Because I knew his face so well, I sort of expected him to walk up and say, “Molly, so good to see you!” But since he’s never met me, I guess he couldn’t. I brought him greetings from our church, which he’s heard so much about, all the way at our headquarters in Cleveland: he’s heard of our moxie and our spirit, our struggles and our commitment to justice and our levity. He knew our face, even if he didn’t recognize it at first.
This afternoon, we will bless the offering of food, letters and money you all and your UCC kin have given over the last 11 days. You can come raise your hands over it, too. We’ll be in the sanctuary at Old South Church at 4p. Or you can watch worship from the comfort of cube, carrel or couch at ucc.org. We’ve exceeded the food offering goal, and doubled the letter-offering goal (though more is better, in this one case!), and have yet to reach the dollar-goal for hunger relief at home and in East Africa.
Loves, this Sunday marks the third and final sermon in the Hunger and Justice series. Hunger won’t end just because we reached the million-can mark. Nor will our hunger for justice. I’ll be preaching on the parable of the talents, in Matthew’s gospel, and what happens when people won’t use their power, choosing to blame rather than take responsibility. Shannon F is our able liturgist. Emilie S will offer the stewardship testimony. Choir and children’s choir sing! Wanda R will be our guest in worship, telling us about her struggles against those who would overpower her, in her work as a hotel/restaurant worker.
After worship, spend more time with Wanda to hear about life on the front lines of the working poor, or sit at a designated coffee hour table with our own Bil L, who has been living down at Occupy Boston. Curious about how utopian community really is, wondering how the dynamics are evolving, what it is really like to occupy full-time? Bil will tell you.
If you haven’t yet baked your cookie dough from last week’s stewardship gift, maybe you want to put it back into circulation at this week’s coffee hour? One more week to ponder our pledges and think about what dough will pass through our lives and into the life of our church in the next calendar year, before we dedicate pledge cards on Sunday November 20.
Bless you, Beloved, and may you be a blessing wherever you go,
Molly
Beloved,
Full disclosure: as I work on the sermon about hunger and addiction I am working my way through a bag of half-price Reese’s peanut butter pumpkins. Field research? The apostle Paul said in the letter to the Romans, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.”
Sigh. I brought 33 items of healthy food to the church kitchen on Wednesday. Once I got started shopping for the Mission:1 antihunger campaign, I couldn’t stop. A healthier addiction, certainly, for both me and the hungry, than Reese’s peanut butter pumpkins. It was so fun, to think about where the food would go, how excited people would be to get organic potatoes (only marginally more expensive than poisonous conventional potatoes) or trail mix granola bars, instead of sugar cereal, or past-date canned peas.
But the pumpkins are still here, to remind me that no matter how hard I try to follow in the Way of Jesus, I have feet of clay. I am human, and flawed, and will never be “good,” never be “done.” No number of healthy items I buy for the food pantry will transform my hunger. But it will, at least, feed the hungry.
I’m not sure where all this is going yet. It will transform itself somehow into a sermon by Sunday morning–it always does–based on Proverbs 30,
7 “Two things I ask of you, LORD;
do not refuse me before I die:
8 Keep falsehood and lies far from me;
give me neither poverty nor riches,
but give me only my daily bread.
9 Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you
and say, ‘Who is the LORD?’
Or I may become poor and steal,
and so dishonor the name of my God.
The sermon will be on our addictions, hunger, justice, and the Second Step: We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. Marlin is our able liturgist. Andrew and Sarah S will offer the stewardship testimony. We will take communion together–one might argue, the only food we really need for one day.
If you haven’t done so yet, please bring food for our Mission:1 food pantry drive! The food is staying right here in greater Boston and Somerville, to feed your neighbors, your children’s classmates. We will also be taking the Mission:1 antihunger offering in worship, but you can give in just a few clicks at www.ucc.org, for hunger relief here in the US and in East Africa. And after worship, Ian and Seth will lead us in writing an offering of letters to transform the system so there are no more hungry. Someday. Someday, all the cut-rate peanut butter pumpkins will pass away, and everyone will enjoy their daily bread, or organic potatoes.
As you leave worship, the Finance Committee will pass out pledge cards and a gift (no, not Hallowe’en candy. Something homemade and much better, to assuage your hunger). Perhaps you are already a pledger, someone whom your church reliably counts on to plan our work. Perhaps you are not a pledger yet, but feel enough of a stirring, a longing to belong, to be part of the great and magical experiment that is a church full of youth and optimism, the Kingdom of Heaven trying to touch earth, that you are ready to make a pledge in any size. Take the card home and pray about it. We’ll also be mailing the full stewardship packet to your home, if you’re a regular–but feel free to ask for one from any of the Finance folk if it doesn’t turn up (the aforementioned feet of clay and imperfection!).
bless you, Beloved, as you hunger for both justice and peanut butter,
Molly
