Faith in Progress

December 21, 2014 Advent 4, Year B Luke 1:26-38 In the Godly Play Sunday School room we have an impressive collection of donated Legos that the kids use to work with the stories that we hear in there.   At first I worried the Legos might not belong in the room.   I think in the back of my mind I was worried that they were too human and not properly holy.   And sometimes they do become spaceships for aliens or Jedi Starfighters.   But they also have also become the Temple in Jerusalem and the tomb where Jesus was laid.   I recently found a Lego-compatible Nativity set online, so bought it hoping it could be on the scene for the Advent stories.   Unfortunately, it just arrived, and since the kids have pageant practice today during Sunday school time, they won’t get to create the scene from this morning’s Gospel story where Mary is visited by the angel and is invited to become part of God’s wildest plan yet.       ...

December 7, 2014 Advent 2, Year B Isaiah 40:1-11 The world has felt extraordinarily heavy to me lately. Unarmed African American men being killed by police officers and grand jury decisions tearing communities apart.   Hannah Graham’s disappearance and death.   A deepening realization of the prevalence of sexual assault on college campuses.   Mass shootings, suicide bombings, polar ice caps melting faster than we’d feared, draught, famine, and wars raging in more countries than I can name. Probably the news isn’t actually any heavier now than at any other time.   I’ve probably just been paying more attention.   Or maybe having kids makes me worry more about the future.    Or maybe I’m just starting to feel so powerless to affect the pain I read about.    I’m betting that from a God’s-eye view the pain of the world has always been heavy.   Our Old Testament reading today from Isaiah is a perfect example.   It’s set in the ...

November 9, 2014 Pentecost 22, Proper 27, Year A Matthew 25:1-13 One of my first really clear childhood memories comes from when I was in kindergarten.   School had just let out for the day and I was staying after with my sister and some other kids to work on something.   I’m not sure exactly what we were doing, but know it involved popsicle sticks.   And my mom came by and asked if we wanted to stay there or to come with her shopping.   My sister wanted to stay and keep working with the popsicle sticks, and I couldn’t decide what I wanted to do so decided to be like my big sister and stay too.   But a minute after mom walked out the door, I realized I really wanted to go with her.   And so I left school and started down the path toward our house, assuming I’d catch up with her.   When I didn’t see her I started going faster until finally I was running home as fast as my little legs could go.   Unfortunately, mom wasn’t to be found.   She...

Sunday, October 12, 2014 Pentecost 18, Proper 23, Year A Philippians 4:1-9 Every Wednesday morning at 9:30, John and I are in here doing Chapel with the Day School kids. I love greeting all those wiggly little people on their way in.   I love watching them light up as they shout out the songs John teaches them.   I love telling them Bible stories and hearing their giggles when I pull out an unexpected prop.   I love when we celebrate birthdays and the kids come up to be sung to.   I love our familiar prayer together, when they repeat the words back so reverently.   But there is one part I do not like about Chapel.   There is one part I have trouble participating in.   And that is the tradition of closing chapel with the Day School song.     “I’m downright, upright, inright, outright happy all the time. I’m downright, upright, inright, outright happy all the time.   Since I came to St. Aidan’s, I’ve made a lot of frien...

September 28, 2014 Exodus 17:1-7 ( Thanks to all the youth who helped to share this story by wandering through the wilderness with me! ) Our story from Exodus tonight needs a little background. Long, long ago, the Israelite people were living as slaves in Egypt.   The king of Egypt, called the Pharoah, would not let them go.   They had to work when the Pharoah said work, and sleep when the Pharoah said sleep, and eat when the Pharoah said eat.   They were slaves in the land of Egypt, and it was a hard, hard life. But God heard the cry of the people groaning in slavery.   And God choose one of them, named Moses, to lead them out of slavery into freedom.   Moses confronted Pharoah many times.   With God’s help, Moses performed miracles to convince the Pharoah to let the people go free.   When Pharoah changed his mind and sent his army after the Israelites, God parted the waters of the sea so that Moses could lead the people through and t...

August 17, 2014 Genesis 45:1-15   In the wake of the news about Robin Williams’ death, Holden and I re-watched Dead Poets’ Society this weekend.   I loved the movie as a teenager when I watched it in the theater.   I was the same age as those young men in the movie, struggling with the same age-old questions of what and who to be, how to be in relationship with my parents and my peers.   Right along with the teenagers on the screen I was not only riveted by the poetry I heard recited with such fervor, but also convinced that I too could seize the day ( carpe diem!) and maybe one day even “contribute a verse to the powerful play,” as Robin Williams’ character, Professor Keating, puts it.   And again this time around, now closer to Robin Williams’ age in the movie, I was spellbound as he looked into the eyes of his students and saw not their stubbornness or meekness or mundaneness or ego, but the uniqueness and possibility teeming within them.   H...