#ATLT: open the doors and see all the people, tamara lunardo

February 22, 2012 Preston Yancey

My fingers have grown since those days, but I still like to use them to remind myself of what makes up the Church. For all the division and frustration, for all the disillusionment and hurt, for all the damage that by rights should have razed the building long ago, still here is the Church. And still my favorite part is the people.

I wrote once of needing audacious grace, the kind I first found in my Savior. And, emboldened by the security of His foundational grace, I dared enough to ask it of the people who called themselves His Body. I laid out a few of my best sins because they were just ugly enough to serve as warning: This was clearly one slutty, manipulative bitch. And then I made the big ask: Could I be a part of their lives in the most communal, personal ways? And the people in the Church said Yes.

I love all sorts of people, but the only ones I have ever known to hear a woman say, "I slept with your husband" and then invite her to dinner are the ones who have also found themselves needing and caught up securely in that first Audacious Grace.

That any one of us should have been so mysteriously, magnificently rescued seems miracle enough; it is almost too good to be true that there are others-- who breathe the same air, who inhabit the same time, who walk right into each other-- who have experienced the very same thing. And yet, the too-good is true: That same grace that has caught up all us wobbly-willed people has also entwined us.

So when I asked them to open the Church door, they rushed to fling it wide. They invited me in to pen my question marks, to sing my faltering tunes, to pass my dirty dishes, to help carry my babies and my burdens.

So here is the Church made of messes like me, and it's no wonder it's so tattered and broken. But I cannot despair: I open the door and see all the people, and the One to whom the steeple points has hid us between closed palms where we are all wobbly and stuck together.

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read the post before this one, here.

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Tamara Lunardo

Tamara is a collector of fine tattoos, an imbiber of cheap wine, and a singer of eclectic music. She works out her thoughts on life and faith at TamaraOutLoud.com, occasionally with adult language, frequently with attempted humor, and hopefully with God’s blessing. Editor of “What a Woman is Worth” through Civitas Press, she holds a BA in English and her five children, when they let her; she almost never holds her tongue.

Tamara’s Blog | Tamara on Twitter

#ATLT: eli's giftedness, eileen bentsen

February 21, 2012 Preston Yancey

Welcome to #ATLT, At the Lord’s Table: A Conversation, a series of over 50 posts from varying authors about the beautiful, mangled Church. Look for at least two new posts every Monday through Saturday between January 25th and February 22nd. Join us in the conversation? See you in the comments. Being excluded is tough – too young to go to kindergarten with your best friend, too short to go on the rides at the fair, not being chosen for the team, the rejection letter from the job you’d already decided at the interview you wouldn’t take if they offered it to you – the list goes on. It never really occurred to me that non-Catholics would find exclusion from Communion in the Catholic Church hurtful. It had never occurred to me to feel that way about communion in another denomination’s communion service. I wasn’t “in communion” with all of their beliefs, so it would have made a travesty of what we each believed to share communion with them. My logic made perfect sense to me. I was blind-sided when I first learned from some of my friends how excluded they felt at not being able to receive communion when they were at Mass. Some are merely confused or mildly offended and chalk it up to a Catholic “us and them” mentality, but others are hurt to the point of tears.

Their pain was palpable. Worse, I had no idea how to ease it. I’m not and never have been an apologist; even if I were, I instinctively knew nothing I could say would explain or ease the sense of exclusion. I’ve struggled with the inadequacy of explanation. How do you bridge a gap between a reality and its emotional impact? I’ve never really found a comfortable solution to this dilemma. Then this year on the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time I heard the reading from 1 Samuel 3:3b – 10 in a way that I think may help me live in the gap. Homilies and expositions of this text usually focus on Samuel’s listening skills and ready response. What I came upon instead that day was a valuable revelation on Eli. It struck me that there isn’t an indication in the OT text that Eli gets irritated at Samuel for coming back to wake him up all the time. It is stereotypical that parents lose their patience with a child who comes to them because of monsters under the bed, a frightening thunderstorm, or to ask for a glass of water. It’s almost illogical that Eli doesn’t get annoyed. I could see Eli telling young Samuel , “Stop bothering me and let me get some rest. The next time you think I’m calling you, just roll over and go back to sleep, but don’t disturb me again.”

Instead, Eli seems very patient and not at all ill-tempered. Eli’s gift in this story was to listen less to himself and more to what was going on around him, all around him. Drowsy and even, perhaps, irritated as he was, he still listened closely enough to hear the Spirit moving. Am I to be like Eli? Since having this gap between reality and its emotional fall-out present itself to me, I’ve focused on my discomfort or the discomfort of my friends. Their pain and my discomfort are no less real but I’ve broadened my view: when something bothers us in our mangled churches perhaps it is a call to ask if we are listening more to ourselves than to the promptings of the Spirit waiting to reveal God to us? I don’t have any answer to the pain of exclusion and the hurt I feel for my friends; I can’t explain away that gap between heavenly and earthly realities. I just keep trying to listen in patience and in humility.

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read the post before this one, here.

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Eileen Bentsen

Eileen Bentsen is an Associate Librarian at Baylor University. As a digital immigrant, Eileen doesn't blog but prefers to have long, rambling conversations concerning just about anything except politics. Preferably with a group of friends over a pot of tea, or, better yet, the dinner table.

#ATLT: the table church, rev. edward green

February 21, 2012 Preston Yancey

It is often said in various forms, in different contexts, with different intentions. People however are a problem, a problem for which Christ is the solution, but that solution is very much a work in progress.

My own faith journey could be read in a number of ways. Baptised in secret as a baby (something I discovered in my twenties), grew up in a non-practicing home but in English Christian Schools where we prayed and worshiped every day, a vocational call at 13 (although I had no idea then what it meant), commitment and adult baptism at 16, five years in a Reformed Charismatic congregation, then a few more in something more Pentecostal.

And then people happened. I had seen it before, the church I was part of in my teens had a break down in relationships between the eldership, but by then I wasn’t involved enough to be hurt by it. In my mid-twenties it was different, I was involved. What happened isn’t so important, the why maybe more so.

I suspect that often in church we get caught up in an unhealthy Paternalism (and Maternalism). Expectations are placed on those in positions of responsibility that are unrealistic and in turn unrealistic demands are placed on others by those in positions of responsibility. Relationships become parent-infant, and when one party falls short the relationship can become toxic. Children rage at their pastors, parents emotionally discipline their congregation, pastoral colleagues fight over the children’s love. Sadly I have had folks tell me they want to be treated like children at church, I have heard ministers describe their flock as children, and I have seen congregations mercilessly turn on pastors when they admitted their mistakes – breaking the illusion of parental perfection.

I wish I could say that it was a problem only in churches with strong leadership, a charismatic spirituality, or an evangelical theology, yet although more hierarchical church groups can sometimes be insulated against it, they are not exempt. Jesus confidently said to his disciples ‘I have called you friends’, we find these words a far greater challenge.

So in my twenties I found myself hurting and cast adrift from the church that had sustained me for years. I wandered into somewhere very different, an ancient building, one with pews, robes, bells, smoke, standing and sitting, ritual and liturgy. I slowly fell in love with the richness of ancient shapes and forms of worship. At the time I hadn’t read the early Fathers of the Church hadn’t had the change of perception to see the liturgy of the ancient church crying out in the pages of the New Testament, and I hadn’t come to any theological conclusions. It was very much a shift of experience.

The table was at the centre of this new experience, this new way of worshiping. Holy Communion, the Offering, the Lord’s Supper, the Eucharist, call it what you will. It was Jesus’ table that he shared with his friends. The depth of this was brought home to me one night in the Garden of Gethsemane, the garden of betrayal and pain.

Every Holy Week, the 7 days before Easter, the journey of Christ’s Passion was shared. On Maundy Thursday evening we celebrated the Last Supper as if we were there with the disciples, the ministers washed people’s feet and we shared Christ’s presence in bread and wine. Then with Christ we would go to the garden. The garden was just a side chapel, a table with a few flowers and plants. The bread and the wine blessed at communion were placed here and we were invited to watch and pray, just as Jesus had asked his friends to do. In John’s Gospel the Last Supper is described starting with the bread shared with the disciples and ending with the blood and water pouring from Jesus’ side on the cross, the last cup. So the bread and wine set aside in the garden, the body and blood of Christ, would be shared again on Good Friday as we gathered around the cross.

The strangeness of this practice for one whose experience of worship had been worship songs and uplifted hands was significant. But in a spirit of exploration, I gave it a go. I sat in the garden that Maundy Thursday night. ‘Just one hour’ I thought. At the end of the hour I intended to leave.

Over the years I had been in some fairly remarkable meetings. I had seen the Toronto or Father’s Blessing break like waves over the British church. I had experienced laughter, floor time and tears. I had expounded that this was a bursting forth of the Fruit of the Spirit, Love, Joy & Peace. But like others I had also grown suspicious, noticing the similarities between the supposed manifestations of the Spirit and the work of skilled hypnotists, unsure of the evidence of transformed lives. Faith may be emotional, even ecstatic, but we must never confuse a human experience with the Holy Spirit.

There in the garden there was no space for laughter, for shaking, for lying on the floor. There was no-one to blow on us, to lay hands and pray, to cry ‘more Lord’. There was just the table, the bread and the wine, Christ present. After the hour I went to get up and I could not, I am unsure if I could even move. The sense of the intimate presence of Christ was overwhelming in a way I had never touched upon in even the most charismatic of meetings. But it was also simple, free of hype, judgement or expectation. Whilst others came and went, Jesus had me wait and watch.

This was not the end of the story; eventually I was ordained in this small corner of the global church, the Church of England. Here too I have seen people hurt as I saw before, seen people struggle with faith and I almost lost my own. I am still in the Garden of Gethsemane; where we let one another down, betray one another, and tears of blood are wept. Yet at the centre is not building, institution, not even people as we have sometimes understood it, but rather the table.

The table were Jesus met with his friends and shared his body and blood, the table where he meets with us still and shares his body and blood when we gather around Him.

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read the post before this one, here.

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Rev. Edward Green

Edward Green is a rural priest working in diverse communities in the UK. Spiritually at home in the Anglican-catholic tradition with a background in alternative worship and emerging forms of church. Married to a Christian children, youth and families worker. Enjoys blogging at http://www.future-shape-of-church.org and listening to 80's post-punk onwards.

see Preston blog