adventures in kindling the radical hope that God's commonwealth of love and justice is breaking-in.
rebecca joy sumner
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With Flaming Ears

5/23/2015

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I’ve been ignoring that it’s pentecost. I really like pentecost. At Midtown Friends (the church I pastored in Sacramento) back in the day, we did some fun things. We exchanged hearts of stone for hearts of….well, sponge...we we’re going to be handing out flesh. But the idea got across. We discussed the Holy Spirit as the Holy Animator and dreamed about what the Holy Animator was bringing about in and through us. We did a number of cool things over the years.

It’s a great day for creative liturgy. And I like creative liturgy. And we’re still in a season of listening and gathering in our new experiment in church, so there’s no liturgy to be creative with. And I have been ignoring that it’s pentecost.

And then I read this post from Christine Sine this morning. This particular line was powerful: “As the Holy Spirit fell on the disciples, the barriers of language and culture were broken down – not so that everyone thought and looked the same, but so that everyone understood each other in their own language and culture.”

At Pentecost, I feel like we are often focused on the power of the Spirit and the things the Spirit empowers us to do. Such as speaking in tongues. Or miracles. Or social miracles like housing for the unhoused or once-and-for-all ending global slavery. Or relational miracles like reconciled marriages or melting our way through that Seattle Freeze with some Holy Spirit fire and forming relationships with neighbors we barely say hi to. Or our elusive miracle: people joining a movement to live after Jesus in an inclusive community that little-by-little (I like better the phrase my Rwandese friends say, slowly-by-slowly because Lord is it slow) changes neighborhoods and - as neighborhoods link together - the world…(no tall order or anything). Or, and this is the even bigger one: a community of faith sharing the things they have across race, gender, and socioeconomic status so that everyone has what they need (Acts 2:44-45).

Because, dang! Those people in Acts were literally speaking languages they did not know. And this crescendoed into, as Acts 2:44-45 tells us: A church body “had. everything. in. common” and gave generously so that everyone’s needs were met. So, yeah, on Pentecost we talk big and dream big and try to expect big and big is so big that we need wildly creative liturgies to capture these extravagant images of the miracles God’s Spirit can do amongst us if we let Her…

...And I like creative liturgy. And I have been ignoring that it’s Pentecost.

But then Christine Sine drew my attention this morning to the greatest miracle. And it’s not some exciting thing that someone did. And it’s not speaking in a language you don’t know.

It is that “everyone understood each other.”  That is a miracle. (This is a blog, but, come on, can I get an amen?)

Have you had one of those eternal moments where you understood someone in a way you never thought you could? What a gift. Have you had one of those moments where you were understood in a way you had given up hope on being understood? If you have - because I believe many of us have not - I guarantee that is one of those sacred moments that you either cherish and replay over and over in your mind tending the flickering flame of hope that it will happen again...or try to forget it because it’s too painful to know it happened but it might not happen again. You might not be understood so deeply again.

And on pentecost, they understood each other. They saw each other. They knew each other. They heard each other. The greatest act on pentecost was not and is not the preacher preaching or the liturgist liturgizing (that cannot be a word, but I wrote it anyway). The greatest act on pentecost was listening so deeply that they understood.

So I have my creative liturgy for tomorrow and let me invite you to join: Listen. Throw out the flaming tongues. Take up the flaming ears. And listen.

Is there someone you disagree with? Is there a cultural phenomenon you don’t get? Are there people you are angry with? Is there a faith tradition or a people group you just don’t understand?

May we all celebrate pentecost with miraculous understanding that pushes to understand all of the various languages of living that are speaking in the sometimes-cacophonies in our neighborhoods. Let cacophony become harmony.

I hope you will join me in praying, slowing down, and seeking to listen - to understand - neighbors I have not understood. This will be my creative liturgy and I will be praying that it is our collective miracle.




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(not) applying pew research as a pastor

5/13/2015

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What if we only focused on what it means to love God and love neighbor in each specific moment, place, and interaction?

I am a church planter. I don't like those words. I nuance them. But, they are words you probably know. I am someone who is working to cultivate a new community of people loving God and neighbor in the Jesus way - or at least with some curiosity or willingness to try on the Jesus way - in specific time and place.

And yesterday the internet exploded with cold hard facts about a church in retreat.
And it's scary. 

We're doing this work because we believe in it. We're doing this work because it's what brings us to life. At the core, we're doing this slow work of cultivating a different way of living in light of Jesus in a particular time and place because we believe in it. We believe it is good for our neighbors and neighborhood to join in the concrete, gritty flourishing of God's Kingdom of love and justice in our place. And, if I'm honest, I'm doing this work because this is the only church I can imagine myself at.

And yesterday the internet exploded with cold hard facts about a church in retreat. And it's scary. It's paralyzing.

But maybe it doesn't need to be. Maybe the numbers and percentages and rates of church attendance aren't our business. 

Maybe like when David took that census, when we start focusing on how big or small our territory and number is is when things go bad. 

Maybe the only thing that is our business is to love God and love neighbor in each specific moment, place, and interaction. And maybe pew research doesn't help - but distract from this work. Because each of my neighbors is not a statistic or a demographic. Each of my neighbors is an infinite bearer of God's image. Each of my neighbors is not a number. Each of my neighbors is one of God's beloved children who God longs to love and know and work and play with. And my job, then, is to love and know and work and play with each of them in their stunning particularity. And I can't do that when I am weighed down by a study that tells me God's family is in retreat.

Pew research and demographic studies would suggest that if I wanted to start a successful mainline Christian church that becomes self sustaining, I need to move somewhere in the suburbs where people are generally over educated and ten years younger or older than myself.  


Faithfulness to God's calling would suggest if I want to participate with God cultivating a new community of Jesus followers I should live where I am, loving people of all ages, all education levels, and all socioeconomic levels.

What if we only focused on what it means to love God and love neighbor in each specific moment, place, and interaction? And as the scriptures tell the story - the Lord will add to our numbers...or not. The growth or shrinking of the church is the work and business of God's Spirit; not ours. Numbers are not our measure of success. Faithfulness is. Love is. The rest is for God to do and us to trust.
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A Walk through the Neighborhood with the Spirit

5/2/2015

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The Hebrew word for Spirit is simply beautiful. Ruach. It means Spirit but it also means breath and wind.

It has been one of those days in Everett where the sky is so blue and the leaves exploding with every known shade of green (and even some unknown ones) as the sun dances across them and the sparkling Puget Sound that you have no choice but to ask yourself: “Do I actually get to live here?”

The only complaint one might make about the day is that it is windy. It’s an erratic playful wind. It gusts in one direction. Calms. Gusts in another. Twirls a bit - like a churchy little girl on Easter morning showing off her special Easter dress. It zooms past your ears roaring more loudly than the man on the motorcycle trying to remind us how impressive his bike is as he revs the engine at a red light. The wind wins out as loudest. Then, when the light turns green and he speeds off, the wind vanishes momentarily with him. Then it comes  back to dance through my hair and team up with my bangs-in-need-of-a-trim to blind me like a friend sneaking up from behind, covering your eyes and saying: “Guess who!?” I know who. Wind. Ruach. Spirit.

And today as the wild, gentle, boisterous wind danced through Everett, we debuted our reimagination of a labyrinth on the city streets.

As far as I know, before today this hadn’t been done. I know for sure none of us there today had ever done it. I know it won’t be the last time.

Our brains and our schedules are powerful things. Like the man on the motorcycle, we are impressive. But Spirit is louder and softer all at once. Sometimes we need something special to slow us down enough to actually feel the wind. To actually see Spirit. 

We tend to get away, out of town, out of the bustle of downtown, away from soccer teams practicing and coaches shouting at them, away from little boys trying to figure out that staying vertical on a bicycle thing, away from cars prowling for parking. But sometimes, we need to stay in the midst of all that because God lives there. God - Spirit - has been waiting to take us on a tour of Her (the Hebrew for Spirit is feminine and the Greek neuter, so I use “Her” in respect to what Spirit has revealed to us of Herself) vast home. But we tend to traipse through it uninterested in the intricacies as we rush from place to place and wait impatiently for lights to change.

So today, eight of us - nine including the dog who is our most faithful church member - walked a labyrinth in the city. And as I walked, I felt the noisy wind - the loud Spirit - telling me: “Welcome to my cathedral. Pay attention to where I am and how I play.”

The wind teamed up with leaves to add percussion like an egg shaker: so small and so audible. Wind danced on concrete between two used, empty, discarded glass bottles comprising the morning’s bell choir. Wind skipped along Colby Avenue as a preschooler rode his training wheeled bike with his dad next to him and his sister babbling and bobbing down the street on her mom’s shoulders past a crowd of people sharing brunch and Spirit said: “Do you see me? Do you see eternity stretching out playfully on Colby Ave?”

I walked past a house in disrepair with garbage scattered about and an old tire leaning on the dilapidated siding. In the disheveled yard there were old mismatched decomposing chairs decorated with rust and mold and one toddler’s chair circling a fire pit. And Spirit said: “This is where I spend so many nights talking with my family over a fire until we should have already been in bed. You might call this circle my church.”

As I rounded the last corner and rejoined my fellow urban pilgrims, there was a peace, playfulness, and hope inhabiting us all that can only come from the hospitality of Spirit taking you on a tour of Her favorite neighborhood haunts.

Then we shared lunch and the wind/Spirit got a little too rowdy, trying to dump everyone’s food on the floor and feed table scraps to the dog. And so we shared lunch and time with the wisdom, calm, playfulness, stillness, and booming voice of Spirit - in Her cathedral. In Her livingroom. In the place she has called home long long before anyone even heard the word “Everett.”

If you weren’t able to join us for this month’s walk in Bayside, we hope you’ll be able to join us on June 6th at 10:30am in the Port Gardner neighborhood of North Everett (1850 Wall Street) Here’s a link with more information: http://www.everettchristianchurch.org/labyrinths.html




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    Lead pastor at Our Common Table: A Christian Community of Welcome and Justice in North Everett

    Rebecca Joy Sumner

    i am a christian. pastor. liturgist. abolitionist. wife. neighbor. church planter. writer (ish). theologian (ish). artist (ish). and basically just someone who playfully clings to this radical thing called hope. specifically, hope that God's commonwealth of love and justice to come more and more with every new day.

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