Author: Church of the Nativity

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Finding Hope in a Tomato Sandwich

The gospel reading for Sunday is the parable of the lost sheep and the lost coin. You can read it here. This week, I lost hope that trying to care for the earth and reverse the effects of climate change were making any kind of difference, and that by continuing to talk about it and try to DO something about it, I was being foolish. I lost my hope, and I lost faith that God was at work still in this world.

What led to this crisis, you ask? It must have been something really terrible to set in motion such an existential questioning of motives! Nope. It was an opinion piece in the New Yorker, not even written by a scientist, but one of their contributing writers. He has lost all hope that human beings will change their behavior to stop the planet from warming at its current destructive rate. Nothing scientific, just his own model in his own head. His solution is to stay put in his comfortably air conditioned home and eat locally sourced kale grown by homeless people.

For some reason, this article sent me into despair. Why bother, I wondered? What difference can I make, can one church make? Am I just contributing to an already too noisy world bent on division and differences?

I am grateful to say I didn’t remain lost in despair for very long. I found my hope again, and I found it in several places. One, I re-found hope in my identity as a beloved child of God who has been saved by the good news of Jesus. The good news that God loved the world enough to die to save us all. That God loved this WORLD enough to save the people in it; that God didn’t give up on the human community. Second, that good news tells me to love my neighbor as God loves me, and there is much hope to be found in that.

There are many examples of what might happen if we love our neighbor, but one stood out to me this week as I lost and re-found my hope for this fragile earth, our island home. A picture posted on our Facebook page:

 

The caption read:

In 2019 Nativity Community Gardeners have delivered a total of 266 lbs. of organically grown fresh produce to senior citizens at Windsor Spring, with whom we have developed a warm relationship. In the coming weeks the gardeners will restore and prepare their garden beds for cool season planting.

We love our neighbors. We grow vegetables for them, feeding the soil, moving carbon out of the atmosphere and into the ground where it needs to be. We plant new things when it is time. We get to know our neighbors, and they share with us in return. I don’t know if it will stop climate change and save the world, but that’s okay, God has taken care of that. In the meantime, we can enjoy the heaven that is a freshly harvested tomato. May you find hope where you exist, and if not, may God find you in your despair and bring you back home again.

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From the Clergy

Top 10 Ways Preachers Can Avoid the Complicated Teachings of Jesus

The Andover Organ

From the Gospel reading appointed for Sunday, September 8:

Now large crowds were traveling with Jesus; and he turned and said to them, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” Luke 14:25

  1. Tell a charming anecdote that has nothing to do with the gospel passage, yet heartwarming enough to be the one thing people remember when they leave church.

 

  1. Preach on the Psalm.

 

  1. Find strange historical, biblical facts to distract congregation from what Jesus is saying and/or focus on one word translated from the original Greek and discuss the varied interpretations of the translation.

 

  1. Tell a lot of jokes and/or use props.

 

  1. Make the children’s sermon really really long so there’s no time for the “grown-up” sermon.

 

  1. Talk about a current event in the news instead.

 

  1. Have an interactive sermon and make the congregation talk to each other – what do YOU think Jesus meant?

 

  1. Ask the organist to play a musical meditation in place of the sermon that day.

 

  1. Preach on the Collect of the Day.

 

  1. Assign the seminarian intern to preach.

 

Also from Sunday’s appointed Gospel reading:

“So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.” Luke 14:33

 

What is your preacher going to do? Come to church on Sunday to find out!

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From the Clergy

An Invitation to the Party

new luxury home with elegant touches including covered entrance, columns

Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it. -Hebrews 13:1-2

Have you ever noticed on the home improvement shows on HGTV, everyone looking for a new house or remodeling their current one says, “We love to entertain and need to make sure there is space for entertaining our guests. We just love to have people over.” It makes me wonder – is that a requirement to be on these shows? Hospitality must be a core virtue?

I think it makes me suspicious because the thought of having people over and “entertaining” for fun makes me personally incredibly anxious. I would love to see a show in which the people said, “We are actually cranky misanthropes who hate having people in our space, and we worry about being good enough to offer hospitality to others.” That feels much more honest to me, because the thought of entertaining people, and that they might be angels is frankly, terrifying.

Jesus, as usual, goes all in. In the gospel reading for Sunday, Jesus says to his host, “When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid.” (Luke 14:12) Not only should we offer hospitality, we should offer it to those we don’t even know, who don’t look like us, speak like us, parent like us, vote like us… As if offering hospitality to angels wasn’t terrifying enough.

Perhaps my real discomfort comes from the idea of being the one who is the guest, and who is unable to offer any payment in return. The idea of being a burden to someone, to take without giving back – there is a certain lack of power that is disconcerting. And yet, that is the grace that God offers to us. We have been redeemed by the one true host who has offered us a seat at the table, whether we are deserving of such a seat or not. The host who has invited us to a party with a cost that cannot be repaid.

May I be humble enough to accept the invitation. And wise enough to turn off HGTV.

 

 

 

 

 

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Caring for Creation

Launch of Restoring God’s Earth Program and Zero Waste Church

Restoring God’s Earth is a program of Church of the Nativity. On October 1, 2017, following a period of study and reflection on the curriculum, A Life of Grace for the Whole World, Nativity launched the program. The curriculum is based upon the Episcopal House of Bishop’s Pastoral Teaching on the Environment, which calls “for all God’s children to work for the common goal of renewing the earth as a hospital abode for the flourishing of all life.”

The program consists of 12 monthly themes with weekly actions for individuals and congregations. For example, the first two themes for the months October and November are “composting” and “reducingfood waste,” respectively.

Information about the themes and actions can be found on the new web site: Zero Waste Church, or by contacting The Rev. Stephanie Allen, sa@nativityonline.org or Carl Sigel, cwsigel@aol.com. For questions about the Zero Waste Church initiative you can also email zerowastechurch@gmail.com.

We are inviting everyone who cares about restoring God’s Earth to join us in this work.

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Caring for Creation

Restoring God’s Earth: A Year of Personal Action – Compost!

Welcome to the first week of Restoring God’s Earth: A Year of Personal Action.

Our first month we will be focusing on Composting.

Decaying food (process minus oxygen) in landfills produces methane – a powerful greenhouse gas, 84 times more damaging than carbon dioxide. Solution? Compost that food! Composting ads in oxygen to the process and produces nutrient rich soil. Compost added to the gardens retain water, produces healthier plants and can even pull carbon dioxide out of the air (a process called carbon sequestration)! It’s Earth’s finest form of recycling.

Here are suggestions for ways to get started composting. Click the link for more information.

Week 1

Freeze your food scraps for composting.

Find/rent a kitchen compost container.

 

The earth is the Lord’s, and all that is in it; the world and all who dwell therein. -Psalm 24:1