Suffering's theological
preposition: "with"
By Phyllis Zillhart
Associate Pastor
Several members and friends of St. Francis are undergoing serious health
problems or life crises. Some of these conditions were recently revealed,
others are experienced daily to a greater or lesser degree and some threaten
the very continuance of life. Will some among us be held only in our heavenly
communion with the saints by Easter? by Christmas?
Most of us pass by the down-and-out every day. Occasionally, we offer a
quarter, a smile, a social service referral, but usually we avert our glance
and keep moving. All of us live under the threat of a military action initiated
by our government in the name of our national honor and our consumer lifestyle
against a nation whose population brims with despairing youth (50% of Iraqis
under the age of sixteen) and whose people are not free enough to choose war
against us.
We try to lose ourselves in the cynical world of political contradictions or
the relentless busy-ness of our day to day lives. Bombarded with biased
information, we hunger for insight. Emotionally overwhelmed, we are dulled to
the actual and imminent suffering of others. It is easy to lose hope. We are at
risk of losing our capacity to care as we buffer ourselves with the anesthesia
of denial and the creature comforts of social privilege.
Thank God that the season of Lent comes to remind us of God's abiding
presence with us, not just in the good times but in the midst of the hardest
and worst of times.
We consider Jesus, beloved and blessed by God, thrust into the harsh
wilderness to be tested. We see Jesus surrounded by power-hungry, reactionary
followers who do not understand his vision of egalitarian access to God. We
witness Jesus enraged by institutional religious abuse. We glimpse Jesus in a
lonely garden praying to avoid the cup of suffering but willing to accept God's
will. We behold Jesus hung on an executioner's cross, lifted up for the sake of
his love for God and the world.
In her book entitled simply Suffering,
Dorothee Soëlle urges us never to hide behind spiritual platitudes regarding
suffering. If we see suffering, we cannot excuse it by downplaying its
importance. We cannot deny its significance by claiming suffering's tie to a
cosmic plan that our dim mortal vision can't perceive. Rather, if we see
suffering, we must face it. We are obligated to do our best to deal with the
effects of suffering and to address its causes.
But sometimes our compassionate dedication to enacting justice cannot
eliminate suffering. Then we must face the limitations of our mortality and
simply, prayerfully, open-heartedly, humbly and gracefully accompany people in
their experience of suffering.
Scripture gives us precedence for this response to suffering. The 23rd
psalm is written in the first person,
G-d is my shepherd. I shall not want.
The writer addresses God in the third person,
"G-d" -- the sacred, unspeakable name for the Creator of heaven and earth,
typically written as YHWH or translated as "The LORD." The pronouns referring
to this good shepherd were traditionally "he" and "his." The general sense is
that God is looking out for me, leading and guiding me.
Abruptly, for no apparent reason other than the sheer existential engagement
of threat and suffering, the address of God shifts to the second-person, "you."
"Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no
evil; for you are with me." Now the
writer is not talking about God but is talking with God. This is direct prayer, fully embodied in the moment of
need.
"Emmanuel" means "God With Us." We claim it as a title for Jesus at
Christmastime as we celebrate the incarnation of God's love revealed in the
swaddled flesh of the baby in a lowly manger. Let us also claim this reality of
Emmanuel in the midst of confusion, fear and suffering.
As we claim "God With Us" in all circumstances, let us also claim our
solidarity with those who suffer. We choose to embrace suffering since to
escape it or deny it is to lose ourselves and our connection with earth's
fellow creatures and our creator.
This solidarity is the path to answers that can bring life to the many and
not just a privileged few. This solidarity in suffering opens us to see more of
the world's hardships but it also clears a channel for hope to live among us.
We experience this full blessing of communion when we "rejoice with those
who rejoice and weep with those who weep" (Romans 12:15). With faces stained
with tears of joy and sadness, we can behold the face of Emmanuel in friends,
strangers, swaddled babies and those who suffer, awaiting their morn of
resurrection.
An interim timeline
By Fr. George Belcher
Interim Pastor
Since my arrival in late
January, I have been getting to know people, hear your stories. Eventually I'd
like to spend individual time with each member, and have started to do so. If
for some reason, you'd like me to visit sooner than later, please don't
hesitate to contact me at the office, at home, or via email (revbelchersf at
aol.com or revgbelcher at sbcglobal.net).
At our Congregational
Council meeting on February 18th, we discussed the shape our interim time might
take. This program still needs to be fine-tuned, and some decisions on precise
times made, but in general, here are some of the things we might do together
while I am with you as your interim pastor.
Soon after Easter, it is
my hope to have a Visioning/ Strategic Planning Team in place. This will be a
small working group that is representative of the whole parish family.
This team will do a lot of
the facilitating and gathering of information during the next year. From time
to time, they'll be asking for your help for specific tasks, like hosting a
small group, perhaps interviewing someone in the community, maybe collating or
gathering data.
In May and June we will
convene "Cottage Meetings" involving the whole parish family. These are a
series of meetings with a small number of participants, often held in someone's
home (hence the name Cottage Meeting). These groups will look at our current
ministry at St. Francis in the context of a Bible study. The process is
friendly, but prayerful and contemplative; it is a way that really opens people
up to the leading of the Holy Spirit.
Before the end of June, we
will have an evening (or a Saturday, or Sunday afternoon) where we can do some
historical reflection. This is a fun but very critical piece of work done in
interims. It helps us understand where we've been, in order to see where we are
and where we might go.
Over the summer, your
Visioning/Strategic Planning Team will be collating data from the Cottage
Meetings and the History Night (or Day). They will also conduct interviews with
people in our community and in the wider church, as well as gather and organize
data that will show the demographics of our immediate neighbourhood.
In September we will have
a meeting where we look at our "norms"-- those unique practices and customs
that give a parish its identify. For example, at St. Matthew's in
Winnipeg, one of our norms was to read a lesson or say a prayer in an
aboriginal language like Cree or Ojibway. Another was that at the offertory a
child from the Sunday School would bring up a prayer the children had composed,
to say right before the prayer over the gifts. A "norm" doesn't have to involve
the liturgy; another example is that At St. Matthew's we always had hot cider
and mince tarts Christmas Eve.
And at that meeting the team will update the whole congregation as to what our
work is looking like so far.
By October we hope to
prioritize our goals, consolidate our information, and develop the two or three
most important objectives for St Francis. At this time we might look again at
our Mission Statement, and either affirm it or perhaps fine-tune it.
In late 2003, possibly
November and December, your Visioning Team will share their report with the
congregation. This report will contain some conclusions that the Visioning Team has arrived at. These would
then be checked with the whole congregation for validation, or they might be
challenged, or even at this late stage someone might add something that has
been missed and was valid.
At the 2004 Annual Meeting, the final report as amended will be presented for
your consideration, and voted on.
After that Annual Meeting,
a new search committee will be appointed to begin the search for a permanent
pastor -- or to fill any other staffing model that the congregation has decided
on. Between March and Summer of 2004 the staffing search and interviews (if
required) will be held, with a view to any new personnel starting in the late
summer or fall of 2004. Finally, as the new model commences, I head back to
Calgary or to my next interim, no doubt regretfully but with many happy
memories.
I've used variations of
this model in each of the five previous interim ministry assignments I've been
privileged to fulfill in Alberta and Manitoba. In cases where the interim
ministry process has resulted in the hiring of new pastors, good matches have
been achieved, and all five parishes are currently doing well.
In the interim time, and
as we go through this process or some variation of it, the most important thing
each of us can do is "pray unceasingly," as Paul says. The second thing that
makes any process work is wide participation and involvement by as many members
of the community as possible. This means you. St. Francis is God's church, but
its also your community of faith, and it's important that every person's view
is shared and heard in an open, respectful and transparent way.
God knows the direction
that is best for St. Francis, and is willing to impart that knowledge to us.
This process enables God's Holy Spirit to do her work.
I look forward to our time
together as a time of hard work, learning together, and more fun than we could
ask for or imagine!
LGBT Lutheran groups
meet ELCA task force
By Jeannine Janson
The ELCA -- the national
Lutheran body of which St. Francis used to be a member, before our expulsion in
December 1995 -- is continuing the process known as "the sexuality studies."
These two parallel studies -- one on sexuality and the other on homosexuality
-- were mandated by a vote of the 2002 ELCA Churchwide Assembly. The latter
study is supposed to address the blessing of
same-gender unions and the rostering of persons in committed gay or lesbian
relationships.
As part of this effort,
the ELCA's sexuality studies task force scheduled consultations with
representatives of the gay and lesbian community within the ELCA, as well as
with pastors and others who want to maintain the current ELCA ordination
policies, in early February.
Invited were
representatives from five LGBT Lutheran organizations: Lutherans
Concerned/North America (LC/NA), Lutheran Lesbian and Gay Ministries (LLGM),
the Extraordinary Candidacy Project (ECP), The Network, and Wingspan
Ministries.
Together, these five groups make up the Lutheran Alliance for Full
Participation, or The Alliance. While the five groups have organizationally
distinct goals, they have related missions and work cooperatively for the full
inclusion and participation of LGBT persons in the Lutheran Church.
Leaders of the Alliance organizations met last November to discuss our
response to the invitations. We agreed with each other to meet jointly with the
Task Force, and designated two representatives from each organization to attend
the February 8 meeting.
Dr. James M. Childs, Jr., Director for ELCA Studies on Sexuality, sent us
the following questions in preparation for the meeting:
Are there any reactions to the Nov. 2002 preliminary report you want to
express?
What do you believe are the most important points to be made on behalf of
your view on the critical questions of blessing of same sex unions and on
rostering persons in committed same sex unions?
What concerns about biblical interpretation do you want to voice in
connection with the study on homosexuality?
What do you want the Task Force to hear that we might not otherwise hear?
We coordinated our responses, each preparing opening remarks which, taken
together, would communicate to the Task Force as many important matters as
possible given that we would only be with them for two hours.
On Feb. 8, the meeting convened at ELCA headquarters in Chicago. Dirk
Selland, my LC/NA co-chair, spoke first, providing an overview. Dirk gave
witness to the fact that despite the pain and suffering we have endured by the
church's policies of exclusion, LGBT Lutherans remain deeply committed to the
Lutheran Church. Dirk concluded with, "We come before you today in the hope
that the [Lutheran] Church, which we dearly love, will become an even better
Church than it already is."
Pastor Katherine Hellier, of The Network, followed. Katherine told the Task
Force that, "The Holy Spirit is at work in the lives and ministries of the LGBT
pastors and congregations they serve . . . the church must take the risk and
open itself to the breath and voice of the Spirit."
Pastor Paul Tidemann of Wingspan told the Task Force that, "St.
Paul-Reformation Lutheran Church would not be alive and well today were it not
for the gift of having gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people as active,
blessed and ordained persons among us. We pray that you will see the gift in
making possible a wider acceptance of LGBT people through blessed relationships
and rostered ministry."
We also provided information about the health and well being of the twelve
ELCA congregations that have called and are now being served by pastors
rostered by the Extraordinary Candidacy Project. ECP President Dr. Margaret
Moreland, providing facts and figures, informed the Task Force that, "There are
pastors not in compliance with the ELCA's policy who are serving in ELCA congregations,
and Gospel ministry is happening in those congregations."
Following up, Pastor Donna Simon, representing LLGM, talked about her
congregation, Abiding Peace Lutheran Church, in Kansas City. Pastor Sharon
Stalkfleet, also representing the ECP, talked about her call to serve Lutheran
Ministry to Nursing Homes, a joint ministry of seven ELCA congregations in
Northern California.
Remarks by LLGM co-chair (and St. Francis member) Greg Egertson served to
remind the Task Force that LGBT Lutherans are human beings and people of faith;
that our relationships are more than sexual acts and behaviors; that we are not
"consultants" in an abstract discussion of "issues," but rather the people
whose very lives are affected not only by the outcome (of the study) but by the
process.
George Watson of The Network encouraged the Task Force to think outside the
box, to develop not just study materials but ways to actually get the whole
church involved. "There must be a way," he said, "for relationships to be
established so that people can experience first-hand that we live lives of
faith. We must become known as people, not issues and objects."
I was the ninth person to speak. I told the Task Force about the importance
to my partner Mari and me of our wedding service, which took place at St.
Francis. I spoke of how we declared our love for and commitment to each other
in the presence of God, our family, friends and community of faith. I told the
Task Force that deception about who we are -- which the church encourages -- does
terrible things to the soul.
Reminding the Task Force that the church has been studying and discussing us
for decades, I pointed to a document that LC/NA provided to the LCA (Lutheran
Church in America) during its 1985 study on homosexuality, and concluded by
reading the following excerpt from "A Call for Repentance, an Open Letter to
the Lutheran Churches in North America," published by Lutherans Concerned in
November 1988.
For more than a decade we have patiently laid before you the stories of our
lives, our faith, and our witness, believing that the pain and suffering we and
our families have endured would be sufficient to move you to action. While we
have always been confident of God's love and acceptance, all to infrequently
have we felt or seen that love and acceptance enfleshed in our Church.
Dirk and I told the Task Force that LC/NA has been committed to working with
the church in a ministry of reconciliation and healing since 1974 and we
continue to do so today. We offered LC/NA's assistance in the ELCA's current
process.
Pastor Anita Hill of Wingspan was the last speaker, telling the Task Force,
"Justice will come. LGBT persons of faith are not going away. While some
threaten to leave the ELCA, we promise to stay. God will not let us go."
She highlighted the irony of LGBT pastors being denied candidacy even as our
church's leaders complain that there are not enough people being called into
Lutheran ministry. Pastor Hill suggested that perhaps "God will continue to
withhold enough pastoral calls until all those whom God has already called are
received into service in our church."
It is clear from our time with them that the members of the Task Force are
deeply committed to dealing with the matters before them. We felt that they
really listened to us. They asked many questions and we believe they have many
more.
We were the first LGBT
people to meet with the Task Force--and they had met twice already in 2002. I
had the sense that up until their meeting with us, the process of the Task
Force in "studying homosexuality" had been, for the most part, academic and
abstract. We brought real people, real feelings, and real matters of faith to
the table. We were pleased that most of the members of the Task Force appeared
to listen attentively and that their questions were honest and direct.
It was discouraging,
however, to learn that we are the only affected LGBT people on the Task Force
agenda; and that, so far, there are no plans to meet further either with us or
other LGBT people who will be affected by the recommendations they have been
asked to make re: blessing of same sex relationships and ordination.
Since two hours was barely enough time to get acquainted -- let alone
communicate and then discuss the many things we want them "to hear that they
might not otherwise hear"-- we asked if the Task Force would consider meeting
with us again or adding one or two of us to the Task Force.
As follow-up to the meeting, the Alliance representatives will provide the
Task Force with copies of our prepared remarks, resources we believe will be
useful and a written request for more time.
Several interested LGBT Lutherans attended the meeting as observers,
including my partner, Dr. Mari Irvin, LLGM Co-Chair. Since the Task Force
meetings are open to the public, we strongly encourage your attendance at
future meetings, both to serve as witness to what transpires and to support The
Rev. Kevin Maly and Susan Salomone, the gay and lesbian members of the Task
Force.
The Task Force will meet again April 25, 26 and 27 at The Lutheran Center in
Chicago.
For further reading
The ELCA has a website on the sexuality studies at http://www.elca.org/faithfuljourney/
.
The ELCA magazine The Lutheran has an article on the studies in
their March 2003 issue at http://www.thelutheran.org/0303/page20.html
as well as several other pieces
on the issue of homosexuality and the church.
Holy
Week services
St. Francis will once
again offer a full schedule of Holy Week services between Passion Sunday and
Easter.
7:00 pm - Stations of the Cross
Tuesday, Apr. 15
7:00 pm - Seder (with full meal)
7:00 pm - Maundy Thursday Liturgy
(with
foot washing)
Friday, Apr. 18
12:00
noon - Good Friday Liturgy (spoken)
7:00 pm - Good Friday Liturgy
(with
sung Passion)
9:00
pm - The Great Vigil of Easter
Science, religion meet
in Slovakia
By Robin Ressler
As many people at St.
Francis know, over the past few years I've been working in an unusual area: the
academic conversation between science and theology.
Now, you might think that
these two arenas -- one academic, yet foundational to technology and business,
and one spiritual and personal, all too often with no visible community impact
-- are necessarily separate. You may feel, as many do, that the demands of
science for objective truth and reproducible results are incompatible with a
religion where we believe in a God of creation, in (sometimes miraculous)
divine intervention, and in the resurrection.
But I disagree. Keeping
science and religion separate can help make it easy for people of faith to keep
their personal beliefs, values, and worldview just that -- personal -- and,
perhaps, even irrelevant not only to the wider community and to the global
village, but even to the social and public aspects of their own lives. As long
as the Good News of God in Jesus Christ (not to mention the truths of other
world religions) is kept compartmentalized, away from our everyday world of
hopping in the car in the morning, paying our bills, working, shopping, going
to school, entertaining ourselves, and voting (if we even bother!) we may fail
to consider how our daily decisions are related to God and our fellow human
beings. This may lead us to opt into a value system -- one that is dominant in
America, certainly, and other parts of the world as well -- that reduces human
beings to biological or economic units, in "competition" with one another for
"scarce" resources -- a value system that incorporates "me first" as a rule of
thumb, and is blindly subservient to the bottom line.
I believe that science and
religion have something in common: the search for truth. The conversation
between science and religion is important because it brings truth- seekers
together and gives them the opportunity to work together. With representatives
of these disciplines in conversation, with one another, it should be possible
for us to deepen our understanding of God's creation and God's will for human
beings in the world: the observable world, that is, that really exists.
This conversation is also
a wonderful exercise in community building. For me, that has been the most
wonderful aspect of my work these past few years.
The culmination of this
work was a conference I organized and co-hosted with my friends, The Rev. Dr.
Peter Pavlovič (ordained in the Slovak Lutheran church, and a formerly a
research physicist) and Fr. Dr. Grzegorz Bugajak (a Polish Roman Catholic
Priest and philosopher of nature), along with the Evangelical (Lutheran)
Theological Faculty of Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia. Held from
January 31 through February 2 this year, the event was entitled: And the
Truth Will Make You Free: Theology and Science in Conversation in the Changing
Contexts of Central and Eastern Europe.
At this conference, over
fifty people from ten formerly communist countries and a variety of (mostly
Christian) religious traditions in listened to and discussed approximately
thirty presentations. Topics included the historical context and present state
of the dialogue between faith and science in these countries, as well as
technical papers germane to specific issues in science and religion. Also
included were a few presentations pointing toward the future, considering the
ongoing significance of this conversation.
The post-communist context
emphasized the importance of both science and religion as means of truth.
Communism, in the form of the Soviet-dominated state socialism -- as endured by
inhabitants of the Soviet Union for most of the twentieth century, and by their
neighbors to the west for forty years or more -- was the enemy of truth.
Communism proclaimed that it was "scientific" -- based on the "science" of
dialectical materialism that stated, among other things, that material, or
physical, reality is all there is, has ever been, or ever will be.
According to this system,
not only was religion false, but open scientific research was suspect as well.
Science that was not politically correct (or did not directly support the
military) was forbidden. Discredited science included genetics (even the most
basic) and Big Bang cosmology.
On the first afternoon of
our conference, after hearing some reports about projects in the works, and two
fine historical presentations, we had a plenary discussion. During this general
meeting, one person after another told the group about how Soviet ideology and
Communist Party practices had a devastating effect on their careers and lives:
on their research and teaching, as well as on their worshipping communities. I
held my breath as this conversation began. One of my colleagues had been
reluctant to have this conversation at all, while another had insisted that it
was really important, and we should have plenty of time for it. The old
psychotherapist in me wondered if this group of strangers -- many, if not all,
of whom had suffered adversity -- would open up to each other or if they would
rather just forget the past and go on.
Open up they did, giving
me, a couple of other Americans who were present, and the younger scholars and
students in our midst, a valuable perspective on recent history. Hearing their
stories was a humbling experience for me, and also a gratifying one, because
these shared experiences laid the foundation for a community with shared
interests. The stories spilled over into the dinner hour as well as into the
living and working together of the next two days.
The second day of the
conference was jam-packed with technical presentations: the substance of the
science and religion conversation. They included presentations about human
being from the perspective of Russian Orthodox Theology, gene technology from a
Slovak Lutheran Theological perspective, and contributions from mathematics,
physics, and physical cosmology, as well as philosophy.
I was delighted when my
friend Peter (who is finishing his second doctoral degree, but earns his living
as a player in ecumenical, church/state relations) offered a beautiful paper on
the concept of infinity, noting how this concept, developed in mathematics and
philosophy and refined in physics, can contribute to a Christian understanding
of God. Another physicist, from Samara, Russia, discussed Biblical themes in
the perspective of modern cosmology, while a young, master's level philosopher
from Poland explored the question whether methodological naturalism (the way
natural science is generally approached) leads necessarily to a conflict
between science and religion.
After a moving ecumenical
prayer service on Sunday morning (an unusual event in itself, in this part of
the world!), Czech, Polish, and Hungarian thinkers presented forward-looking
lectures that incorporated ideas from a broad spectrum of the social and
natural sciences, including political anthropology, biology, economics and
physics, ending with professor Laszlo Vegh of the Institute of Nuclear Research
of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, speaking on "Religiousness and the Future
of Our Civilization."
At the end of this
conference -- for me the culmination of two years' work, but for the
participants, the beginning of a new endeavor -- the participants unanimously
agreed they would like to continue to work together in some way. Several
positive ideas were put forward, and I guess I'm still on board in a
coordinating capacity (by the miracle of the internet, I can do lots of this
from San Francisco!)
Throughout my work, St.
Francis was with me. You prayed for me. You gave me gifts of money. You sent
little gifts, photos, and cards. You sent me e-mails and, thank dear Jesus, you
maintained an online presence including photos and the texts of some excellent
sermons, that both encouraged me and made me homesick, but in a good way! You
prayed over me when I prepared to travel away, and embraced me, literally, when
I got home.
I couldn't have done it
without you. Thank you all so much for everything, and I thank God for you all,
as well. You have truly been instrumental in creating an atmosphere in which
healing can take place and truth can be known and made known. Ask me about my
work, this article, the virtues of Slovak beer, or science and religion. But be
careful -- you may get a long reply!
Heaven's leaven
By Jessica Prentice
And again he said,
"To what shall I compare the kingdom of God?
It is like to Leaven
which a woman took and hid in three parts meal
Til it was all leavened."
-- Luke 13:20
I am baking bread. I mix my leaven into meal that I have made from water and
flour. The flour is coarse, almost more like cracked wheat than flour, even
though I ground it twice.
It is hard work grinding grain, even just a few cups worth. But the smell of
freshly ground flour is wonderful -- rich, redolent of life and of eons of
time: of women crouching over mortars and pestles, of a horse-drawn mill: two
huge stones rubbing together, pulverizing the wheat berries, filling barrels
with flour.
It is a smell we rarely smell, nowadays. But I wonder if, in the time of
Jesus, in the time of Luke, in the time when this parable was uttered, it
wasn't a familiar part of daily life. Something everyone took for granted.
And what about the smell of leaven, a completely different smell altogether:
sour, yeasty, slightly fermented? Perhaps it was sitting in an earthenware jar
on a ledge somewhere, keeping warm in the sun? The woman in the parable would
certainly smell it before mixing it with her meal, maybe poke at it with her
finger or a spoon, to see how active it was, how ripe, how ready to work its
magic. She would know how to tell, by smelling it, by touching it, because she
would have smelled and touched it many times over the years, would have kneaded
it into countless loaves of bread, which would have been eaten, each one
thankfully, by her hungry family -- some warm out of the oven, some after many
days of travel in a sack slung from a donkey, but still rich and good and
nourishing.
My leaven is like hers probably was: sour and yeasty, a little bit bubbly.
It stays in a small ceramic crock, most of the time in the fridge. This is
because I don't bake bread that often, and the warmer it is, the more tending
it needs. In the cold of the fridge the fermentation process slows way down, so
it can sit there for a week or more without being fed more flour and water.
When I am ready to use it, I put it in a warm spot to get it active again, feed
it more flour and water, and let it ferment. The woman in the biblical verse
probably baked bread more often than I, and so maybe kept her starter warm all
the time. Or maybe she had a cool cellar, or a well or cistern, or a hole dug
in the ground, where she kept things like meat and milk cool enough to last a
few days. Maybe she put her leaven there to slow it down.
Some translators translate the Greek word zumh ("zumē") as "yeast,"
and indeed it is. But it is not the commercial yeast we find in small packages
in our grocery store -- this was only developed in the 1800s. Until then, bread
was made with a natural leaven made up of wild yeasts -- microorganisms that
can be harvested from the environment by mixing together flour and water and
keeping it at the right temperature in the right place for the right period of
time. Careful control over these factors will favor the desirable
microorganisms, and discourage the ones you don't want. Once a good leaven has
been made, it can be kept indefinitely by taking care of it, feeding it flour
and water, and using it to bake.
Such natural leaven is now often referred to as sourdough, but it can be
used to make bread that is either noticeably sour or not. Many breads use
commercial yeast to leaven the bread and then add "sourdough" to give a sour
flavor but not for leavening. But the woman in Jesus' parable was using a
natural, wild-yeast leaven to raise her bread.
Many of the microorganisms used to leaven bread are in the Lactobacilii
family, and there is even a microorganism named Lactobacillus sanfranciscensis,
which is associated with the famous San Francisco sourdough. The microorganisms
involved in alcoholic fermentation are a different family (Saccharomyces),
though many beers (most notably the Belgian Lambic) make use of Lactobacilii as
well, giving the beer a sour flavor.
Though we now understand much about the microbiology involved in natural
fermentation, in ancient cultures fermentation was seen as magical and
mystical. Gods of fermentation (such as Dionysus) or unseen spirits were
sometimes considered responsible for the mysterious actions of invisible
microorganisms.
For my part, no amount of scientific understanding can make it less
mysterious, magical, or sacred to watch flour and water become bread. And it is
not something I can do without thinking about Jesus' parable. As I mix my
leaven into the flour-and-water meal, in a ratio of approximately 1:3, I am
struck by the power of doing a thing, a simple daily action, that cuts across
millennia. And I am pushed to wonder about the message of that parable, and why
Jesus likens the Kingdom of God to that sour, yeasty, bubbly mass I pour out of
the crock.
I wonder what it is about the leaven that Jesus is comparing to the Kingdom
of God. Is it the quality of felicitous, contagious spreading? The way just a
tablespoon of leaven can take over a cup of dough in just a few hours, turning
the whole thing into leaven? Is Jesus referring to this kind of uncontrollable,
organic, exponential growth?
Or is it a reference to the magic and mystery of the process, that it is
something that we can't see with the naked eye, can't easily measure, quantify,
or capture, or even understand, but that is nevertheless completely real and
true and potent? Or does the message have something to do with the "hiding" of
the leaven, that it is something that is buried, unseen, but still active,
alive, and doing its work? Or is it the everyday quality of the act, the making
of the daily bread, the humbleness of it all combined with the magic and
mystery, that makes it like the Kingdom of God?
In many ancient cultures, fermentation is treated with a kind of respect and
awe that is almost religious in quality. One writer notes: "This kind of
reverence pervades indigenous and older societies. Each life-form, whether a
cactus, stone, or yeast, is viewed as an expression of the sacred, with its own
intelligence, awareness, and sacred nature."
While Christianity is often seen as the antithesis of this kind of mystical
understanding of nature, as well as an oppressor of peoples who practiced it, I
find in many of Jesus' words and teachings more than a hint of this kind of
mysticism. Perhaps the Kingdom of God is like to leaven because leaven is alive
and sacred, because leaven has its own intelligence that is in itself an
expression of God.
Or maybe it is simply that the Kingdom of God is something that lifts us up,
that brings lightness to our being, that pushes us heavenward.
The mysteriousness of Jesus' message in the Parable of the Leaven fascinates
me, and reminds me of the mystery of leavening itself. Perhaps that itself is
the true message: like the Kingdom of God, it is something we can marvel at,
and experience, and know to be true, but in the end it is -- and always will be
-- a mystery.
Jessica Prentice's website at http://www.stirringthecauldron.com
contains an archive of her writing
about food and sustainable living.
Stained glass restoration
project to begin soon
By Mark Pritchard
The Property Committee is considering a proposal from Great Panes Architectural
Glass Art of Calistoga to refurbish the stained glass windows on the north side
and street side of the church.
The congregation voted to authorize the project at the Annual Meeting in
February. If the Property Committee awards the contract to Great Panes, the
work would begin this spring.
The work will include releading, reputtying and cleaning of several windows,
as well as adding steel reinforcement bars. The biggest job involves the
windows on the north side of the church, all of which will be refurbished. But
the project also includes work on several windows on the street side as well as
repair of some broken panes on the south side.
"In my opinion, the need is critical, especially for the north side," said
Pastor Ruth Frost.
The windows were completed sometime after the church was built in 1906 and
are approximately 75 years old. The lead pieces that hold the windows together
-- called cames -- were never meant to last this long, Frost said.
"Lead cames are designed to expand and contract as the windows warm and
cool," Frost said, "so they're designed to be somewhat flexible. But over time,
the lead becomes more brittle and contracts less easily."
Another factor in the windows' construction also necessitates the
restoration. During the era of the windows' construction, it was common for
stained glass artists to use Portland cement as an ingredient in the grout that
holds the glass in the lead cames. While this ingredient was "quick setting,"
it also makes the grout corrosive over time, eating out the heart of the cames.
"The damage isn't visible to the naked eye," Frost said, "but the extent of
the corrosion will become evident" once the windows are disassembled during the
project.
Both the brittleness and the corrosion of the lead cames leads to buckling
of the windows. This buckling is especially dangerous, Frost said, in windows
which are either large in area or tall. St. Francis' windows are both.
Outside her job in the areas of worship and outreach, Pr. Frost is an
experienced stained glass artist with experience in both large and small window
projects.
Restoration will mean the windows are taken out for a period of several
weeks. During this time, the glass will be cleaned, and the pieces which are
painted will have to be repainted -- a process that involves firing painted
pieces in a kiln. When the windows are reassembled, they will be reputtied
using a non-corrosive compound. Steel reinforcement on the less visible outside
of the windows will help preserve them, and finally, protective Plexiglas will
be fastened on the outside of the windows to protect them from wind, birds, and
weather.
The contractor estimates the removal and replacement of the north windows
will take six to eight weeks, and the windows on the street side of the church
three to four weeks. During that time, expect to see scaffolding in the church
during worship services, since it is not feasible to take down and put up the
scaffolding every week.
The project is the first large construction or maintenance project the church
has undertaken since the completion of the Yard and Safety Project.
"We've got some very nice windows," Frost said. "They're not high-end
windows for their time, but they're very nice ones, and for today, they're
jewels. They're worth maintaining."
St. Francis staff gets DSL,
new email addresses
The St. Francis office staff took a giant leap online with the installation
in February of a DSL line, enabling the staff to maintain a constant connection
between their desktop computers and the internet.
This is time-saving for two reasons. First, it means they no longer have to
wait while the AOL program launches and establishes a dial-up connection. Using
the internet with DSL is also faster than with a dial-up connection -- as
anyone knows who has suffered through incessant television ads for the service.
The new service means new email addresses for the church office and for some
staff. Current staff email addresses are now:
Church office: StFrancisSF
at sbcglobal.net
Rev. George Belcher: RevGBelcher
at sbcglobal.net
Pr. Phyllis Zillhart: RevPZillhart
at sbcglobal.net
Pr. Michael Hiller: Priestly at
batnet.com
Pr. Ruth Frost: ruthfrost
at prodigy.net
Readings for Lent
Here are the Lectionary readings for Lent this year.
|
Lent I (9
March)
|
Genesis
9:8-17
Psalm 25:1-10
1 Peter 3:18-22
Mark 1:9-15
|
|
Lent II (16
March)
|
Genesis
17:1-7, 15-16
Psalm 22:23-31
Romans 4:13-25
Mark 8:31-38 or
Mark 9:2-9
|
|
Lent III (23
March)
|
Exodus
20:1-17
Psalm 19
1 Corinthians 1:18-25
John 2:13-22
|
|
Lent IV (30
March)
|
Numbers
21:4-9
Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22
Ephesians 2:1-10
John 3:14-21
|
|
Lent V (6
April)
|
Jeremiah
31:31-34
Psalm 51:1-12 or
Psalm 119:9-16
Hebrews 5:5-10
John 12:20-33
|
|
Liturgy of
the Palms
(13 April)
|
Mark
11:1-11 or
John 12:12-16
Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29
|
|
Liturgy of
the Passion
(13 April)
|
Isaiah
50:4-9a
Psalm 31:9-16
Philippians 2:5-11
Mark 14:1-15:47 or
Mark 15:1-39, (40-47)
|
St. Francis hosts
AIDS Banquet
ST. FRANCIS HOSTS the
Friendship Banquet for low-income people with AIDS at St. Paulus Lutheran Church
on Wed., March 12, 4:00 p.m.
This weekly meal for
people with AIDS is hosted several times a year by members of St. Francis, who
cook and serve an excellent meal to up to 75 people.
To help, contact Barbara
or Jack Kling.
About this newsletter
By Mark Pritchard
For a long time, several different people have
suggested that the members and friends of St. Francis Church need a forum for
essays, reflections, discussions and other pieces of writing that are too long
to fit into the St. Francis Times, our weekly bulletin.
This is an attempt to fulfill that long-held idea.
Some of the content of this newsletter will be
newsy -- longer pieces that talk about events we've held or been a part of.
These happenings range from our own congregational events to outside
conferences, retreats and other happenings. This newsletter will give us a way
to share impressions and experiences.
But beyond that, I hope this publication will give
you a place to register your thoughts and feelings, your reading and research,
your practice and experience, of your own spirituality.
Among our members and friends there is a great
range of spiritual practice. Some of us regularly pray Luther's morning and
evening prayer. Some of us meditate or practice lectio divina. Some of
us use the rosary or keep other practices associated with other traditions.
This newsletter can reflect our variety of spiritual practice by giving people
a place to share how they approach the divine.
Similarly, the people of St. Francis come from
many backgrounds. Some of us consider St. Francis our permanent spiritual home;
others are passing through on their journey. I hope this newsletter will
reflect this diversity, as well as recognizing and honoring the searching and
doubts almost all of us have sometimes.
Finally, while I expect the initial audience to be
the members and friends of our congregation, I hope the newsletter will allow
us to show people outside our community what makes us unique, and also what
makes us utterly like other Lutherans, or other Christians, or other people of
faith. Sort of like the cookbook did.
So please consider writing something for this
newsletter that reflects your experience, your practice, your own life, your
committee, your prayer, your family, your background, or your hopes. We can go
farther than simply announcing we're feeding the homeless on Sunday morning,
for example -- we should say why we're doing it and what it has taught us. We
can reflect on our practice of the liturgy. We can ponder how to be instruments
of God's peace.
Submissions for the next issue, slated for May or
so, are due April 12, 2003.
instrument
a newsletter of St. Francis Lutheran Church
Editor:
Mark Pritchard
This
Lent 2003 issue was completed on 5 March 2003.
Produced
on something like a quarterly schedule. Submissions in MS Word format to
mark94110 at yahoo.com, or on paper to Mark c/o the church office, 152 Church
St., San Francisco, Calif. 94114. Submissions may be on any topic related to
spirituality or the work of the people.
Opinions
expressed herein are those of the authors and not necessarily of St. Francis
Church, its staff or members.