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2012 Lenten Devotional Study

The Church & Society Committee brings to you the Lenten Devotional Study on the book of Mark prepared written by Rev. Elizabeth Knott, founder of Pal Craftaid. Download a copy of the 2012 Lenten Devotional by clicking this link (then right-click to print or save a copy to your computer).

Rev. Elizabeth Knott is a retired Presbyterian minister. In July of 1992 she participated in a seminar to Palestine-Israel which was co-sponsored by the Presbyterian Global Ministrie and Peacemaking agencies. The seminar became an unexpected transformative venture sending her back 32 times to the Holy Land. In 1993 se founded the volunteer ministry of PalCraftAid whose purpose has become to provide support, healing, and hope to Palestinian individuals and families. Through the importing and selling of Palestinian sculpted olivewhood and counted cross strich needle work to congregations, over $500,000 has been raised to various Palestinian organizations who offer critical life-sustaining sustaining ministrie to those in desperate need.

More information about Pal Craftaid and the Lenten Devotional can be found here.

Joyful Noise!

Guitars, keyboard, bass, cookies, and goat nails…were all enjoyed by our young people on Sunday.  The Youth Connection rocked out to “Peace Like a River” and even kept it together for a third verse.  Other songs were attempted with varying results.  We have a ways to go on the Beatles’ “Love Me Do,” but a wonderful, musical time was had by all.

Many thanks to Al and Carol for helping lead us with instruments, guidance, and hot cocoa!

We’ll jam again in a few weeks so keep looking for songs that you’d like for us to learn.

The Three-Fold Cord

I’m guessing I’m not alone in recycling paragraphs from old wedding homilies, adding material that is personal to the couple standing in front of me. One of the things I often say in the short sermon I give at a wedding is that the guests are there not only to celebrate, but also as witnesses – that they have a role in the marriage. The couple chose each other to marry but they chose us, as witnesses, and we are there to hold them, from that day forward, in our hearts and in our prayers. And then I remind them that there is another witness and a greater source of help. If the wedding is actually in the church, I might say something like, “These two people have chosen to get married here instead of in a bowling alley or in a junior high school gymnasium, not only because it’s somewhat more aesthetically pleasing, but also to turn our attention to that other witness. And even if we, in the pews and elsewhere in the room, fall down on the job of supporting them, God will not.”

Getting married changes a relationship. Being married is different from living together. If you are married, you know this. And if you are a person of faith, it makes a difference whether your wedding is in a church or performed by clergy. It makes a difference to make your promises before God. Sometimes I’ll tell the couple that God is the third cord in the three-fold cord that Ecclesiastes 4 says is not quickly broken. It makes a difference to feel that God is a part of the relationship.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals declared last week, “Proposition 8 serves no purpose and has no effect other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their family relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples” (http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/general/2012/02/07/1016696com.pdf ). The Court concluded that the Constitution doesn’t allow that. I had the court’s opinion in mind last Saturday, when the Presbytery of the Redwoods voted to send two overtures dealing with same-gender marriage to our denomination’s General Assembly (an overture is something like a bill before Congress). One overture would allow Presbyterian clergy to officiate at the weddings of same-sex couples. The other would change the definition of marriage in our Book of Order so that it says “two people” instead of “a man and a woman.” Now, these changes in Presbyterian policy and practice would not involve “reclassifying” family relationships, as ours is not a situation in which rights have been stripped away from people who once had them, as was the case with Proposition 8. Nevertheless, the Presbyterian Church’s current policy communicates that the marriages of same-gender couples do not have equal dignity to opposite-gender marriages; that they are not equally sacred and are not equally blessed. To the rest of the world, it looks as though we intend to demean the status and dignity of this group of people, their relationships, and their families.

We know the consequences of communicating that people are “less than.” This past week each of my daughters, separately, sent me a Rolling Stone article about how the anti-gay climate in one Minnesota town has led to a rash of teen suicides (http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/one-towns-war-on-gay-teens-20120202). It is not far-fetched to say that depriving couples of the right to marry contributes to the treatment of gays and lesbians as second class, or worse.

The truth is that I have never, ever understood how gay marriage undermines straight marriage. I just don’t get it. I’m fairly certain that the only threats to my marriage are my pride and my anger and my laziness about commitment (and my husband’s but he isn’t here to defend himself so I’ll leave him out of this). Some of the best, most enduring, most monogamous relationships I’ve ever known are between two people of the same gender. But that isn’t why I supported these two overtures. I supported them because gay and lesbian people are equally human, equally children of God, should be treated with equal dignity and should have an equal opportunity to have their relationships blessed by the church, even if their relationships are no more ideal than the straight couples we marry – or no more ideal than our own.

We all need – and deserve – that third cord.

Divine Healing

Lesson: Mark 1 :40-45

Last month when I was back home in Pittsburgh for Christmas, I was invited by my aunt to attend a worship service at a congregation which she has been recently attending. Attending my aunt’s church was a good experience for me because not only did I get to see my aunt and her family, but as a Presbyterian, I got to worship in a style that is different than how I normally worship. In this particular case, I was worshiping in a non-denominational contemporary church setting.

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Lay-ups, Hook Shots, Prayer

A million years ago when my kids watched “Sesame Street,” there was often a segment with a little ditty, “One of these things is not like the others; one of these things just doesn’t belong. Can you guess which one is not like the others by the time I finish my song?”

Lay-ups, hook shots, prayer. Certainly, one of these things is not like the others. But is it also true that it “just doesn’t belong”?

A controversy arose last month because the organizers of the CYO basketball league in Marin County have decided that each game will begin with an adult – preferably one of the coaches – leading the kids in prayer. This is a change from years past. The organizers hope that the prayer move the players away from what one of the league representatives called the “changing tone” of youth sports (http://www.marinij.com/westmarin/ci_19691785).

The organizers have told the coaches that they don’t have to be the ones leading the prayers. They can find another adult. They also insist, “If a player isn’t interested in standing at half court (for the prayer), he can stand quietly and respectfully, or sit on the bench and wait for his team to come back.” So no one is forced to pray and no one is forced to lead the prayer. And yet there is still some sense that the requirement that the kids be exposed to prayer is somehow unreasonable and even offensive. One trustee of a West Marin school district where some of the games are played told newspaper reporters, “I’m going to put up a sign in front of the gym: ‘If you don’t pray in my school, I won’t think in your church.’”

OK, well, now we know what offensive looks like. I am stumped about a response to this insult, beyond inviting him to worship with us so he can experience for himself whether or not there is any thinking going on here. Or maybe referring him to some of the great thinker/theologians – although if what he means is that anyone who believes in God is incapable of “thinking,” then, really, there isn’t any point in offering him these riches.

CYO stands for Catholic Youth Organization. Is there someone who doesn’t know that? My first thought is, “You’ve been put on notice.” The basketball league is sponsored by the Roman Catholic Church. It’s their party, so to speak. And your son or daughter does not have to play CYO ball. This is in contrast to public school, which is state-supported and which children must attend (unless their parents send them to private school). I am in agreement with those Supreme Court decisions banning required or official prayer from public school under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. Although, as someone has pointed out, as long as there are exams, there will always be prayer in school.

The argument is that CYO basketball is the only game in town. This isn’t, in fact true. The Y (which used to be the YMCA – the Young Men’s Christian Association) also has a league. It’s smaller but they don’t pray.

But even if it were the only game in town, have we reached the point in our culture that mere exposure to the fact that some people believe in God and practice their beliefs is offensive? Does that harm young people? Does the Catholic Church need to be apologetic or accommodating to the culture when they are the ones organizing the league?

My son plays CYO basketball. He is probably one of the few kids standing at half court who finds a few seconds of prayer to be pretty routine. So far, his coaches have been willing to read the prayer the league offered as an option – a prayer asking for God’s blessing and that everyone involved will remember to be good sports. But if they ever choose not to lead the prayer, I’ll be volunteering.

Wings Like Eagles

Lesson: Isaiah 40:21-31

A colleague once told me he hoped to write a book someday called, “It Isn’t in the Bible.”  It would cover those quotations and words of wisdom that people believe are Scripture – but they aren’t.  Like, “God helps those who help themselves.”  Not in the Bible.  “To thine own self be true.”  That’s Shakespeare, not the Bible.”  “This, too, shall pass.”  “Cleanliness is next to Godliness.”  Neither of those is in the Bible. Read more →

Folded Prayer

Back in the 1990’s, before I began seminary, I was introduced to the tradition of 1,000 paper cranes – origami cranes folded by a person or people as an expression of a hope or desire. In Japan, it’s a tradition for a bride and her friends and family to fold 1,000 cranes before the wedding. It is a labor of love, and according to Japanese lore, the bride who finishes this task before her wedding day will be richly rewarded with a good and happy marriage. One of my favorite episodes of the TV series, Northern Exposure, shows the whole town of Cicely folding cranes for the wedding of Adam and Eve. My daughter wanted something more interesting, more participatory and less expensive than flowers decorating the sanctuary during her wedding earlier this month, so we all started folding months before the wedding. When all was said and done there were something over 1,000 but we lost the exact count. We just knew how much paper we’d bought, and that it was over 1,000 pieces, and it was all folded.

We didn’t fold the cranes with any belief that doing so would bring her good luck. Rather, we folded them as a prayer practice. It was during the very first Gulf War that I first learned that folding cranes can be a way to pray with your hands. It is physical, tactile, methodical, and you can put whatever intention into it that you choose. At Redwoods Presbyterian Church in Larkspur, we folded 1,000 paper cranes as a prayer for peace, drawing on the tradition of the story of Sadako Sasaki. Sasaki was a young girl who lived in Hiroshima at the time the atomic bomb was dropped. She began folding cranes as a wish for peace. One version of the story says she finished; another says she did not finish before she died of leukemia, presumably from radiation poisoning, in 1955, at the age of 12.

In the Presbyterian tradition we’ve steered away from beads, candles, touching holy water – all such practices have been dismissed (if not condemned) as superstitious, and maybe in some situations, they have been superstitious. If you believe that because you are touching a bead or lighting a candle something will happen that otherwise will not happen, that is a superstition. But a prayer is different from a superstition. Prayer lifts up our hopes and desires and concerns and places them honestly before God, understanding that God is not a divine jukebox – plug in your prayer, get what you want. Rather, in prayer, we place ourselves before God, aware that standing in the light of God’s love changes us, and even changes the world, in ways that are mysterious, beyond our knowing. And sometimes, it helps our prayer to touch something, do something. We are physical beings. God gave us 5 senses and I believe it is fine with God for us to use those 5 senses in prayer.

Our theme for Lent at First Presbyterian Church of San Anselmo this year is “Cross-wise.” We are taking a look at the cross as the symbol of our faith, and what it can mean for 21st century Christians who live in relative peace and privilege. As part of our theme, we are inviting people to participate in a hands-on, tactile prayer practice: Make a cross. Paint a cross. Build a cross. Draw a cross. Build it out of something that represents pain, struggle, an obstacle, or a victory over an obstacle. Paint it in a way that expresses your fear, your hope, your journey. You are limited only by your imagination. We will display the crosses of people who are willing to have them displayed, either with names or anonymously, over the course of Lent.

I will make some crosses out of origami paper. Thanks to Theresa Cho, the associate pastor at St. John’s Presbyterian Church in San Francisco, I have learned how to make a box-like cross out of 26 (yes, 26!) sheets of origami paper. That is a lot of praying. With each crease, I will hold in prayer a person in our congregation, a situation in the world, a concern on my heart.

As we say in worship each Sunday, “Please pray with me.”

A New Teaching

Lessons: Psalm 111, Mark 1:21-28

Many people are excited that next week is Super Bowl Sunday.  Others of us know that what’s really exciting about next week is it’ll be only two more months until Opening Day of the Major League Baseball season.  In one of my favorite baseball movies, Bull Durham, Crash Davis, who’s been a catcher in the minor leagues for twelve years, is sent down from a triple-A team to an A-team to help train a very talented but very young, very green pitcher nicknamed “Nuke.”  Part of a catcher’s job is to know the batting records of the players on the other team.  The catcher then signals the pitcher what to pitch – a fast ball, a curve ball – whatever that batter is least likely to be able to hit.  In one of Nuke’s first games, Crash gives him the sign to throw a curve call.  Nuke shakes him off, which is what it’s called when a pitcher doesn’t want to do what the catcher signals.  Crash walks to the pitcher’s mound and asks Nuke why he’s shaking him off.  Nuke says he wants to bring the “heat” – throw a fastball.  He says he wants to announce his presence with authority.  Crash knows that the man at bat is a “first ball, fast ball hitter.”  But Nuke says this batter hasn’t seen his fast ball.  Crash goes back behind home plate and tells the batter to expect a fast ball.  The batter, knowing what’s coming, smacks the ball over the fence – a homerun.  And we figure out who has the authority on the team.[1]

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Looking for Communion Servers

Greetings!

It’s that time of year when we start thinking about Lent. As is our tradition, we serve communion on six Sundays during Lent, beginning on February 26. That means we will need a total of 48 communion servers!  This year, I’m excited to announce that we are introducing online sign-ups! Now you can simply visit a web page, take a look at what slots are open, and type in your name. It’s easy, give it a whirl! Just click here to be taken directly to the online sign up page.

If technology is not your thing, fear not. You can still contact Lynn Bicknell via email at vialynn@comcast.net or by telephone at (415)-459-7919.

You can learn more about serving communion, and how to sign up online or otherwise, by clicking here.

Thank you!

More Than a Whale of a Tale

Lesson: Jonah 3:1-10

My sister, who shares my from-a-distance fascination with the grocery store tabloids, informed me over Christmas that the Weekly World News has gone out of business.  Where will we now go to read that Hillary Clinton has adopted an alien baby or that Dick Cheney is a robot?  How will we keep up with the adventures of Bat Boy?  If you’re worshiping with us for the first time, I want to assure you – I promise you – I only read these headlines safely from the other side of the checkout counter – well, except for those few times I’ve used them in sermons.  But after all the times I’ve made fun of the tabloids, today we read from a story in the Bible that could have come straight off the cover of one of them.  “Man Survives Three Days in Belly of Giant Fish.”  There’d be a photo, of course – in black and white – a fish that looks suspiciously like a large-mouth bass blown up to look ten feet tall with a cheesy photo of a tiny bedraggled man superimposed next to it.  The article probably would say that scientists believe the fish is the product of a mutation caused by organic dairy products.

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