Sheep and Wolves and Ashes, Bread and Puppets

Wednesday, March 9, was Ash Wednesday, and it was amazing.

It started with our “First-ever Ash Wednesday Service for Children and Families.” This was held in the sanctuary at 5:15 and was built around Jesus’ teaching: “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” Fifty-one participants of all ages trooped down the aisle carrying sheep puppets. Mark Scott led us in singing the Taize song “Jesus the Good Shepherd.” Two teen crucifers “protected” the sheep from some very vicious wolf marionettes.

We entered a “sheepfold” in the crossing. Beth Fultz and I explained the meaning of Ash Wednesday, saying that the mark of the cross meant that “we belong to Jesus.” The wolves asked if they, too, could be Jesus’ sheep, and so they were invited in as well, since Jesus says, “I have other sheep who are not of this sheepfold.” We then applied the ashes and celebrated the Lord’s Supper with all present.

At 7:00 we held our regular Ash Wednesday service in the transept. It was also well-attended. The choir led us in singing the Taize song “Ubi Caritas,” a very moving piece that says (in Latin, if you’re bold enough to sing it!) “Where there is charity and love, there is God.” This year the flow of the service was different: participants moved directly from the application of the ashes to the Lord’s Supper. There was something powerful in hearing first, “You are dust, and to dust shall you return,” and then, “The body of Christ, for you…the blood of Christ, for you,” a movement from our humility before God to God’s exaltation of us through Christ.

But it’s what happened in between the two services that stood out especially. Following the 5:15 service, joyful kids bounded around the campus; sheep chased wolf marionettes and parents congregated talking and laughing. Then we all went in to the Ash Wednesday supper prepared by our Fellowship Committee, led by Faith Mallory. What a great meal! But more than that, what a great crowd! There were over a hundred there, people of all ages, as the folks who attended the children’s service broke bread with those about to attend the more formal service.

One of the challenges facing churches these days is finding ways that the established, lifelong members and the newer members can connect to one another. I've been in churches where the sheep in the one fold didn't really interact with the other. Who knows why: maybe one group views the other group as wolves, or maybe there's some natural tendency of sheep to stay in the familiar sheepfold and not venture into the unknown. But that night, at the fellowship dinner, we had a sheep mixer, and everybody enjoyed it.

The People Who Wear The Robes

by Diana Logan

Diana Logan is a nurse practitioner and a member of St. Stephen Presbyterian Church.

It was ten years ago in a different church, in another state, that I began to fear the people who wear the robes.

It started one October day when a member of the 9th grade Sunday school class I was teaching at the time asked to speak to me privately. I will call him Jason.

“I’m leaving,” Jason said bluntly. I was puzzled. I had know Jason since he was a baby and his parents were good friends. His mother had not said anything to me about the family moving away. When I questioned Jason about this, he replied: “No, I mean I am leaving this church. After last Sunday’s sermon I am afraid to come here anymore because I think I am gay.”

My heart began to break. Both my husband and I had been disturbed by the sermon we’d heard the previous Sunday. It had underscored our dismay regarding a number of negative events we had observed over the last several months in the Presbyterian church we had attended for twelve years. The Presbyterian Women’s circles had been merged into one very fervent group called “Women’s Ministries”. The adult Sunday school class had begun to discuss a publication called: “The Presbyterian Layman”. Session had announced via the church newsletter that all of us who attended the church were now members of “The Confessing Church Movement”.

It was all very confusing, but we loved our church, and our family tried to go on as before: I taught Sunday school, my husband was a deacon, and our teenage children attended youth group. Then came was the sermon which had upset Jason. The sermon title was: “Pruning the Dead Wood”. Our lead pastor said that he had concerns about our congregation’s commitment to Jesus Christ in that some had allowed the secular culture to encroach upon their daily lives. I was not sure what he was talking about, but his references to people who were gay needing to “renounce their sins” suggested to my husband and me the beginning of a witch hunt.

I looked at Jason. He was a bright, caring, committed Christian. He had been baptized in our church, and not so long ago he had been confirmed. Unbelievably, he was now telling me that he was afraid to attend the church that had promised to nurture him. I hugged him. I begged him not to leave. But Jason had made up his mind. “It is only going to get worse,” he said tearfully. “You just wait and see.”

I ran from the Sunday School building in great distress, determined to talk to somebody, anybody who would listen. I saw coming out of the church office one of the members of Session. I did not know him well, but we had served on committees together and I remembered him as being very kind. I told him, without revealing Jason’s name, what had transpired. He had initially greeted me with a smile, but as I spoke, his expression on his face reddened with embarrassment: “Well, you know, it does say in the Old Testament…Leviticus, I think, that this sort of thing is a sin….” he said lamely. “But people are beginning to get hurt,” I said. “And Leviticus also talks about stoning unruly children. Shall I go out in the desert and collect rocks to throw at my ninth grade Sunday School students every time they act up?”

His tone then changed, and he advised me very sternly that I needed to talk to one of our pastors. They were the ones, after all, who could interpret scripture in a way the rest of us could understand it. He said that it was sad indeed that the young man wanted to leave our church, but perhaps it was what was needed if he were refusing to acknowledge his sin.

Dismayed and feeling disbelief at what I had just heard from the elder, I turned from him to go into morning worship. Briefly, I saw the flowing robe of our lead pastor disappear through the door of the sanctuary. I had known him for years, and had loved and respected him. Lately, however, he had seemed to change, somehow. My stomach contracted in fear as for the first time I realized how dangerous he had become.

The phone message from our associate pastor came the very next day. For some reason, she said, God had laid me upon her heart. She was concerned. Would I please join her for lunch soon? I told my husband that evening at dinner that I knew God had nothing to do with it. Still, I would meet with her. I was curious as to what she had to say. It was clear to me that the elder had told The Robes that I had been “acting up”.

“Homosexuality is a sin,” she said simply as she slurped a spoonful of soup. As as teacher of our youth, I needed to guide the young man. If he were beginning to have sinful urges, it was an opportune time for someone to intervene. She and the lead pastor would be glad to help. I need only tell them his name. “Over my dead body” I thought to myself. There was no way I would ever give Jason up to The Robes.

What she said next, however, made me stop chewing my bread and listen more carefully: “I had a similar problem with a secret sin, once” she said dreamily. I perked up. Was our associate pastor a lesbian? If this were so, I could not wait to tell Jason. “Jesus saved me from a shopping addiction,” she said, and I started to choke on my salad. “So never underestimate the grace of God,” she admonished. “The loving forgiveness of Jesus Christ can save this young person from his horrible sin. We have begun to pray without ceasing for him.”

I was furious, but I tried to stay calm. Each student in my Sunday School class was like my own child to me. I had taught most of them since the early grades, and had proudly watched as many of them had been confirmed. I wanted to brag about Jason, how he was the best of them all. Had he not served the church, participated in mission and worked hard helping with Vacation Bible School? He was a regular in Youth Group, a counselor at Presbyterian summer camp, and probably the biggest shocker (to her at least)—he had preached wearing robes in her precious pulpit during Youth Sunday the year before. His sermon had brought the congregation to tears, as his message was one of hope and love. Now she and others were wanting to hunt him down so they could save him from some fabricated sin. He was leaving his church, in fear. I now began to see why Jason would never be safe with these people. I knew I had to protect him with my silence.

In the end, I simply asked her to please leave Jesus out of it, as there was nothing loving in what she was saying. Lunch was over. The associate pastor tried to hug me as we parted, and she said that she would be praying for me. Her words were superficially kind, but in my heart I knew that I, like Jason, had become dead wood.

The message came through loud and clear about a week later, via the Women’s Ministries group e-mail. The message was about me, but did not address me directly. The e-mail had been forwarded to every woman in the group: “We cannot believe that Diana Logan is causing so much trouble in our church. But then, what would Satan do?”

I jumped in my chair when I read the reference to Satan. So now I was the devil himself? That was a quick leap, from long-time church member and Sunday School teacher to Satan. I was blown away at the betrayal, as was my family. Clearly, I was dead wood and now I had been pruned. The prophetic words of Jason came back to me: “It is only going to get worse”. How right he had been.

The evening after the e-mail had been circulated, I received a phone call from the only friend I apparently had left in Women’s Ministries. She told me that she was no longer going to attend their meetings and that she and her husband were seriously thinking about withdrawing their church membership. “Satan has indeed come into our church,” she said and I shuddered at her words. “But he is not in you. If there is a devil among us, he is wearing robes.”

I did not laugh about the e-mail until a couple of weeks later when I went to lunch with a gay co-worker. I was explaining to him how the associate pastor considered a shopping addiction on the same level of sin as being gay. I had challenged her, and therefore had received the nasty e-mail. My friend responded by throwing his napkin over his face and feigned weeping so dramatically that other people in the hospital cafeteria turned to stare at us. I kicked him under the table and he peeked at me from behind his napkin. “But you don’t understand,” he said earnestly, “You have just made me realize that I will truly burn in hell. I am gay AND I have a shopping addiction!” Our laughter was very comforting to me.

One can only imagine when I attended my first service at St. Stephen eight years ago, how cynical I was. Not only did the pastors wear robes, but collars as well. At first, I found the robes oppressive, not only of the pastors but also of the choir members as they walked up and down the aisles. It was as if I were experiencing some liturgical post-traumatic stress syndrome. My hard heart only softened a little as I saw the tiny children of the Bethlehem choir walking sweetly by me during those special Sundays that they sang with the adults.

Time passed and the loving people of St. Stephen greeted me each Sunday. I listened carefully each week as either Fritz or Warner declared that “St. Stephen is an intentionally inclusive community of believers”. Old wounds began to heal. I began to realize with great clarity that the people who wear the robes at St. Stephen are not to be feared. There were the beautiful babies, freshly baptized, who were carried up the church aisle by Fritz and introduced to their church family. Something in the way he gently challenged the congregation by that simple stroll with the baby in his arms made me trust that St. Stephen was one church that would not renege on its promise to nurture its young.

Then there was that Sunday that Warner stopped shaking hands with people at the door after church to get down on his knees in his robes to greet a crawling infant face to face. The baby squealed in delight.

My biggest epiphany came, however, on a Sunday morning in ordinary time, when as a congregation we turned to face the back of the church for the benediction. There was the choir in their robes and Fritz in his robes, raising his arms to give us a blessing. I looked around me at all the people who had become my church family, and a love for each and every one of them overcame me in such a rush that I began to cry. I felt at home with them, and safe. Through the blurriness of my tears it appeared that there was no distinction between clergy or choir, adult or child, male or female. We were all cloaked in a grace so strong that there was no room for separation.

I bear no ill will towards the people of my previous church. Had I not experienced what they had to teach me, I would not have learned a very important truth. What defines a church is who gets to wear the robes—and at St. Stephen, we all do.

Where Love and Need Are One

In Bible study (which we’ve recently moved to noon on Tuesdays) we’re studying the Book of Genesis. We came across and interesting problem: God creates humanity and tells them to be “stewards” of creation—in other words, to take care of the world God has created. Yet after human beings fall from grace, work “by the sweat of the brow” is a curse that’s the result of human failure to obey God. How is “work” different from the “stewardship” that humans were created for? My guess is that work is something we have to do; stewardship is something we want to do. As Robert Frost wrote in his poem “Two Tramps,”

Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes.

The Advent Season here at St. Stephen was a perfect illustration of stewardship “Where love and need are one.”

A crew of the faithful came early in Advent, as they do every year, unannounced and uncelebrated, to decorate the sanctuary with greenery and with Christmons decorations.

Our annual children’s-oriented Advent festival of activities was entirely managed by faithful volunteers who cooked the brisket, fed the masses, bandaged the boo-boos and personned the craft tables.

Several individual choir members went above and beyond the call of duty leading our Advent carol sing (who can forget Tommy Wadley channeling Bing Crosby?) and, on Christmas Eve, leading the singing at our first noontime Christmas Eve Service of Lessons and Carols.

And then there was “Southwestern Christmas on the Hill,” where dozens of volunteers turned out to make a memorable event for about 400 guests who did crafts and activities, saw “A Cowboy Christmas” play, and ate chuck wagon food.

Throughout, St. Stephen folks reached out to others. Room in the Inn volunteers fed and socialized with our homeless brothers and sisters. We partnered with our Presbyterian Children’s Homes & Services staffer, Becky Evans in a couple of key ways. The youth “adopted” three local families she works with, provided them with presents, and then visited at each of their homes to deliver them. They brought guitars and sang carols.

Not only that, but PCHAS decided to link their annual Christmas party for the families they serve with “Christmas on the Hill.” As a result, nearly 100 folks from needy families attended the event.

The volunteers who made these things happen worked hard, and they did good works. But they did it out of love, not out of obligation. They did it with joyful hearts, not dragging feet. This is the stewardship to which God has called us from the beginning—“work [that] is play/for mortal stakes.” St. Stephen volunteers cultivated souls, and in doing so their own souls shone forth.

Blessings to you all in the new year.

Adventful Advent!

Over four hundred people crowded St. Stephen's campus and buildings for our annual "Christmas on the Hill" event this past Wednesday. The evening was warm and breezy and that had to help bring the crowds out, but still, it was an amazing event. Excluding worship, "Christmas on the Hill" displays everything that's good about St. Stephen. (I am prejudiced, of course!) This year we called it "Southwestern Christmas on the Hill." The theme was cowboy, and everyone was dressed fit to kill. Around here, of course, the odds are they were going to dress like that anyway! Cowboy hats and boots abounded. There was fake steer ropin', wagon rides, crafts and plenty of vittles. And then there's the "on the hill" side of our events--we always break out big sheets of cardboard and slide down the hill.

Becky Evans, our on-site representative of Presbyterian Children's Homes and Services, turned out probably twenty families she works with, adding at least 100 people to the crowd. We've partnered with PCHAS for years. We are one of the few churches-possibly the only church--that office a PCHAS rep. During Katrina, we worked together to provide aid for literally hundreds of families and to host one victim family for over a year. Every year we help PCHAS collect Christmas gifts for clients, but this was the first year we've used Christmas on the Hill as their day to celebrate Christmas. It was wonderful. It was a blessing to see how much the parents' faces lighted up as they watched their kids having fun.

My job was to write, direct, and narrate "A Cowboy Christmas." We performed it three times in the sanctuary. I have to say, it was a blast, and seemed to receive good reviews! I wrote it as if the nativity was taking place in the old West ('right near here in Palesteen!'). The angel Gabe, played with a perfect Western accent by 17 year old Sarah Sanchez, came and told Mary that she would have a baby and name him "Hey-zooz." Ihoma Owhonda, playing Mary, said, in the cynical sardonic teenage way she says everything, "Well... I AM a servant of the Lord..." as if she was saying, "Oh, oh-kay," and rolling her eyes. The angel Gabe then woke up Travis Johnson, playing Joseph, and told him "Be a man about this! Marry Mary!"

The Three Wise Men were "City Slickers from the East, from New York or somewheres," who rode their horses backward. They accidently wound up in Dallas and made the mistake of asking Sherriff Herod about the new king. And ol' Sherriff Herod was played by Art Clayton, a giant ex-football player who is a gang prosecutor. He dressed himself all in black with a big star on his chest and spat and swore he'd get a posse together to hunt this baby Hey-zooz down. So the angel Gabe told Joseph that they had to escape Herod by going to Oklahoma.

Like I said, so much that makes this church great was on display--numerous, hard-working volunteers, our mission orientation, our diversity, people of all ages, and most of all our sense of fun. For all that we have this strong commitment to high worship, mission, and thoughtful faith, one of the best things about St. Stephen is that we just love to have a good time. Thanks to Beth Fultz and Mark Scott and all the volunteers who made this event possible!

Lent and Easter Highlights: I

Thursday afternoon about forty adults and children joined me, music director Mark, and DCE Beth for our first ever "family-oriented" Maundy Thursday service. It was Thursday afternoon, soon after children's choir. We'd decided to do this because we realized that our regular service, at 7:00 pm, was not really a child-friendly experience, if only because of the time; and if it's not child-friendly, it's not parent-friendly, either. Maundy Thursday is just too important to the Christian faith for us to neglect educating kids about its meaning.

We three staff can easily get a bit overwhelmed by the requirements of Passion Week, but in this case we had so much fun, both in planning and execution! The service was in the "crossing," the gigantic area between the pulpit and the pews. It centered on three things--telling the story, the foot-washing (which we did as a hand-washing), and communion. We performed two or three Taize songs. It took less than thirty minutes.

The families were so excited to be there! Many of them were already here for kids' choir and they just played in the front lawn of the church until it was time. It was a beautiful Spring day. The children at the service ranged from under two to probably ten or eleven. They wandered and squirmed freely, and I had the impression the parents knew that was fine, because they seemed relaxed and worshipful themselves.

In addition to parents, there were grandparents and even adults of all sorts who simply wanted to be there for whatever reason. "Miss Paula," as she is known, the wonderful woman who teaches our "Godly Play" class for pre-schoolers, was there. So were Ada and her beau, Bill. Ada is in her eighties, a lifelong member of St. Stephen. She is spry, stylish, and youthful; she and Bill go out dancing regularly. As Beth and I were performing the handwashing, Ada was smiling and dashing away tears. We were performing it at the baptismal font, and Bill whispered to me, "This is the eighty-nine anniversary of her baptism."

Maundy Thursday

Today is Maundy Thursday, when Christians remember Jesus' Last Supper. Today and tomorrow, Good Friday, are "downer" days, and for good reason: we remember Jesus' arrest, mock trials, torture, and crucifixion death. We are reminded that we are just like Judas, who betrayed Jesus; and Peter, who denied Jesus; and all his male disciples, who ran away when it was crunch time. We are reminded that it was for our sins and shortcomings that Jesus died, and we're humbled by it.

But "Maundy" in Maundy Thursday doesn't mean, "maudlin." It comes from an Old English and Latin-rooted word that means "command." The command it means specifically is the one Jesus gives his disciples in John 13:34-36: "I give you a new command, that you love one another. As I have loved you, so you should also love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples: if you have love for one another."

We could go on and on about this command, about how we live in a world where we take "Christian on Christian" violence for granted in our wars or that rhetoric between the sides on any religiously-charged issue inevitably heats up to the point that its clear to anyone watching that supposed Christians hate each other. And then there's the idea that this command may be too limited, that it's only about Christians loving Christians. Interesting and important, but I don't want to go there today.

But over Lent, I've just been grateful for the ways people at St. Stephen have loved one another. A committee of the Christian Ed committee, led by our Director of Christian Ed, Beth, has been working with a teen in need and reported good news--at last, she has graduated high school! Their support for her was so critical, a true example of Christians loving one another.

We had two large funerals over the course of Lent. Tom's six year struggle with cranial cancer ended at last, and he entered the heavenly kingdom. What a turn-out from both church members and the community! After his death, we all shared stories of his indomitable spirit, his wonderful sense of humor, and his deep faith. But one stood out to me. The cranial cancers and the resulting surgery caused him facial disfigurement, something about which he was often embarrassed, but he faithfully showed up to church and in other public venues each Sunday. One little girl was at first scared of him, so her dad suggested one Sunday that she draw him a picture and give it to him after church. She did. Now the truth was that Tom was a delightful, joyous fellow, someone who loved life, someone who immediately connected to children. The little girl fell in love with him immediately and afterward always looked for him after church. When her dad told her he'd died, she cried.

Christian on Christian love strikes again.

The other big funeral was Larry, a no-nonsense, plain-speaking rabble-rouser of the best sort. He'd been a mainstay of the church, as a member, an officer, and as a choir member with an extraordinary tenor voice and a love for every kind of music from gospel to Faure to Taize. His last day on earth he was basically unconscious, surrounded by family, friends, and church members. Choir members gathered at his bedside to sing "The Iona Boat Song," Larry's favorite:

From the falter of breath, through the shadow of death, to the wonder that's breaking beyond...

Our music director, Mark, was teaching in Denton and rushed to his bedside as soon as he could. he walked in, grasped Larry's hand, said "I'm here"--and Larry entered God's kingdom.

Christian on Christian love.

"Seeker" Service

I talked to Thea today, who attended last Sunday's service at St. Stephen for the first time. Thea is a true "seeker," exactly the sort of person that we in the church really don't know how to serve. All the church growth literature these days talks about "seekers," a generic term for people looking for God, but who have needs that we "traditionalists" don't address very well. They may believe in God, or not; or consider themselves Christian, or not; but for whatever reason "church" doesn't seem to meet their needs.

Thea is probably the most genuine "seeker" you'll ever meet--she's even blogging about it, www.theameetsgod.blogspot.com . She's a divorced single parent, between jobs in a bad economy, with lots of worries. She's sought God in all sorts of ways. She attended one mainline denomination and was on the path to be confirmed but was told she had too many questions. She has tried prayer and other spiritual practices. Now she's decided that she's going to study and attend a different religion a week and blog about it.

What's hard for her is that she's in an emotionally difficult position and doesn't "feel" God there--God seems detached, indifferent, perhaps even non-existent. I can relate. Several years ago, when I was having a very hard time at a church, I started struggling with the same doubts. Why was it that things I was trying to do to serve Christ and benefit others were turning out so badly? Why was that things were going personally so badly for me? Why did God seem "so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?" (Psalm 22: 1) I had no sense of God's presence or God's answer to my prayers.

I developed an interest in Christian mysticism at that time. I was deeply moved by John of the Cross, a 16th Century Spanish mystic who wrote "The Dark Night of the Soul," about his struggle with exactly that issue. But his struggle made mine sound like a walk in the park. Here was a man whose life was dedicated to prayer and service of God, and he described such a deep pit of despair that even in my darkest moments I could not grasp--what we moderns might call anhedonia, a complete inability to take pleasure in anything, no doubt a side effect of a deep-seated case of depression.

John had based much of his certainty that God loved him and was with him on feeling that God loved him and was with him, a feeling that he got from prayer, from worship, from doing good things for others. But now the feeling was gone. Had God abandoned him?

Despite this deep Slough of Despond (as Bunyan calls it in Pilgrim's Progress), John refused to give up. He challenged the still-popular notion that feelings of God's nearness are either our reward or our indication that God is with us. Faith, he taught, is deeper than feelings, deeper than thought. Somehow he learned to have faith that God was near him even when he felt the distance was impossibly great. He somehow believed that God loved him in spite of his overwhelming feeling that this was impossible--that he was too great a sinner, that God not only was not near him but had in fact rejected him. He continued to pray, to worship, to do good works, despite the fact that he felt no sense of pleasure in them but often only burden bordering on despair.

My despair wasn't as great as his, and trust me, my faith isn't as great as his, either. Nonetheless, I was taken by his point: the greatest faith we can have is to believe that God loves us despite the fact that our feelings, our mind, our experience--our everything--tells us this just couldn't be true; to believe that God is near to us when we know, beyond a shadow of doubt, that it couldn't be true.

Thea and I talked about this, and about other things. My sense is that she, and other "seekers," are frustrated by the same thing about churches--our presumption that we have the answers and our refusal to tolerate much questioning. She seemed to represent well a demographic that Christianity is failing to reach--intelligent people who are turned off by Christians who promulgate a literalist interpretation of the Bible at the expense of modern science; good people who are turned off by the exclusivity and cruelty of many Christians toward gays or people of other faiths; people longing for a loving, accepting God because they themselves feel abandoned or alienated. Most of all, they want to go someplace where they are welcomed with all their questions, flaws, and quirks, as children of God, beloved of God, by people willing to get to know them in their uniqueness, and to love them for it.

In that sense, aren't we all seekers? The challenge is to be the church that does that.