Summer Memories, Summer Sadness

Several years ago, I invited a colleague, an Evanston resident, to join the Windy City Miata Club cohort in the Evanston July 4th Parade. She had a great time breakfasting with club members before the Parade, helping to decorate the roadsters in red, white, and blue, and riding shotgun in the Parade, waving to the enthusiastic crowds which lined Central Street. When the day was over she thanked me, explaining that the summer holidays are always harder for her than Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Kindness and Calm in the Midst of Uncertainty

Today’s texts from the prophet Jeremiah, the Psalms, and St. Matthew’s Gospel offer us conflict, chaos, anger and violence, difficult realities which may reflect the way in which we experience our society today, but 180 degrees from where my mind is at the beginning of this week.

On the Anniversary of the Emmanuel Nine

This morning I finally had a chance to open the June edition of The Christian Century. On page ten I found these numbers:

As of May 3, there were 14, 191 gun-related deaths in the US in 2023.

6,073 of those deaths were homicides.

8,118 were suicides.

Only 360 of the total gun deaths were committed in self-defense.

It’s About Taking Care of Our Home

Judy and I have done several major home improvement projects in the years since I retired from Rainbow Hospice. The first was replacing the second floor (“Judy’s”) bathroom. Taking the existing bathroom down to the studs was probably one of the most satisfying experiences of my life. At the end of the day I could truly see what I had accomplished.

Giving From the Heart

Our Old Testament lesson for Trinity Sunday, the story of creation, gives us a deep image for the life of the Christian steward. “Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image…and let them have dominion….over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that move upon the earth…”

Festival of Weeks

Shavuot or “The Festival of Weeks” occurs seven weeks after Passover and begins on the fiftieth day after, hence its Greek name Pentecost. This is one of the three festivals for which some Jewish people would make pilgrimage to Jerusalem (the other two are Passover and the Feast of Booths/Tabernacles). Pentecost is a harvest festival where families bring the first fruits of their harvest in anticipation of God blessing the remainder of the harvest (Exodus 23:16; Deuteronomy 26:5-11). This made Pentecost already symbolically rich for imagining the beginning of a bountiful ingathering, but in Acts’ case what was reaped was not produce, but people.

A Good Word for Matthew the Tax Collector

As we have talked recently about “year-round stewardship” I remembered a suggestion once made, only half in jest, that the Church move St. Matthew’s Day on the liturgical calendar from September 21 to April 15 and refocus our stewardship emphasis, beginning on that day and continuing through the month of May. We can give thanks for Matthew the Tax Collector, the IRS, and all tax collecting bodies for truly making us aware of our financial health and stewardship.

Stewardship Update

Our deficit is now over $50k.  This year is trending like last year when we needed a heroic year-end offering to erase the deficit.  Let us remember that our Giving from the Heart campaign was not only about a year end offering, but also about our steady weekly support of the ministry of Christ’s church.  Let us be accountable to each other, and to God the Giver of all good gifts.

Giving From the Heart

“Giving From the Heart” was the theme of our successful year-end offering which helped move our year-long budget deficit into a surplus. We also shared our plans for regular support of the ministry of St. Luke’s in the weeks and months of 2023. Our Strategic Plan calls for a year long stewardship emphasis in which we help one another grow in our life as stewards of God’s graciousness in our lives. There are four major elements of this stewardship emphasis.

Th Lord is My Shepherd

On September 11, and the days following, our whole lives were a window into life and death, faith and doubt, suffering and global consolation.  On that day, at noon, I hosted a prayer service for the Interchurch Center on Riverside Drive, where our offices are located.  Thousands in our building had seen, like we did, the towers fall and did not know the fate of loved ones downtown.  As our prayer I asked each of those present to name the names of those on their hearts downtown.  To hear those names come at me through clenched teeth and strained voices, to add my own names was such a shocking experience that it drove us all to our deepest reserves of spiritual depth.  Our different religious traditions did not separate us.  We were united in our humanity before God and each other.  And I spoke by heart the 23rd psalm, which paints a picture of community which is relevant to us today.