Author Archives: RevEverett

About RevEverett

I am an ecumenical magpie. I serve as the Executive Director of the Massachusetts Council of Churches. A United Church of Christ pastor, lobbyist & bike commuting yogi. Supercrafty. NJ by birth, MA by choice. Opinions are my own. Love abounds.

Actually listening to “Religious Nones”

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I really, truly heard it for the first time: “I’m not missing something,” she said. “I don’t want you to see me as lacking. I’m perfectly fine without religion.” For some reason, I finally heard this loud and clear at a panel discussion last Friday night at the New England Synod of the ELCA (video forthcoming: http://www.nesynod.org Mad props for attempting to live stream it!)

The professional religious world has been talking a TON about “Religious nones” since the Pew study came out in October 2012 that documented one in five Americans has no religious affiliation and one in three under 30. We’ve been talking a ton. I’m not sure we’ve been listening to “religious nones” as much as we’ve been talking about “religious nones.”

I attend Church meetings professionally. It’s an occupational hazard. Church annual meetings are mostly insider baseball: committee reports, resolutions, budgets. Church annual meetings are a space where you can just print the lyrics and rest assured all the good Church people who’ve given up a Saturday to attend said meeting will know the tune.

"Religious Nones" panel at NE ELCA Synod. Photo by Andy Merritt

“Religious Nones” panel at NE ELCA Synod. Photo by Andy Merritt

The most recent Annual Synod Assembly of the New England Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America did two remarkable things: It invited ‘outsiders’ to speak to the gathered body and it actually listened to religious nones.

After the resolutions were debated and the work of the day done, newish Bishop Jim Hazelwood moderated an 1.5 hr panel with 6 “religious nones,” sitting in daytime television style, living room chairs before a room of approx. 500 Lutherans on a Friday night.  Each of the 6 panelists was invited to participate by a pastor. I think it speaks volumes about the deep and non-judgmental relationships between pastors and their non-religious friends that folks would attend and participate.

It feels reductive to summarize the careful, nuanced responses from the panelists. I hope you’ll watch the video. But some general themes I heard from the panel:

  • A perception that Church is an unsafe space for doubt and questioning. The panelists spoke of their high comfort level with not having “all the answers.”
  • A deep desire for authenticity. This commitment to authenticity may mean rejecting a singular religious label because it don’t adequately capture the multiple spiritual traditions someone finds meaningful. They named a fear of “being put in a box.”
  • A fear of being ‘an impostor.” The panelists spoke of not wanting to do things that they didn’t actually believe in.
  • Experiences of feeling overwhelmed by traditional worship services. I heard multiple panelists speak of feeling lost, unsure when to sit and stand, and intimidated. Panelists also spoke of thinking it odd to dress up for Church. As one put it “why should I get up early on a Sunday, get all dressed up, to watch people in weird robes?” This panelist found an easier point of entry with a smaller, Saturday evening service.
  • A number of the panelists, though not all, had some religious background. For these people, late teens and early twenties was a turning point in questioning and ultimately, leaving religion.
  • A deep, dare I say faithful, commitment to big ideas and values. The panelists had thought a lot about how they wanted to move through the world, how they wanted to live ethically, how they wanted to change their community. They just didn’t feel the need to do it within the bounds of a religious community.
  • A fullness to their own life and spirituality. As one panelist said, “I bristle at someone saying ‘I’ve got this thing you are missing.’ as if I’m lacking.”

It makes me deeply sad to hear again and again the panelists articulate a perception that religious communities are intolerant of doubt.

In Bishop Hazelwood’s report the next day, he reminded us that in the mission context of New England, 75% of all people do not participate in any type of faith community. But his big, bold move was this:  he challenged the Lutheran pastors to spend 25% of their time talking and listening to people outside their church. And he offered to go meet with any church council that balked at this re-allocation of the pastor’s time. Bishop Hazelwood made sure to say again and again “this panel is something you can do at your church.”

This panel is also something you can do at your denominational annual meeting. In my experience of attending annual meetings, we talk a lot about new mission starts and outreach/evangelism. We talk a lot amongst ourselves. What if 25% of our time gathered thinking about the future of the Church was with people from outside the Church?

More than “Boston Strong”

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Trinitarian Congregational Church, Concord MA

Sunday April 28, 2013

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Chalk drawings on Mt. Auburn Ave, Watertown

31 When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. 32 If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. 33 Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, “Where I am going, you cannot come.’ 34 I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” John 13:31-35

 

After it was all done, with feet back on land, her body temperature slowly rising again, she said “It was one of those rare occasions in life when things turn out better than you ever imagined.” On August 7, 1987, a 30-year-old woman who learned how to swim just up the road in Manchester New Hampshire, began in Alaska and swam across the Bering Strait. For two hours and six minutes, in water that started at 43F and dropped to 38, Lynne Cox swam across the US-Soviet Border for the first time in 48 years. “Experts believe she succeeded because of a combination of determination and her own body fat which insulated her like a seal.“ tactfully opined the BBC.  Swimmers may be unlikely diplomats, but Lynne’s symbolic act cut through the silent glaring of the Cold War. At a signing of a nuclear weapons treaty later that year, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev praised Lynne, saying “She proved by her courage how closely to each other our people live.” Just 2.7 miles. Just that close.  Let us pray…

If you have been to church even once before today, chances are you’ve heard the gospel lesson from John. This is the new commandment, that you love one another. Except that there’s nothing terribly new about it. Love one another. Got it. Heard it in the Old Testament, Heard it in the New Testament.  Not throwing stones at neighbors. Letting those newcomers sit in the good seats in my pew on Christmas Eve, no less. Love one another. This is children’s sermon stuff. Love one another. Let’s sign up for coffee hour duty and call it a day here. We’ve got things to do.

Except, that the weight of this passage is lost by taking it out of the full chapter. We separate ourselves from the strength of this passage. The Lectionary committee did what is so tempting to do, cutting and cropping and segmenting our lives. These five verses are placed right in the middle of denial and betrayal.  Look at Chapter 13. Before these verses in 13:21, Jesus says to his disciples, “One of you will betray me.”  After these verse, Jesus tells Simon Peter “Very truly, I tell you, before the cock crows, you will have denied me three times.”  This love Jesus names in verse 34 is spoken into betrayal and denial by those closest to him.  You who will deny me, you who will betray me: Love one another. It’s a love not contingent on the disciples’ good behavior, but on Christ’s Love. Love one another as I have loved you- without reservation, without condition, without consideration that you will return this love.

And again, the passage turns. In verse 35, Jesus says “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” The love is not just for the disciples, but for a public witness to the world. Jesus expects the community of his followers to behave in such a thoroughly different way that people will KNOW that “you are my disciples.” It’s public. It’s perceptible. This love is fierce, and it’s visible.

A friend of mine works in elder services on the South Shore of Massachusetts. She told me once of a man in his 80’s who had kept his loving relationship with another man, his ‘housemate’ a secret for years. When his companion died, there was no community to hold his grief. He drove around and around the South Shore looking for a church to visit, a sanctuary to sit, to pray, to sing, maybe to feel another human’s touch even if just in the passing of the peace. He looked for a church that might be friendly, a church that would not betray his love. He drove past church sign after church sign, none signaling a safe harbor. For love to be visible, it must be recognizable. For a grieving man driving alone in a 1984 Cutlass Ciera who had not walked into a church in half a century, the words “Open and Affirming” meant nothing. He was looking for a visible sign, perhaps a recognizable flag, that the love of God could be extended, even to him.

Jesus is pressing his followers for fierce, visible, explicit love, even in fractured community. My now deceased maternal grandmother had a habit of sending newspaper clippings through the mail, in repurposed envelopes. No note, no explanation. The message was implied. I think I was supposed to infer something like “I read this article and it made me think of you. Love Gran.” Jesus is asking the disciples to send those newspaper clippings and actually write out the implied message. The command is to make a gesture so identifiable that others immediately recognize the love that shortens the distance between us fractured humans- a swim across the Bering Strait to an enemy’s shore, a flag of inclusion, a handwritten note that actually says “love Gran.”  These gestures of visible love aren’t just for the benefit of a closed community, but to show what God is like to the world beyond the community.

Perhaps more than any other time in recent history, our state has been visible these past two weeks. We prepared for a Patriot’s Day weekend when the whole world would watch. Dean Jep Streit of St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral in Boston (who ran the marathon many times) once remarked to a friend that he loved the Boston Marathon because it was a world-class athletic event that anyone, with some grit and preparation, could participate in. The Boston Marathon is high on excellence, broad on participation- which on our best days we aim for in Church too. And then, we became visible in ways entirely not chosen by us. In the midst of all the pain and anxiety of the past two weeks, we have seen fierce, visible signs of love for one another.

We have seen the same hospitals proving medical care for the victims and the perpetrators of violence.  When their churches were still a crime scene, Old South worshipping at Church of the Covenant, Trinity Copley at Temple Israel.  When a Palestinian Muslim woman was knocked down in Malden and young men who look “foreign” on the MBTA were stared at too long, many rabbis and pastors attending Friday prayers this week at the mosques in Roxbury and Cambridge. When he could see police with machine guns from his parsonage window, Fr. Arakel went across the street to St. James’ Armenian Orthodox Church in Watertown to let the police search the sanctuary, make them coffee and let the first responders charge their cell phones to text their own worried families. We have seen powerful signs of fierce love that rebuilds our fractured community.

And yet, we have more work to do.  You know this. Even with a suspect arrested, we are far from done attending to this experience. As Christians, we have an obligation to our common, public life to offer visible signs that acknowledge our pain, not merely mask it. Even if we want desperately to be “Boston Strong,” a win by Red Sox’s can’t save us from our grief.  “Boston  Strong” is not enough to will our way to wholeness. Resiliency is not something we can buy. Sam Adams Brewers have put in a trademark application for a “Boston Strong” Beer. Already 8 other companies have trademark applications in for “Boston Strong;” You can buy “Boston Strong” hats, tee-shirts, bumper-stickers, tattoos, coffee, beer. Almost immediately, “Boston Strong” became something to consume. Six months from now, when we lay awake wondering whether a police siren starts another manhunt, it will not be “Sweet Caroline” we sing to ourselves to calm frayed nerves.  We cannot just be critics of signs, but as Christians we are obliged to be creators.  What are the stories, songs, narratives of grief and redemption that we can offer? Even in our own grief, we have work to do. Scripture offers a vision of heaven like a city. God doesn’t vacuum up the righteous in the rapture, but instead God comes to dwell and redeem our communal living.

You heard it in the text we read from Revelation 21: “And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” The heavenly city is not a place of poverty or violence but restored relationships, bursting full and inhabited by that glorious global mix of people you catch a glimpse of on Commonwealth Ave. Maybe one reason that the Boston Marathon is so symbolically powerful is that people run towards a city, not flee from it.

For a part of the country notoriously slow to warm up to outsiders, many, many writers have said over the past few days that we were all made Bostonians by the events of the last two weeks. I feel it too. Those were my streets that were bombed. Those were my neighbors injured. That was my apartment under lockdown. How many of you are not originally from this area? You know how hard it can be to break in, to be a home here in New England where the ‘new church’ was built in the 1800’s and the ‘new family’ has been here for 3 generations. History weighs heavy here.  Places are made sacred by prayer or death, sometimes both. Maybe we have been made one city by acts of death. The challenge next is to be made one by acts of visible love.

It was just 2.7 miles across the Bering Straight between Alaska and the Soviet Republic. For comparison sake, it’s 2.7 miles as the crow flies from the door of this church to MCI (Massachusetts Correctional Institution) Concord. That’s how far. That’s how close. In this place it is entirely possible to live 2.7 miles from one another and keep up our New England stonewalls of silence between neighbors. In this place, it is entirely possible to live just 26.2 miles apart and have entirely different experiences of safety and security, education and opportunity, life and death. Jesus speaks, into the brokenness of community a new commandment of Love.  Look for the place this week where you can offer a visible sign of love. Fierce love. Love not for the lovable, but for those who would deny you or betray you. Offer some superfluous sign of love that rebuilds fractured community. That is just how simple and how hard the Gospel is.

What the Living Do: A Sermon after Watertown

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As seen on Mt. Auburn Street, Watertown, where just 48 hrs before police with machine guns patrolled.

As seen on Mt. Auburn Street, Watertown, where just 48 hrs before police with machine guns patrolled.

“What the Living Do: A Sermon after Watertown”

St. James Armenian Orthodox Church, Mt Auburn St. Watertown MA

Sunday April 21, 2013 Memorial of the Armenian Genocide Martyrs

”Do not be astonished at this; for the hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and will come out—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation.” ~John 5:28-29

It was years after his body was in the grave before she wrote the words down. Marie Howe’s brother died in 1989, but it took years to write the words. It wasn’t far from here, just over the town line into Cambridge that Marie Howe had to wake up, brush her hair, and walk out the door of the apartment into that bright, clear New England sun after her brother died of AIDS. When she finally wrote down her experience, she wrote a poem in the form of a letter to her brother:

Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down there.

And the Drano won’t work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up

waiting for the plumber I still haven’t called. This is the everyday we spoke of.

It’s winter again: the sky’s a deep, headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through

the open living-room windows because the heat’s on too high in here and I can’t turn it off.

For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street, the bag breaking,

I’ve been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying along those

wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve,

I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it.

Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning.

Her poem goes on…this is what the living do.

Many among us have been entombed this week: shut in our houses in Watertown and beyond, encased in grief and fear. Many are bound in their sleeplessness. Many were held fast by their work at a critical time- those who patrolled our streets, tended the wounded, guarded our safety, cared for our children, stayed up for 26 hours straight to report the news. We have been bound up, locked down, sheltered-in-place, held by this strange, harrowing series of events. We have been wrapped tight in our burial shrouds.

In the days after the Easter Resurrection of Christ, the disciples finally left that stuffy apartment in Jerusalem where they’ve been bound by fear and dread, where they had run out of milk and toilet paper. They venture outside, into a world utterly changed. The sun seems brighter, but harsher. The roads seem busier, but scarier. And they did what the living do. They walk along the road to Emmaus. They go fishing. They sit down for breakfast and try to comprehend their new reality.

This is what we Christians do. We are a people of the Resurrection. We are a people of Christ’s resurrection, and we cling to the promise that we will be resurrected too. We know that no grave can hold our bodies down. We’ve been here before. We know that story of a week that begins with a parade and ends with death. We know that buried Hallelujahs will eventually rise. We know that the curtain will open again to reveal to us the altar and the bread of heaven. We are the people who say death does not have the final say. You heard it in the gospel lesson this morning from St. John. Jesus says to them, “Do not be astonished at this; for the hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and will come out—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation.” We, who have been waiting in our houses watching the clocks tick away, are waiting to hear His voice. We are straining our ears that are burned with the sounds of sirens to hear the voice of God declare for us release.

We are the disciples who leave our apartments in Jerusalem after the shelter-in-place order is lifted. This is the practice of our resurrection. And even if you don’t feel it now, even if you don’t believe it now, this is what the living do. In the hours we were bound to stay inside, huddled around the television or the computer screen, strict New England gave way to early spring. While we were in doors, the early leaves came out on the trees. We step outside with the sky “a deep, headstrong blue,” to go to church, to drive to the grocery store, to go to school or work. This is what the living do.

And this is what your church did. In the midst of chaos of Friday, Fr. Arakel came to the church. He unlocked the thick wooden doors. He escorted the police in to inspect the church, to ensure that this sanctuary was still a place of peace. Your church. Your strong Armenian coffee powered the police who rested in your parish hall chairs. Your electrical outlets powered the phones of the first responders who texted back home to worried families. This place was a sanctuary not just to you who worship here today but to those who patrolled our streets just 48 hours ago. This is the practice of resurrection.

This is what the living do- the mundane, the ordinary acts of living that defy that which would entomb us. This is what the Armenian Genocide survivors did. They crawled from their tombs and rebuilt lives, alive but utterly changed. Their faith was an act of defiance. The raising of children, the singing of the liturgy, the baking of choreg, this is what the living do. This is what the living do to stay living after facing so much death. This is why we remember their names and their faith so that we might be alive too.

So this is what we do. We come to church. We walk outside. We practice normalcy knowing that it is not. You may not feel ready to venture far from home. Everything is not as it was. This week has utterly changed us. We are not going back to lives that are the same. Or normalcy has been interrupted. On Friday, synagogues stayed closed despite Shabbat prayers. On Friday, mosques stayed closed despite Friday prayers. Local Muslims here in Massachusetts have already been harassed, threatened and even beaten. Everything is not as it should be. Trinity Episcopal Church in Copley Plaza is still part of the crime scene. They will worship at Temple Israel this morning, a Jewish synagogue that graciously opened their doors to a displaced people. Old South Church, United Church of Christ is still part of the crime scene. They will worship this morning at Church of the Covenant. The pastor, Rev. Nancy Taylor told the Boston Globe, “The last time Old South Church in Boston was closed for this long was in 1775, during the British siege of Boston.” This is not our life as usual. Our colleagues from the American Red Cross of Massachusetts gave me cards to share with you, with suggestions for how to cope after a time of disaster. They are in the back of the church. Take one as you leave. We have all experienced trauma this week. To be “Watertown Strong” or “Boston Strong” is to recognize when you need someone else to walk with you. To be among the living is to know that we need help to stay alive. Recognize that we do not run this race alone.

This week all began at the marathon, which now seems so long ago. This week, one of the hymns from the African American tradition has been playing in my mind. The songs of our faith has a way of tracing pathways in our minds, to follow well worn paths in times of uncertainty. For the enslaved, spirituals were a way to pass on the faith and defy the death around them.  And so you sang, even as you were running from those who would hold you captive.

I’m not the strongest singer in the world, that’s not why we sing. If you know it, join me. If you don’t know it, you are welcome to join me too. I’ll sing it twice. I know singing and clapping are not standard in an Armenian Orthodox Church, but consider it a gift from the wider body of Christ.

“Guide my feet, while I run this race. Guide my feet, Lord, while I run this race. Guide my feet, while I run this race, for I don’t to run this race in vain.”

In this time of uncertainty and fear, we cling to the sure promises of our God that we do not go on in vain. We tune our ear” for the hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and will come out.” Even as we grieve, we will remain steadfast in charity, defiant in hope, practiced in forgiveness, and constant in prayer. This is what the living do. May it be so for you in the days ahead. Amen.