The Creatures All Around Us

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We are more than halfway through our summer preaching series, All Creatures Great and Small, which highlights the animals in scripture that shape the biblical story. As we have moved through the summer, I often find myself pointing out to my colleagues the places where these same animals that appear in our sermons also appear in our stained-glass windows here at the church.

You might be surprised how many animals you can find in our widows, from the Sanctuary to the Chapel. A careful observer can find the animals that populate the Bible, but also a wide variety of animals never mentioned in scripture.

Between the windows depicting Psalm 23 in the east transept and the Good Shepherd Tiffany window in the Chapel, there are more sheep and lambs that can be counted.

In the Sanctuary, you can find the ram God provided Abraham at the sacrifice of Isaac, the fatted calf shared in celebration of the return of the Prodigal Son, the donkey upon which the Good Samaritan places the wounded man as he takes him back to his inn to recover. In a small corner of the Resurrection window, you will find the animals from Peter’s vision in Jaffa lowered down as if on a sheet declared by God to no longer be “unclean.”

Of course, in the windows depicting the creation story in Genesis, there are all kinds of birds, fish and whales, deer and jaguars, and that one problematic snake. Daniel’s lions are in the chapel. Windows celebrating the history of global mission, including both elephants and reindeer, are a little harder to spot. The St. Francis windows in the Narthex of the Chapel include butterflies, a wolf, rabbits, and squirrels. I know many of you consider the church mouse in the Fine Arts window to be the most charming of all our creatures.

My absolute favorite is the dogs. There is one biblical dog – located in the parable window, which tells the story of Lazarus, who sat begging at the gate of a rich man every day where dogs would lick his wounds. But the other two dogs are in the chapel – and they are both with children. In the “home” window of the Chapel, two children, surrounded by the words “kindness, sympathy, affection” and their faithful dog, care for a new litter of puppies.

This Sunday’s featured animal, the mother hen that Jesus evokes in his lament over the city of Jerusalem, is not found anywhere in our windows, but there are just as many birds throughout, maybe more than sheep. In fact, the most prominent animal in all our windows is the dove, which represents the Holy Spirit. This Sunday, as we explore what exactly Jesus was trying to convey when he compared himself to that mother bird, we will continue to celebrate the ways that the presence of God, the glory of God’s creation, and our relationships and care for one another are illuminated by the creatures of the earth.

What has Value?

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On your phone, on the internet, and on television, you can constantly check how the stock market is doing, along with getting analysis about the prospects for a bull or a bear market. As someone interested in how my retirement investments are doing, I check on them regularly. However, there are other things we affirm as having value that are harder to measure regarding how they are doing.

This last Sunday, Frank preached about the story of Abraham and Isaac, where Abraham was close to sacrificing his child. Those of us who are parents can’t imagine doing that. In fact, most of us have lovingly made other kinds of sacrifices for the well-being of our own children. And yet, we might not show that we value other children that God loves by checking to see how they are doing and making adjustments for their benefit.

Each year about this time, the Annie E. Casey Foundation releases assessment information on how our nation’s children and youth are doing regarding educational, economic, social, and health outcomes. Their ‘Kids Count’ 2024 annual report has national and state measurements that show where there are improvements and where there are growing challenges that impact the lives of young people. The states in the northeastern part of the country tend to rank pretty high compared to other states, but among the 50 states, Pennsylvania only ranks 23rd on 16 key indicators for the well-being of children and youth. Some of the areas of concern in our state are repercussions from the pandemic: a decrease in the percentage of young children who are in preschool, declines in reading and math scores, and higher death rates for children and teens. Firearm-related deaths are the leading cause of death among teens. There are slightly higher rates for low birth weight babies. There have been some improvements over recent years, with slightly lower child poverty rates and teen births. If you want to check out the information for yourself, here is a link: Interactive 2024 Data Book – The Annie E. Casey Foundation – The Annie E. Casey Foundation (aecf.org)

Occasionally, I will hear someone advocating for policies that would improve the lives of children who say, “We need to do more for children; they are our future.” That statement is true, but it sounds pretty self-centered. The policies and investments we adults put toward all children (not just those in our own families) determine much regarding their present and future well-being. Jesus certainly loved and valued all children. One of the ways we can follow his lead is by at least being aware of and responsive to what affects the overall well-being of those who are so vulnerable in our midst.

Youth Mission Trip to Peru

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When I became a youth pastor, I knew I wanted to treat mission trips differently. I knew missions were more complicated than just going on a trip, doing service work for some poor people, telling people about Jesus, and going home. Rather, there was an opportunity for something genuinely sacred to happen.

This past Wednesday morning, nine youths and five adults from BMPC departed the Philadelphia Airport to go to Peru for the Youth Ministry’s Summer Mission Trip with Joining Hands Peru. This trip is my last with our youth before I depart for Washington to become a solo pastor in the Pacific Northwest. So, perhaps understandably, I’ve put some pressure on myself for this mission trip to be, well, everything.

As a teenager, I went on dozens of mission trips to places as close as Kentucky and as far off as Belize. I helped build houses, ramps, and fences. I led Vacation Bible Camp in bad Spanish and painted a pink fence pink. I toured beautiful places, traveled in a boat to see pyramids, and sang worship songs around a campfire.

Sometimes, the trips were transformative, and sometimes, they were something to pad my college resume. Almost every time, it was me serving a community I saw as “needy,” understanding my coming to serve in their community as me being the hands and feet of Jesus in the world, bringing others the Gospel.

I thought I was Jesus, serving the impoverished when, really, the people I encountered were Jesus, and I was, more likely than not, another rich young ruler searching for their own selfish salvation.

I chewed on this question for years, wondering if I was participating in, at best, religious tourism and, at worst, harmful colonial white saviorism, with an added flavor of American exceptionalism, where the White Americans always knew better than the local people of color.

In undergrad at Rhodes College, where I majored in Religious Studies, I wrote my senior thesis on the experience of “Mission Trips as Rite of Passage Ritual.” Mission trip participants first undergo separation from their everyday lives, followed by initiation or transformation in this liminal-other space where something happens. All of this was concluded by a return to normal, but as some new and different person, forever changed by the experience.

While I respect my 22-year-old self’s attempt to justify her own experience of mission trips and understand what she went through on them, I can’t help but realize that that interpretation of mission is solely around the people who go on the mission trip, leaving aside entirely the question of the people we are supposedly “serving.”

While we’re in Peru, we’ll engage in service with Peruvian teenagers in La Oroya and Callao, working on reforestation, painting murals over graffiti, and participating in a beach clean-up. I have an inkling that working with these Peruvian teenagers will dramatically alter the experience of our teenagers. It’s hard to see someone your exact age, interested in the same things you are, as an “other.” Writing them off as needy and you as non-needy is much more challenging. And, if God acts like I think God does, it’ll be a mutually transformative experience for us and the folks with whom we’ll work. I hope our youth see how, while life is different for people in Peru, much more connects us than divides us. And that God looks at each of us, Peruvian or US American, with a smile and a plan for each of our lives, full of glorious purpose and hope.

I pray this trip to Peru is transformative. I hope it is a rite of passage where we enter that liminal space where we are all between what we were and not quite what we will be because of our experience in Peru. While there, we will work with Joining Hands Peru, a mission partner of BMPC, with whom we have built and are continuing to build a fruitful and faithful relationship. Jed Koball, a mission co-worker of the PCUSA, will lead us. Jed came to BMPC in the fall of 2023 to share his work among the incredible people of Peru, who are fighting daily to save themselves from the disasters of climate change instigated by greed.

While in Peru, our group will daily delve into the call stories of scripture—from the call of the Apostles to the call of Mary—learning together how scripture teaches us that we are called to participate in God’s salvific action in the world, bringing about justice, freedom, and peace to everyone and everything, including the planet entrusted to our care.

I covet your prayers for the next 10 days that we are abroad. I ask you to pray for each of our youth and adults that this experience might transform us more into the people God created us to be. I can’t wait to see and share how God works in us, on us, and in and through the people we encounter on this mission trip to Peru with these amazing young people.

A Decent Purpose

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As a five-star general who led the Allies to victory in World War II, Dwight D. Eisenhower served two presidential terms before retiring from public office in 1961. In his celebrated Farewell Address of that year, offered just days before John F. Kennedy was sworn in, the outgoing President delivered words of caution to a nation still living in the hubris of armed might and growing Cold War hostilities:

Down the long lane of the history yet to be written, America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect. Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield.

Those words ring just as true today as they did when Eisenhower offered them well over 60 years ago. On this Fourth of July, when we honor and celebrate the history of this nation we proudly call home, we are also invited to measure how our allegiances ultimately lead us to love or hate. Are we building a bigger table, or are we determined to fight over the chairs? For as Eisenhower goes on to note, “Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.”

Decent purpose. Is America only for America? Or do we exist as a citizenry for a more decent purpose? What is the aim of our national ambition? Are the blessings we receive from the hand of Providence for us alone? Is our greatness as a people only defined against the defeat, destruction, or demise of another? The 34th American President cautioned us to see our greatness as an invitation and called for the balance of security and liberty, recognizing that both are needed for a free society.

The First Letter of Peter proclaims, “As servants of God, live as free people, yet do not use your freedom as a pretext for evil.” The beauty of this nation, even with its tattered and complicated past and our present frustrations, is that our freedoms afford us the capacity to live as a people shaped by the values that point to abundance. Our freedoms afforded us in Christ do the same. We are called to a decent purpose.

Happy Independence Day.