Month: July 2025

I have been thinking back quite a bit these days to a trip that several of us took in the fall of 2021. Women from BMPC, as well as other congregations, traveled together to St. John in the Virgin Islands to visit historic National Park sites that were originally sugar cane plantations where human beings had been enslaved. These sites were particularly historic because of their proximity to the British Virgin Islands, where slavery was outlawed almost 30 years before being banned in the US.

Standing on the beach at the former plantation, this group of white and black women stood together, prayed in memory of the men and women who lost their lives in that place, especially those who jumped into the water hoping to swim to freedom, gave thanks for the ways that the world has changed since those days, and asked that each of us might be transformed by the things that we saw and experienced together.

The impetus for the trip was the way that the National Park staff had used their time and energy during the lock downs of the pandemic to both update the interpretation materials for the site that better described the experience of enslaved people in that site, and to add it to the National Park’s Network to Freedom listing identifying sites on the Underground Railroad.

I was moved, all of us were, by the way that the staff talked to us about their responsibility to tell the truth about that place and the ways that telling the stories of the enslaved people there was a small measure of repair to the inhumanity of slavery.

I think of this trip and experience each time I read news of the attempts in these days to remove these kinds of interpretive tools and stories from National Park sites and historic locations around the country.

Many might consider this a political issue outside the realm of our purview as a church or as people of faith. But in most ways, it is deeply connected to our history, present, and future as Christians in the United States. Not just because of the ways that Christianity, the Bible, and the church were used to justify slavery; the fact that Presbyterians more often than not declined to stand up against slavery when it really mattered; and the ways that we have collectively failed to be accountable for the lasting impact of these historical roots in our culture and communities today, but simply because what we believe as Presbyterians about confession and forgiveness.

Each time we gather in worship, we begin our liturgy with an act of confession. Some people find this incredibly off-putting and maybe even tedious. Still, its placement at the start of worship is very intentional, positioned so that every time we hear scripture read and proclaimed, we are reminded of the ways that we and the world are broken and the truth that through Christ, forgiveness and repair are promised and fulfilled. The echoes of our forgiveness still ring in our ears before any part of scripture is spoken.

We practice this act of spiritual repair each week, so that when we step into a broken world, we are not caught off guard or offended by the need for this same kind of liturgy of confession and repair in our community and national life.

As we do that work, may this prayer of forgiveness from Cole Arthur Riley’s book, Black Liturgies: Prayers, Poems, and Meditations for Staying Human, be a part of each of our comings and goings this summer as we travel the breadth and beauty of this land:

Let your soul receive this rest: God seeks to mend the brokenhearted, provide for the economically oppressed, honor the aging, and protect the vulnerable.

Receive forgiveness for the injustices you’ve participated in and be purged of those that still reside in your own heart.

Find renewal in the divine, that we would welcome healing as it knocks.

That we would reintegrate every part of us that this world has tried to cleave apart, claiming the dignity of our bodies daily.

As you receive this mercy, let it hold you and keep you, that your hope for liberation would be reborn each morning. Amen.

For some of us, summer is a season when we do some traveling. We live in an age when the challenges of travel are quite different from those of earlier generations. I read something that described travel in the Western part of our country during the 18th century. Even when people were traveling by stagecoach, there were different classes based on how much one spent on a ticket. In contrast to airline travel today, the classes of tickets on the stagecoach did not have to do with the size of the seat or the kind of food that was served, but rather with what was expected of the ticket holder in case the stagecoach got into a difficult situation. There were occasional deep mud holes, steep inclines, or other difficulties to be negotiated at one time or another along the way.

There were three types of tickets sold. The first class, which, of course, was the most expensive, entitled the ticket owner to remain in the stagecoach no matter what conditions might be faced. When you got the most expensive ticket, this meant that you were exempt from having to put forth any kind of effort during the trip. A second-class ticket meant that if difficulty arose, you had to get out to lighten the coach, walking alongside it until the difficulty could be resolved. The cheapest ticket – the third-class one – called on the holder to take responsibility for difficulties. This meant they not only had to get out of the coach when there was a problem, but they also had to, alongside the driver, get down in the mud and do whatever had to be done so that the vehicle could either get unstuck or get up the hill. 1 You would not be surprised to know that those who had this category of ticket held the least prestige.

We live in a society that values appearance, status, fame, wealth, power, individualism, materialism, and consumerism. But what Jesus calls upon us to value is counter-cultural when it comes to what is first class, second class, and third class in terms of behavior. The willingness to serve, doing so in a loving fashion, is the greatest of all the values in the Christian hierarchy of understanding. According to Jesus, the true first-class status is not one of exemption or privilege, where we pay the most so we’ll have to do the least. It is, rather, the eager willingness to do whatever a problem situation requires, no matter how menial or seemingly disagreeable, so that we might continue our journey together, assuming, of course, that we are moving in a direction under God’s guidance. This servant willingness represents the highest of all values. One is free to live in this way by the realization that our worth as human beings comes from an act of God and not from our own competitive achievements. Our worth is given to us as a gift, and realizing this in the depths of our being is the great freeing reality which allows us to lovingly serve. Once that gracious truth takes root in the depths of our being, then each one of us, in whatever role we play in the life of this church, can begin to act out what is truly first-class in God’s eyes.

1 From content shared by John Claypool

I have a special memory of working with one of our congregation’s Associate Pastor Nominating Committees. We had met almost weekly for nearly a year soliciting input for the position description, networking, reading seemingly countless applications, holding initial phone conversations, small group Zoom interviews, and full committee interviews to discern God’s leading us to the right candidate. Toward the end of that search that was leading us to our final candidate, one member of the APNC said, “There was a moment in which it seemed like the Holy Spirit just entered the room.”

That’s what every search committee prays for, hopes for, and anticipates – a moment of palpable clarity. A moment in which it seems like the choice is a God thing and not just human intuition, the melding of the mind and heart, the discernment of a call. For this reason, I am fond of reminding committees early in the process that, by their work together, they will become greater than the sum of their parts. In community with one another we open our circle of discernment to make room for the Spirit.

The Congregational Meeting to call our new Associate Pastor for Congregational Care this coming Sunday following the 10 am worship service is the joyful celebration of the Spirit’s work on our midst. The APNC that has been meeting together this last year to find the best candidate for BMPC represented the diversity of our congregation and the constituent ministries. Sometimes we did not fully agree on some aspect of the search process or the fit of a particular candidate. However, when we began to engage our finalist in conversation there was a clear and palpable unanimity of discernment.

At the candidate’s request, we are not posting her name in this column, which appears on our website, to help prevent word getting to her current church before Sunday, when her call is confirmed by us and she can freely share the news of her departure there.

However, by now you should have received the brochure in the mail which fills out the details of her sense of call to ministry, her love for God and the church, and her excitement about joining the pastoral staff at BMPC. Not only does she bring the level of experience and gifts for which we had been looking, but she carries a winsome presence that attracts others into easy conversation about life and faith.

The candidate had planned to be here in person for worship and the Congregational meeting, but unfortunately while on vacation this week she sprained her ankle which prevents her ability to travel to Bryn Mawr. Our Presbyterian polity does not require her to be present when we vote to call her, but I encourage you to read the mailing in anticipation of the meeting so that you can join the APNC and pastoral staff in our excitement that the Spirit has indeed entered the room.

The candidate will announce her departure from her current congregation on July 14, after BMPC acts to call her, so please hold any details in confidence until then.

Early this Sunday morning, nine youth and three adults will hit the road for Charlotte, North Carolina, for this year’s youth mission trip with our partners at CROSS Missions. Throughout the week, these young people will have the opportunity to meet people completely different from themselves, serve their neighbors, grow in their own faith, and develop community with one another.

When I think back to my own experiences of mission trips as a young person, I have very little recollection about what good I was able to do for others. I’m sure I painted something or poured some concrete – did I assemble pews at one point? More than any of that, I remember meeting new people from totally different contexts who challenged my past understandings of the world around me.

These trips helped me understand that God’s world was so much bigger than I could imagine. That God had created a world filled with diverse people, with vastly different experiences, in wildly divergent cultures – and that God loved and was in the midst of all of it. Having encountered all of this, I could then imagine something of the love God had for me.

When these youth return from Charlotte, ask them who they met, where they saw God, and what they know now about how God is operating in their own lives as a result. They’ll do good for others, sure, but more than that, they’ll encounter God at the edge of their own understanding of the world God has created. Thank you for keeping us in your prayers.