Author: The Rev. Rebecca Kirkpatrick

Our son Owen started his senior year of college just a few weeks ago. When he first left for school four years ago, I was a little worried, as all parents are, that it might take a while for him to find his “people.” So, we gave him the advice that most parents give, encouraging him to go to everything he could during those first few weeks. Accept every invitation to try something out. If they teased a free T-shirt, be there to get one. And for sure, BE at the activity fair in those early days of the fall semester so you can wander among the clubs and groups and see where you might fit.

That first semester, Owen went to the Wooster activity fair and left signed up with an audition to join the college’s tenor/bass a cappella group – Merry Kuween of Skots. Wooster is the “Fighting Scots,” which the name is a play on, and with six different creatively named a cappella groups on campus, I don’t ask questions.

This Sunday at BMPC, we will be hosting our own annual version of a campus activity fair – our Rally Day Ministry Fair in the gym following our 10 a.m. worship service. Every year you hear me encourage you to stop by the tables staffed by volunteers from all of our different and thriving ministry areas to find a new place of connection. And this year is no exception. Just like I have told Owen to be there to find his people, that is my advice for you all as well.

Here are just a few things that you might connect to this Sunday –

Stop by the Music and Fine Arts table and offer yourself as an usher for one of the wonderful concerts scheduled for this next year.

Visit the Children and Family Ministries table to learn more about what it means that members of the church will pray for over 500 children in our congregation this year.

Swing by the Youth Ministry Table to sign up to referee Minute to Win It activities at this December’s Rainbow Reindeer Games.

Pop over to the Caring Ministries Table to get information about making soup that can be taken by staff and Deacons to members during illness or recovery.

Say hello at the Adult Education table and sign up as a volunteer in Converse Library helping with reshelving books in our adult collection.

Spend some time at the Mission table assembling a personal care kit for this winter’s code blue shelter while you hear about our eight different mission committees.

Drop in at the Senior Adult table to learn more about the trips, programs and fellowship opportunities on the calendar for this next program year.

Make you way over to the Congregational Life table to learn more about being in a Connection Group.

This is just a snapshot of the ways that you can find to connect to the mission and ministry of our church in this next year, and by no means exhaustive.

Four years ago, we told Owen to show up, try something new, and trust that somewhere along the way he might find his people. I believe the church works much the same way. God often meets us through one another, in unexpected places and ordinary invitations. So come wander, wonder, and see where God might be calling you to belong.

This month I had the joy of spending a week of continuing education at Ghost Ranch, a former dude ranch, now a Presbyterian conference center about an hour south of Santa Fe. Ghost Ranch is an awe-inspiring location known not just for its Presbyterian history, but as a site of historically significant paleontological discoveries and artistic inspiration. Georgia Okeefe herself lived at the Ranch starting in the 1930s.

The conference itself was incredibly life-giving, and the connections and conversations I made with clergy from a wide range of generations and Christian traditions were refreshing. But the landscape was what really captivated me. I kept taking the same photos over and over again, hoping that maybe the next one would be able to capture the overwhelming beauty of the mountains and surrounding mesa. One evening, a friend and I took the chairs from our guest room out into the middle of a field to stargaze and be overwhelmed by a clear glimpse of the Milky Way.

One of the most famous mountains viewed from Ghost Ranch is Cerro Pedernal, which means “flint mountain.” The architects who thoughtfully designed the main lecture space at Ghost Ranch ensured that there was a clear view of Pedernal behind each of our keynote speakers and preachers. I will confess that mostly while I was listening to the presentations, I was looking at the mountain.

Okeefe herself is said to have painted Pedernal at least 29 times. I wonder if, like me with my iPhone, she kept trying to capture the overwhelming beauty of the mountain that can’t be fully captured in film or in oil.  The quote commonly attributed to Okeefe in reference to Pedernal is, “God told me if I painted it enough, I could have it.”

It is no wonder the Psalmists found both beauty and divinity in the vision of a mountain –
“I lift up my eyes to the mountains—where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.”

My prayer as we near the end of summer is that you too have found a place to experience the beauty of God’s creation—something so remarkable that it defies being captured in a photo. But also, that the summer has offered a time of quiet and retreat, a time of reconnecting with friends old and new, a time to give thanks for the blessings of this life in the midst of its challenges.

May we lift our eyes to God’s glory revealed in the world around us and remember again the One from whom our help comes and our calling to be stewards of God’s beautiful creation. And may we carry that sense of wonder, gratitude, and renewal with us into the season ahead.

“Georgia O’Keeffe – Red Hills with Pedernal, White Clouds [1936]” by Gandalf’s Gallery, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

My husband and I recently took our first-ever tropical beach vacation. We are more mountain and lake people, so we looked forward to the new experience.

In anticipation, I was determined to find a great beach read to dig into between dips in the ocean. I was especially delighted to discover a series of “beach” reads that are set on the exact island where we were. There was something especially fun about reading a book set in our exact location. I was uniquely able to imagine the smell of the air, the beauty of the hiking trails, and the friendliness of the people, because I was fully immersed in them.

This coming Sunday in worship, we will explore the ways that this phenomenon of imagining ourselves inside a story applies to the Bible as well. Our passage in particular tells of a pivotal moment in the lives of Hagar and Ishmael, Sarah’s slave and Abraham’s son.

The drama of the patriarchs and matriarchs, as ancient as it is, still portrays some of the exact same family dynamics, personal drama, and human foibles that we all experience today. Maybe we can’t imagine ourselves as nomadic shepherds living in the desert thousands of years ago, but the jealousy, the disappointment, the heartbreak, and the love between complicated people are likely present in one way or another in all of our lives.

This is one of the things that I love so much about scripture, and especially the stories of the Bible – that scripture pulls us in like any great piece of literature and invites us to imagine ourselves within the drama.

Can you imagine sitting down to read the Bible with the same enthusiasm as we do our “summer” reading: curious about the plot, swept up in the human interactions, surprised by the twists and turns, and compelled to consider what we would have done in the shoes of the major and minor characters.

I invite you this summer – maybe not to pack your Bible in your beach bag, though that would be a great idea – but to spend some time in the drama of scripture and see where it takes your imagination. The Book of Esther is always my suggestion for a dramatic and wild starting place for an exercise like that. The Acts of the Apostles has numerous tales of disciples getting in and out of trouble with each other and the world. And of course, Genesis, where we will linger for a time this Sunday, is full of stories of all of humankind discovering what it means to be God’s people on this earth.

I look forward to hearing all about your summer reading!

This January marks the third year that BMPC has participating in hosting the Lower Merion Code Blue shelter in our Atrium and Gym each night of the month when the real feel outside is 32 degrees or below.

In past years, I would often orient volunteers and then head home to my manse next door, hoping that at least one guest would show up that night to make all of the volunteers’ effort and hours worth it. This year, that has never been a concern.

Each night we have been open, we have had at least three guests, and on at least one night, we have filled every bed. Our connections with the Lower Merion Police have grown stronger, and multiple times a week, they bring guests to stay at the church who, in the past, would have had nowhere to go.

What has not changed this year is the way this project has fostered new relationships and deepened existing ones in our church and community.

Truth be told, volunteering at our Code Blue Shelter is likely one of the quietest and most boring tasks we do in “mission.” For the first shift, there is some activity at the start, and the second shift has a busy last hour of tasks to complete, but mostly it is sitting and keeping watch in the wee hours of the night.

While many of us who work bring computers and books, iPads and neglected work, there is also a part of every shift where volunteers just sit and talk and get to know each other in the quiet of the night. It brings joy to my heart each time I get to introduce members to each other as they start their shifts – often highlighting what I appreciate about each of them, knowing they will find places of connection in the time spent together. This is what it means to be a community.

This year, I have come to especially value the ways that guests and volunteers have connected. Often, a guest will ask about a volunteer they haven’t seen work this year, but who they remember from the past. In the days after a shift, a volunteer will often share with me a part of a guest’s story they learned for the first time.

As we approach our final week of hosting, I encourage anyone who has been considering volunteering at the shelter to grab one of the remaining slots. Not because we need more volunteers to help carry the burden of keeping the shelter open each night (even though that is the case), but because this is what it means to be church and community together.

Sign up for a Code Blue Shift.

Jonathan Sacks was a renowned rabbi, philosopher, theologian, and public intellectual. A gifted teacher and writer, Sacks explored the moral foundations of society, the relationship between faith and modern life, and the power of religious traditions to foster human dignity, responsibility, and hope in a pluralistic world.

In his book the Dignity of Difference, he wrote this,
Men and women were made – so I believe – to serve one another, not just themselves.
We may not survive while others drown;
we may not feast while others starve;
we are not free when others are in servitude;
we are not well when billions languish in disease and premature death.

This is an easy sentiment to appreciate and to affirm as an orientation for how we as individuals and as a church live out our Christian calling to service and our identity as disciples of Jesus Christ.

People in our world are drowning in this moment – not so much literally but figuratively.

There is an overwhelming sense of dread among folks in our community and nation:

One of our mission partners here in Lower Merion reached out to me this week to ask for help in gathering supplies and resources for immigrant women whose husbands have been detained and are struggling to care for their children.

One of the Afghan families BMPC has supported for two years is in crisis as two of the men, and primary wage earners, have been detained despite their faithful compliance with the established legal process of being granted asylum in the United States. The members of our Refugee Support Committee have been working tirelessly to help them return home.

This week, news has been shared widely among Presbyterian circles that Rene Nicole Good, who was killed by ICE agents in Minneapolis last week, was a sister Presbyterian among us who served in her congregations and, as a young adult, was in mission service in Ireland in the early 2000s. Rene’s uncle is a Presbyterian pastor in Nebraska.

What is our calling in a world where things like these are happening, where so many are drowning?

That will be the topic of our conversations this coming Sunday morning at 11:15 in Congregational Hall – what is our community called to do to speak up and speak together in this moment? My hope for our time together is three fold – that it will be a space where we can articulate our grief at the brokenness of the world in this moment, an opportunity to reaffirm many of our historic values and practices as a congregation around justice and advocacy, and especially a chance for us to connect and move forward with new ways to engage and work towards good in the world today.

I hope you will join us.

Our annual Theologian in Residence program, created in honor of David and Ruth Watermulder, is always a highlight of BMPC’s Adult Education programs. Over the past ten years, we have welcomed a wide range of remarkable scholars, and when one looks at the full list of every scholar who has been a part of this endowed lecture series since its inception, it is packed with some of the most influential thinkers, writers, and preachers of this generation. But, I think I can say with confidence and joy that our upcoming weekend with the Rev. Dr. Anna Carter Florence, Professor of Preaching at Columbia Theological Seminary, is going to be the most fun.

Anna brings a quality of imagination and creativity to her teaching and preaching that is both deeply faithful to the spirit of the Bible, while also breaking open new and innovative ways for us to step into and experience the story of scripture.

In her book Rehearsing Scripture: Discovering God’s Word in Community, she describes the wildness of reading the Bible together:

The biblical text is a wild thing, and it takes us to where the wild things are. When we read scripture and community, we have no idea what will happen or where it will take us, except that wherever it is won’t look like anything we know – it is the wild and free vision of God’s reign, breaking its way in. It is the mother of all waves, carrying us over the known horizon. Maurice Sendak may not have realized he was writing the perfect description of our biblical interpretive task when he wrote his classic children’s book, Where the Wild Things Are, but he was. Maybe, every time we open our Bibles, we should open our mouths too with a collective roar: “Let the wild rumpus start!”

I hope that you will join us for what might not be a wild weekend of exploring scripture together in community, but what will surely be a weekend of thoughtful and creative interpretations of scripture, joy found in community with one another, and surely a hopeful message of the ways that God’s word still speaks to us today.

Here is the full schedule for the weekend – we hope you see you there!

LIGHT BRUNCH
Saturday, November 8, 9:30 a.m.
Congregational Hall, Ministries Center

LECTURE ONE: ANOTHER LOOK AT SOME (NOTORIOUS) WOMEN:
VASHTI, TAMAR, AND LOT’S WIFE
Saturday, November 8, 10:00 a.m.
Congregational Hall, Ministries Center

PREACHING
Sunday, November 9, 8:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m.
Chapel and Sanctuary

LECTURE TWO: ANOTHER LOOK AT JESUS:GROWING UP, TELLING STORIES, AND WALKING ON WATER
Sunday, November 9, 11:15 a.m.
Congregational Hall, Ministries Center

 

 

 

In the Spring of 2023, the BMPC Session approved a new Statement on Belonging and Inclusion as an outgrowth of the good work of our Anti-Racism Committee over the past several years. If you have not read that statement yet, I encourage you to do so.

One of my favorite sections from that statement addresses the importance of this kind of work being a part of everything we do as a church, not just an isolated priority of one or two committees.

As an outgrowth of our willingness to learn, change, and grow, we commit to ensuring that this work embeds every aspect of our church life from welcome and hospitality to programming and fellowship; from financial, stewardship, and mission decisions to pastoral care and worship life. In all that we do and in all the ways we represent ourselves, the work of diversity and inclusion will be obvious.

To that end, this Sunday afternoon, BMPC church officers, ushers, committee leaders, teachers, staff and volunteers will gather for a training with the Rev. Dr. Cody Sanders of Luther Seminary in Minnesota to be trained on a particular aspect of our work of Belonging and Inclusion – microaggressions.

Microaggressions are brief, everyday exchanges that deliver demeaning messages to people based on their group identity. These exchanges may be verbal, behavioral, or environmental, and they communicate subtle hostility, degradation, or insult directed at someone’s race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, class, ability, ethnicity, national origin, or religion. Their power to cause harm comes largely from the fact that perpetrators are usually unaware of them; microaggressions are often expressed unintentionally and without conscious recognition.

Throughout all of our ministries as a church we are constantly welcoming new people, caring for one another, and interacting in ways that have the potential to either convey a deep sense of belonging or to communicate in subtle ways that someone is not welcome here.

I am so grateful that in this moment, this congregation and its leadership are taking seriously the work that must be done to help us live more fully into our values of Belonging and Inclusion.

The great news is, that Dr. Sanders will also be speaking on the topic of Microaggressions this Sunday morning at 11:15 in Congregational Hall. If this aspect of anti-racism work is new to you, or if you are especially interested in learning directly from someone who is a leader in helping churches do this work with integrity, please join us for that conversation this Sunday following worship.