When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the…
This weekend, your vestry will gather for the first part of a two part virtual retreat. Our retreat leader is The Reverend Alissa Newton (bio here), the program director for the College of Congregational Development.
The twelve, well fourteen, of us will gather in a virtual upper room and bring our fears, worries and trepidations as well as our hopes, dreams and joys to the table. Alissa will help us construct an understanding of what it means to be a vestry, and what it means to lead a Church like Memorial coming out of a pandemic. This is really important! Because we have a large turnover in vestry members, and quite a few who are new to this kind of church leadership. I invite your prayers for all of us this weekend as we begin this journey. For Bill, Stacy, John, Shannon, Wendy, Keenan, Alice, Sarah, Katie, Steve, Beth, Ryan, Paul and myself.
Following this weekend, don’t be surprised if a vestry member reaches out to you!
Alissa is giving us all homework to do between the two sessions, to ensure that all of you are also able to share in this work and this journey.
The Gospel verse above comes from the passion narrative in John, and is understood to be one of the most anti-Semitic verses in the text. There is a lot of discussion as to whether it should be edited, changed, or removed all together. I won’t opine on that here - but I will say that if we leave out the final word (Jews) and allow that blank space to fill in all of the fears that keep us from truly living into our own calling, to take risks, to follow Jesus - then we get pretty close to how the disciples were feeling.
It was and is a sad and symbolic example of how one class of people stood in then and now for all that is foreign, different and scary - how the Church has many times over sought to put the blame on Jesus’ death on the Jewish people rather than understand it was us and our fears that allowed Jesus to die on that cross. What is sadder is how that kind of fear based living, continues to motivate so much hate and hurt in the world today.
Because we seek to be a community of Love, we will take our fears with us on retreat - so that we can name them, claim them, and avoid ourselves falling into those familiar traps of ignorance, indifference and hurt. Perhaps you have fears, concerns and worries that have from time to time mutated into hate and division? If so, perhaps you can invite Jesus to the table to walk trough them.
After all - he showed up in that upper room when the door was locked, he certainly can show up for you too.