Mission Yearbook: Professor leads compassionate preaching webinar

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The Rev. Dr. Cláudio Carvalhaes

Exploring the ways that preachers’ prayers impact their preaching was the task recently for the Rev. Dr. Cláudio Carvalhaes, professor of worship and practical theology at Union Theological Seminary. Carvalhaes spoke for about 90 minutes as part of the Synod of the Covenant’s monthly preaching workshop. Watch his presentation here.

“What a world we’re living in! In a time of fascism, prayer is more important than ever,” Carvalhaes said. We either “want to go to the streets and fight or coil back in our beds and never leave.”

Taking in news reports from places like Gaza, which Carvalhaes called “a laboratory for cruelty,” can leave us feeling paralyzed and hopeless, he said. “We need to create opportunities for our people to do something,” he said, showing a recorded clip of a line of Buddhist monks on a 123-day prayer walk for peace. “We could do something like that. We could have a peace walk around the block every Sunday before worship,” he said.

From people in cities such as Minneapolis, we are learning the importance of group singing as resistance, he said. “St. Augustine said that singing is praying twice,” Carvalhaes said. “There is a whole theology being developed on the streets.” Our lives, he said, “are one whole prayer, and our prayer ends only with our last breath. Our spirituality comes from the breath of God, so while we’re breathing, we’re praying.”

Five years ago, Carvalhaes published “Praying with Every Heart: Orienting Our Lives to the Wholeness of the World.”

“Today, I want to develop this notion of ‘praying with,’” he said. It’s a title given to him by a Buddhist friend at Union Theological Seminary.

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The Rev. Dr. Dave Davis

Most Presbyterian worship services begin by calling people to worship. “We start with the belief that God is already there,” he said. “But so many other traditions believe you have to call upon God to come [to the service]. They have prayers or singing to ask God to come.”

Capitalism has taught us that “we are on our own” and “have the freedom to be ourselves,” he said. If all the people on the call were applying for the same job, the one who got hired “would be praised for the strength and power” that got that person hired, Carvalhaes said. “The rest of us, our families would tell us ‘you’re not good enough.’ The system blames us individually for what the social system can’t give to us, and we just buy into it.”

In our churches, if something happens that “takes us off the grid of living well,” such as a job loss, we may survive for a few months off our savings and our unemployment checks. After that, in an example Carvalhaes presented, we may get anxious about paying our bills, and so we go to our church for financial help. The pastor may ask the session to authorize some money to help us, but it’s not enough, and we begin to ask for prayers each week during worship, which annoys our fellow worshipers. “You can do better,” they tell us. “Why do you have to ask each week?” Eventually the pastor tells us, “Sorry. We have already helped you. The session says that we don’t have enough money for everybody.”

“In this example, I am trying to show how committed we are to each other, but capitalism keeps us from going all the way to help people,” he said. “There are limits and boundaries we have clearly posted but we don’t talk about.”

He concluded his talk with thoughts on mercy and gratitude.

“We say, ‘God have mercy,’ because we have gone too far, or don’t know how to return, or we have lost all hope. The prayer is the hope we will find the God who lives in those far places as well,” Carvalhaes said. “At the end, God will be with us — either for new beginnings or a full end. It’s a scream to a God who lives outside the gates and can provide us a welcome no one else will.”

The Synod of the Covenant’s monthly preaching workshops are available to frequent preachers living and working both inside and outside the bounds of the synod.

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service (Click here to read original PNS Story)

Let us join in prayer for:

Jon Baxter, Chief Engineer, Building Services, Administrative Services Group
Serrita Bell, Director of Communications and Marketing, Presbyterian Foundation    

Let us pray:

Our loving God, thank you for the gift of those who reach out to others in a spirit of love. May their example be a light to the world, that all may live in peace. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - Have we lost our ability to live without fear?

Not if we belong to God in both life and in death, border conference preacher says

February 18, 2020

The Rev. Dr. Cláudio Carvalhaes

We fear so many things, the Rev. Dr. Cláudio Carvalhaes told worshipers during the recent celebration of 35 years of ministry by Presbyterian Border Region Outreach.

Carvalhaes, who’s from Brazil and is associate professor of worship at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, was preaching at the Lirio de los Valles Church in Agua Prieta, just across the U.S. southern border from Douglas, Arizona. The conference, attended by about 150 people, was called “Responding to an Exodus: Gospel Hospitality and Empire.”

“We have arrived!” Carvalhaes said jubilantly at the outset of his sermon, his arms outstretched. “We have arrived where so many of us fear. We fear the distance (from home) and we fear the people who need us the most. Our politics and our economic structures cast a heavy blanket on all of us. I wonder if we are losing that sensibility that life can be lived without fear — with courage and boldness — by resting in God’s place fully.”

“If we belong to God in life and in death,” he said, “what do we have to fear?”

Carvalhaes then paused to “bless the memory” of nine members of the LeBaron family, killed nearby in November.

“We came here to see how love can break the chain of fears, because when we’re together we can face anything,” Carvalhaes said. “In the name of love, we say, ‘O death, where is thy sting?’”

Conference participants came “to show lovingkindness and to pray — and we came to receive a blessing, too,” he said. “We have come to celebrate Frontera de Cristo (one of five border ministries), this ministry that has been casting out fear for 35 years.”

“Our crusade,” he said, “is not to conquer anyone — just our own fears.”

Those in attendance came from “el norte,” he said, “with privileges and choices. We came because we can, but our brothers and sisters don’t have those privileges. They deserve the same — or we shouldn’t have any privileges.”

“We don’t have the urgency by which the people from the south live,” Carvalhaes said. “It is the urgency of breathing, the urgency of finding a place of solace. They live like the Christians in the first century lived.”

Carvalhaes identified what he called “the craziness of the gospel: There is no wall, no preservation of nation states. What has to be preserved is the people … If you are not with the immigrants, you are on the side of the Pharaoh. We have come to change our own narratives and beliefs, our own faith — to say to people here, ‘You are mine.’”

He urged worshipers to look through and beyond the border wall, which now divides about one-third of the 1,954-mile-long border between Mexico and the United States.

“Our Mexican brothers and sisters are warriors of love and resistance,” he said. “They see the face of evil every day and they say, ‘God, have mercy on us.’”

In Mexican culture, people are known “for celebrating death very vividly. That’s why they’re so alive,” he said. “We say, ‘People don’t die. They pass away.’ Here they celebrate life.”

He tasked worshipers with developing an alternative narrative to the wall — and to “discover that you too are immigrants. Remember who was the Pharaoh of your ancestors’ time so you could be here today witnessing to the love of God.”

Toward the end of his sermon, Carvalhaes had volunteers push over a pair of decorative walls near the pulpit. He got excited at the sight.

“Are you ready?” he asked worshipers, his voice rising. “Are you fearful? Let God create a new world for all of us!”

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service

Let us join in prayer for: 

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff

Rebecca Storti, Board of Pensions
Gail Strange, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us pray:

O God, when the world’s needs seem to overwhelm our ability to help, let us remember that you ask us to give what we have, not what we do not have. By your Spirit, we can do more than we ever dreamed. Give us faith to trust your Word and obey your commands through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.