Tuesday, September 27, A Season of Peace

Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.”
John 5:8 (NRSV)

Migration headlines focus on people being “led forth in peace” to a safer home. However, not all immigrants are motivated by the search for peace. Many “go out in joy” toward opportunity. The joy they embody is not the joy of unfettered glee. It is a joy closer to that felt by the man at the Bethesda pool. When Jesus says, “Stand up, take your mat and walk,” joy was absolutely part of the healed man’s reaction, yet rarely does joy show up on its own.

It is still true that no one would help this man when he was in need. His joy is mixed with loneliness. The life he has become accustomed to changes in a moment. The new life is better, but there will be things to grieve alongside the joy. Then, on his first stroll in 38 years, he gets shamed for carrying his mat on the sabbath. Joy frequently is mixed with other emotions. When sadness, anger, fear, shame, guilt (etc.) twist around our joy, we second-guess the validity of the joy. Yet if we find ourselves moved to go out, the fuel is undoubtedly joy. Joy that is affirmed and championed is strong enough to drag any other emotional baggage we are packing for the journey. This kind of joy empowers people every day to stand up, take up their beds and walk toward a better life.

Action: Spend three minutes affirming your joy. It may be buried deep in fear or shame. Be intentional and give your joy a moment to be acknowledged. How can you be a champion for someone else’s joy?

Prayer: Leading God, the joy in me is rooted in resurrection, so I know it cannot be destroyed. Show me those who need to be reminded and chose me to be a champion of joy in my community. I am ready to stand up, take my mat and walk. Amen.

 

The Rev. Bethany Peerbolte, or RevBethany as she is known to her 300,000 followers on TikTok, serves as an associate pastor at First Presbyterian in Birmingham, Michigan. If you ever meet her in real life, DO NOT ask her about cults unless you have at least five hours to waste.

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This year’s Path of Peace reflections are designed to help participants explore peacemaking efforts addressing some of the major issues of our time. The theme for the 29 days of the 2022 A Season of Peace is Led Forth in Peace: Critical Areas of Engagement for Peacemakers. With these daily reflections, we are invited to reflect upon ways to practice peace by engaging the following critical areas:

1. 1. 1. Climate change
      2. Nonviolence
      3. The intersection of poverty and racism
      4. Immigration/migration

Today in the Mission Yearbook - Welcoming the stranger

Stateside Presbyterians are enriched by hosting pastors from different countries

September 27, 2022

Taiwanese aboriginal pastors Varuvu and Sai make music with Rev. Luke. (Photo by John McCall)

As part of his sabbatical from Eastminster Presbyterian Church in Columbia, South Carolina, a few years ago, the Rev. Brad Smith brought his wife, Nancy, and their three young adult children to Taiwan to experience the richness of both Taiwan’s culture and church life.

During their visit, they visited an aboriginal village and shared a meal with three women pastors from the Tyral tribe. Brad and Nancy are wonderful ambassadors of Christ’s love and these three pastors felt deeply affirmed and listened to by the Smith family. The Smiths also visited other churches in Taiwan and learned how God is at work on the island of Taiwan.

Because of their rich experience in Taiwan, Brad hoped that there could be an ongoing connection with the pastors in Taiwan. For years, since Eastminster has been a partner with me, a mission co-worker, so this connection was a natural one.

I have brought three groups of Taiwanese pastors to Montreat Conference Center in North Carolina for two weeks of spiritual renewal. Taiwanese pastors live right at the church where they serve, so it can be difficult to find time and space away. So, these weeks are wonderful times for the Taiwanese pastors to leave their busy schedules and come to a place of natural beauty and welcome. These pastors are renewed both by the beauty of Montreat, the sharing among different people groups, and by visits to churches and homeless shelters. For two of these years, Guatemalan and Malawian pastors have joined the Taiwanese pastors along with groups of PC(USA) pastors.

Taiwanese and PC(USA) pastors together at Montreat Conference Center. (Photo by John McCall)

At one homeless shelter, a Taiwanese pastor knelt to wash the feet of a homeless man. As she washed his feet, he began to cry, and said, “The last time I was with Asians I was shooting them in Vietnam. And now they are kneeling to wash my feet in Christ’s name.”

Eastminster has hosted two groups of these Taiwanese pastors for a weekend. They stay in the homes of church members and are warmly welcomed by their new American friends. The Rev. Billy Graham once said that every American Christian should have the opportunity to welcome Christians from other countries in their homes.

On Saturday evening, Eastminster hosted a culture night where the Taiwanese aboriginals taught everyone some of their songs and also one of their traditional dances. At the adult Sunday school, four of the Taiwanese pastors shared about their families and ministries in Taiwan. They were delighted to find that the folks at Eastminster were very interested in what God is doing in Taiwan. Since one-third of these Taiwanese pastors come from some of the 17 tribes of Indigenous Taiwanese, they wear their traditional aboriginal clothing in worship. It was beautiful to see them singing the anthem that day in their colorful clothes from different tribes.

Justin joins aboriginal youth in a dance on the basketball court. (Photo by John McCall)

After the weekend in Columbia, the church arranged transportation for us to drive back to Montreat, where we welcomed about 20 PC(USA) pastors, women and men, also from different people groups in the U.S. It was exciting for the Taiwanese pastors to learn that America also has a wide variety of people groups.

The generosity and interest of the Eastminster church deeply impressed the Taiwanese pastors. They were impressed by their willingness to learn from their new Taiwanese friends and were delighted to learn about the ministry of Eastminster in their mission work locally and globally.

A year later, folks from several of my partner churches came to Taiwan to see God’s work in that land. One of the associate pastors, Mark Durrett, and two young adults, Justin and Miles, made the long journey across the Pacific. Miles and Justin, both young fathers, had the opportunity to stay in an aboriginal village over a weekend. They played basketball with village youth and joined in their activities at the village community center.

It was beautiful to see the reversal of roles, from Eastminster folks hosting the Taiwanese, to the Taiwanese hosting the friends from Eastminster. After the weekend in the village, we all traveled to a church center to host a two-day retreat with the American guests and the Taiwanese pastors who had traveled to Montreat.

The Rev. John McCall is a mission co-worker serving in Taiwan. Learn more here.

The article first appeared in Mission Crossroads. Find it and other articles here

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Ruth Gardner, Director, Human Resources, Administrative Services Group (A Corp)
Shelley Gardner, Chaplain, Board of National Mission, Presbyterian Foundation

Let us pray

Gracious God, you are always faithful. Thank you for sharing your vision of how a church can flourish. Help us to reach out to those in our community who need support and a connection with you. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Monday, September 26, A Season of Peace

Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.
Matthew 10:40 (NRSV)

This past January I participated in a Contextual Immersions J-Term course on Immigration at the U.S.-Mexico Border, sponsored by Columbia Theological Seminary. During the 2½-week course my classmates, professors and I gathered often on Zoom to connect with new colleagues working and living at the border. We were able to hear firsthand stories of hope and joy, loss and longing, leaving home and arriving new places, endings and beginnings, and over and over, themes of being welcomed and welcoming others.

As we heard these stories of our neighbors brought closer by technology, we began to share relational moments and orient ourselves as new characters in the lives of one another. No longer were we strangers or “others” but rather a new grouping of activists, students, leaders and children of God. We were called to action to invest ourselves in our local refugee and migrant communities and to work to dispel the often-taught narrative that we should keep our distance. Reminded that just as Jesus was once a refugee, we were called into fully welcoming immigrants in whatever way we can.

As people of faith, we have a calling to examine how we are currently practicing radical welcome and acceptance to migrants and displaced people. The laws and practices of the United States have not historically been welcoming to all who want to come here, and we have tended to “other” those who are leaving the places they have always called home. Perhaps it is time we begin to open our doors wider and extend invitations of welcome to all.

Action: Research local businesses run by refugees and immigrants. Grab a friend, plan a visit, and support their work and trade.

Prayer: Holy One, Holy Three, just as you have moved and danced throughout history, we ask that you continue to journey alongside all who travel across land and sea. May we ever be reminded of your liberating hope and radical welcome as borders are crossed and new homes are cultivated. Amen.

 

 

Courtney Anne Henry is a current seminarian at Columbia Theological Seminary in the Dual Degree Program (M.Div. and MAPT ’24). She is an inquirer in the Presbytery of Greater Atlanta where she is currently discerning a creative and artistic calling to ministry.

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This year’s Path of Peace reflections are designed to help participants explore peacemaking efforts addressing some of the major issues of our time. The theme for the 29 days of the 2022 A Season of Peace is Led Forth in Peace: Critical Areas of Engagement for Peacemakers. With these daily reflections, we are invited to reflect upon ways to practice peace by engaging the following critical areas:

1. 1. 1. Climate change
      2. Nonviolence
      3. The intersection of poverty and racism
      4. Immigration/migration

Today in the Mission Yearbook - No senior discount here

Older adults are honored as ‘the saints among us’ during a hybrid worship service

September 26, 2022

“La finca,” part of the Comunidad Presbiteriana La Trinidad new worshiping community near Annapolis, Maryland, is seen as a place of refuge and community for those who worship there. (Photo courtesy of the Presbytery of Baltimore)

The Presbyterian Older Adults Ministries Network took the opportunity recently to honor “the saints among us” with a hybrid worship service originating from Hunting Ridge Presbyterian Church in Baltimore and witnessed by people in nearly 20 states.

Three pastors delivered homilies during the service: the Rev. Deborah McEachran of Hunting Ridge Presbyterian Church, the Rev. Keith Paige of Cherry Hill Community Presbyterian Church in Baltimore and Pastor Jose H. Lopez-Chapa of Comunidad Presbiteriana La Trinidad (CPT), a new worshiping community near Annapolis, Maryland.

“You deserve some recognition, my brothers and sisters,” McEachran said, focusing a homily not on endings, but on beginnings.

At the intercultural congregation McEachran serves, members from Cameroon describe an impending birth as a mother “about ready to pop.”

“It seems an apt description,” McEachran said. “The womb pops open and empties itself, brusquely popping that child into a world of light and air and welcoming arms and excited voices.”

Imagine God giving birth to mountain ranges, as the Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney does for one of the Scripture passages for that Sunday’s worship, Psalm 90:1–6. Gafney translates God as “Mother of the Mountains” here, McEachran said.

“It is this God, the Mother of the Mountains, who offers a place of refuge for every generation, young and old and all those in between,” McEachran said. “This Mother continues to give birth to new ideas, new forms of ministry to people we know and people we don’t know. Look at the ways God has popped during these last two years, when we have been learning to connect in different ways. … We have learned to record worship, meetings and educational offerings, extending our reach over miles and over time. This birthing God is always active within each of us and each of our communities.”

Families from Central America and Mexico cultivate crops and their faith at “la finca,” or “the farm.” (Photo courtesy of Comunidad Presbiteriana La Trinidad)

“Keep your eyes open,” McEachran suggested. “You are going to be called upon to assist in birth, like a midwife. How might you be needed to help the next generation see God as the Mother of the Mountains, the Mother of us all, the one who gives birth to new challenges, new ministries and new hopes?”

Lopez-Chapa described CPT as “a small farming project we have on a beautiful farm near Annapolis. The world opens up for me every time I go there. … It gives me the chance to look around and see meticulous gardens and a picturesque red paneled barn.” It’s referred to as “la finca,” or “the farm,” a central gathering place.

The 10 parcels are each rented to a family from Central America or Mexico. “During the growing season, you can come over after work or on the weekend and find a number of families tending to their parcels,” he said. “The kids run around and play in the dirt while mom and dad tend to the crops. People here care for one another, and they watch out for one another.”

La finca is “a place of rest and a place of freedom, a place of holiness, renewal and hope,” Lopez-Chapa said. “It’s a place where we know where God is” and how, as the psalmist said, “God existed even before the mountains” were made. “Anyone who has ever climbed a mountain, hiked a remote trail or gazed upon a waterfall must have shared a similar thought,” Lopez-Chapa said. “No matter what happens, God is always there with us. This, dear friends, is our faith. The Lord is our refuge, our dwelling place, our home. Thanks be to God.”

“Church, we are looking for a place to dwell,” Paige said. “We feel disconnected sometimes. We may be living in a house, but we might not feel at home. Lord, where is our dwelling place? Our spouse may be gone or in a nursing home, or perhaps we are the caregiver. We don’t want to be a burden. Where is our dwelling place?”

“We need a dwelling place for our own bodies,” Paige said. “We run from one doctor to the next. Our travel is limited, our friends are disappearing and our children have lives of their own. Where is our dwelling place? God has an answer: ‘Lord, you have been our dwelling place.’”

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Lemuel Garcia-Arroyo, Mission Engagement Advisor, Mission Engagement & Support, Presbyterian Mission Agency
Debbie Gardiner, Executive Assistant, Executive Director’s Office, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us pray

Loving God, we know you through your Son, Jesus Christ, and we serve you as led by the Holy Spirit. May we respond to your call as servants even as we seek to be leaders in your church. Amen.

Sunday, September 25, A Season of Peace

Because the Lord your God is the God of all gods and Lord of all lords, the great, mighty,
and awesome God  who doesn’t play favorites and doesn’t take bribes. He enacts justice for
orphans and widows, and he loves immigrants, giving them food and clothing.
That means you must also love strangers because you were strangers in Egypt.
Deuteronomy 10:17–19 (CEB)

America is a land of immigrants. Unless you are Native American, your people came from somewhere else.

When my in-laws immigrated from Germany, just 12 years after the end of World War II, they were not greeted with open arms in a country where anti-German sentiment was still strong. With the exception of a few kind and generous souls who made all the difference in their transition to this country, the good Christians of New England did not adhere to the biblical directives on how to treat strangers in their land.

For those of us who look to the Bible as our guide for living, there isn’t much wiggle room when it comes to how we should treat immigrants. We are to welcome them, care for them and treat them fairly. The government will have rules about who can and cannot live on this land, but our mandate as Christians is pretty clear.

The Jews were strangers in Egypt. Many years later Jesus and his parents were strangers in that same country, fleeing an oppressive dictator who wanted them dead. Our ancestors were once strangers in this land we call home.

We are called to love strangers in our land — not only because we were once strangers, but because we are called to love as God loves.

Action: Look into local efforts to welcome immigrants into your community. Consider ways that you can help with time, money or other gifts you have to offer.

Prayer: God who knows no stranger, help us to love ALL of our neighbors and to make those who have been displaced from their homes feel at home in our midst. Amen.

 

Anne Russ is an ordained pastor with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). She has a heart for small church ministry, Christian camping and the power of the Web to spread the Good News of the Gospel. Anne is a fiercely supportive theater mom, a loud laugher and a lover of good stories. She is a displaced Southerner living in New York who pastors through her online platform, DoubtingBeliever.com.

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This year’s Path of Peace reflections are designed to help participants explore peacemaking efforts addressing some of the major issues of our time. The theme for the 29 days of the 2022 A Season of Peace is Led Forth in Peace: Critical Areas of Engagement for Peacemakers. With these daily reflections, we are invited to reflect upon ways to practice peace by engaging the following critical areas:

1. 1. 1. Climate change
      2. Nonviolence
      3. The intersection of poverty and racism
      4. Immigration/migration

Minute for Mission: Gifts of New Immigrants

September 25, 2022

Rola Al Ashkar

Rola Al Ashkar is a Presbyterian Christian from Lebanon. She grew up in a non-religious family, in a culture drenched in religion. Her parents took her and her brothers to church and Sunday school on occasions. When she had her confirmation class, she received her first Bible, and even as a teenager, she read the Bible with critical eyes, questioning parts of it and searching for answers. Her curiosity led her to regularly attend Sunday services, youth meetings and church summer camps, and through those experiences her faith grew, and she found a community in the Presbyterian Synod of Syria and Lebanon.

Rola continued to search for more depth and to struggle with her commitment to her reformed faith, as she experienced religious discrimination in a culture where Presbyterians were a minority in a minority. At age 17, she decided to study theology and serve the church, though being a female minister wasn’t heard of at the time. Due to family opposition and cultural restraints, she could not join seminary until seven years later.

In 2011, she finally joined the Near East School of Theology in Beirut and was a part-time student for four years. Afterward, she transferred to Princeton Theological Seminary, where she graduated in 2016.

Even after her graduation, there were still no precedents to women ordinations in the Middle East, and Rola almost gave up her dream to become a pastor. This is when she decided to travel to the U.S., where she started serving Parkview Presbyterian Church in 2018, an intercultural PC(USA) church in Sacramento, California. Rola found a loving and supporting community in the Presbytery of Sacramento, where she got ordained in April 2021.

Now, Rola serves Westminster Presbyterian Church in Sacramento as Ministry Assistant for Outreach and Christian Education and is the organizer of the Iama Yoga New Worshiping Community.

Rev. Magdy B. Girgis, D. Min., Middle Eastern Ministries, PC(USA)

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff

Marissa Galvan-Valle, Associate, Hispanic Resources & Relationships, Presbyterian Publishing Corporation
David Gambrell, Associate, Worship, Theology & Worship, Theology, Formation & Evangelism, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us pray

Lord Jesus, today you call us to welcome the members of God’s family who come to our land to escape oppression, poverty, persecution, violence and war. Like your disciples, we too are filled with fear and doubt and even suspicion. We build barriers in our hearts and in our minds.

Help us by your grace,

To banish fear from our hearts, that we may embrace each of your children as our own brother and sister;
To welcome migrants and refugees with joy and generosity, while responding to their many needs;

To realize that you call all people to your holy mountain to learn the ways of peace and justice;

To share of our abundance as you spread a banquet before us;

To give witness to your love for all people, as we celebrate the many gifts they bring. We praise you and give you thanks for the family you have called together from so many people. We see in this human family a reflection of the divine unity of the one most Holy Trinity in whom we make our prayer.

Saturday, September 24, A Season of Peace

For you always have the poor with you.
Mark 14:7 (NRSV)

As a child, I grew up with the refrain, “We don’t see color.” It was often repeated by adults in my community who meant well, who thought they simplified the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s message for children’s ears. My parents shared with us the music of Peter, Paul and Mary; we watched “The Cosby Show”; and we had an extra set of grandparents who were a gay couple. Iconic white middle-class liberals in a notoriously conservative pocket of the United States.

This refrain of “we don’t see color” echoed throughout my life. As I grew, I studied history and social studies, and I earned degrees in Political Science and Political Theory. I realized the

narrative that I had been taught about race, color, creed, etc., being “meaningless” was a fallacy. My elders meant well, but they oversimplified the lessons learned by those who fought in the civil rights movement. As the scales fell from my eyes, I learned about the insidious nature of environmental racism, housing discrimination and voter rights denials. In course after course, from story to story, I realized that the colorblindness that I had so professed was part of the more immense evil of systemic racism.

A parallel between the oversimplification of the Rev. Dr. King’s message to a single sentence, and Jesus saying, “The poor will always be with you” in the Gospel of Mark, is not lost on me. After many years of thinking about the intersection of race and poverty, these two stories overlap effortlessly. The Rev. Dr. King reminded us often that we cannot ignore differences away, pay our way out of disparity or simplify the narrative of poverty into sound bites.

Christ wasn’t affirming poverty as a natural state of being when he said the poor will always be with us. He reminded his followers to take moments of joy in their lives and refreshment before coming back to the fight. To be restored in the spirit so that they could dismantle the systems that cause suffering. Jesus tells Judas the poor will be with you always only once. He repeatedly tells those who follow him that they are commissioned to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, comfort the afflicted and visit the imprisoned. The poor are with us is not a mandate to continue to oppress and discriminate, but rather to address the needs as generations come to pass.

Action: Consider where you have accepted things as they are: ignored needs that could be addressed, pled colorblindness, taken hard-heartedness that poverty is an unanswerable issue? How has your perception of race and poverty changed throughout your life?

Prayer: God of the poor, lead us out of complacency and move us away from well-meaning teachings that simply aren’t true. May we not shrug our shoulders at issues of race and poverty, but continue to work for peace and justice for all God’s children. Amen.

 

The Rev. Kimberly Reinholz is an Episcopal priest, currently between calls, most recently the associate rector of Grace and Holt Trinity Church in Richmond, Virginia. She currently lives in New Jersey with her clergy spouse, two kids and a rescue dog. She has a passion for working with youth and young adults and believes that the church isn’t dying, rather changing. As it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be.

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This year’s Path of Peace reflections are designed to help participants explore peacemaking efforts addressing some of the major issues of our time. The theme for the 29 days of the 2022 A Season of Peace is Led Forth in Peace: Critical Areas of Engagement for Peacemakers. With these daily reflections, we are invited to reflect upon ways to practice peace by engaging the following critical areas:

1. 1. 1. Climate change
      2. Nonviolence
      3. The intersection of poverty and racism
      4. Immigration/migration