Reposted from Facebook:
Mom, I recall growing up in the Methodist Church for a number of reasons you specified, years after you left college, where there was infighting among all sorts of Christ-followers, and the value of friendships that led you to the L-rd. And I recall something that we did that was etched into my spirit, and have never let go. First time I knew it was right. And the first time a woman led me in such a meaningful time of worship.
And before anyone asks me, I can articulate textually, contra the tired, old arguments that they cannot lead or pastor, how they can.
Mom, one First Sunday morning in the late 80’s, we had decided to remain how and watch church from home, and during the time for taking the bread and the cup, you came from the kitchen bearing a cup of juice that had grapes floating in it, and a loaf of leavened bread. And the three of us sat and Holy Spirit showed up in that connection with His Love, in, with, and under the Medicine of Immortality (Ignatius of Antioch).
Since that day, I have seen and communed with many different groupings and manifestations of Bayit Adonai, the King’s Assembly, the ἐκκλησία, and have seen a whole lot, and been led into a whole lot.
Reasons I have friends who are practicing Catholics, as well as those who, like me, are practicing Jews.
And then there is Arthur Burk, the Man From California who added another layer to the Remnants of the Pesach Supper….
Following the breaking of the loaf of blessing in our celebrations as a global tribe, he mentioned the cup was an apocalyptic and eschatological reminder of anticipating the return of the Lamb of G-d, and as we engage in the Fractal of Four that helps heal those of us with PTSD (Anticipate, Experience, Savor, and Tell/Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and the Kingdom/Right Atrium, Right Ventricle, Left Atrium, Left Ventricle).
And so, this connecting point of encounter with the King is used, most notably during Pesach, the season in which my second marriage began, as a tool of deliverance and exorcism, and also as a tool for alignment. First employed by you to help us as a family stay in a place of alignment when so many other things were falling out of alignment, it communicated much to me.
And now, in this season when more alignment of other parts of my family, blood, marriage, adoption, and spiritual, I remember the way the King met me in Seattle, which caused everything to shift in the way I approach pastoral work, since the Man From California recognized and called me what I am: a pastor. It’s not what I am, it’s who I am, and it has always been who I am. Not merely an electrician, not merely a teacher, but a pastor. “A Naval Aviator. It’s not what I am; it’s who I am”.
It is a reminder to grace and bless and bring into alignment the organizations I lead and of which I am part.
And one other thing I gathered from interacting with you whenever I have stepped into other churches and gatherings: I absolutely hate thin celebrations, celebrations that seem more buoyed or framed by fears, fears cultivated by the celebration of feasts, agape feasts, Jewish feasts, or otherwise, and other restrained “celebrations” that do not cultivate in us what Thomas Aquinas called the “red hot poker in the fire”. Salvation is not merely an insurance policy for barely-saved sinners, nor is it merely a penal substitution or a forensic justification, though those are important tiny-arse facets of it, but rather it is a gateway and a threshold across which we pass on the journey to being fully and completely transformed that we bear His fire and His image as the red-hot poker does the fire in which it rests. And that change is meant to temper and permeate all that we do and are, as we are made permanently hot and cold by turns as we do the dance as the season demands.
So, Mom, do not underestimate the impact you had, amidst the pain and abuse of too many others that could have driven me and Nick away from the King. And remember the grace on the land that helped anchor me as a unique son of the King in this season, and one tied deeply to land and people. This season will bear fruit; the Zoologist understood that. Their abuse and blame for their abuse does not fall on you, nor does any accrued shame. Neither of these are the King’s way.
And this season is a season of steep rescue by those who have put skin in the game for the rescue missions that are coming. For one too many victims of the October season and other crap that we have sat and tolerated. It’s time. And this is when the time for rescuing those too damaged by junk is ripened.
“I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.”
J.R.R. Tolkein, The Two Towers