Powerful Call to Service in Sermon at Minneapolis’ Westminster Presbyterian Church

In the January 28 sermon at Westminster Presbyterian Church Rev. Timothy Hart-Andersen delivered a powerful call for all to go out into the world and serve those in need.[1]

Reading from Holy Scripture

The Bible text was Luke 4:14-30 (NRSV):

  • “Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.”
  • “When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’”

  • “And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” He said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’ And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’” And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers[a]in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.”

The Sermon: “What Is Jesus Up To?”

“The preacher that day in Nazareth was on a roll when he came to town. He’d been on a speaking tour throughout Galilee, visiting the villages and synagogues there, empowered by the Holy Spirit, and things were going his way. The response was good. He was being praised everywhere. His reputation was growing.”

“esus is strategic in starting his ministry. He comes out of 40 days in the Judean wilderness and does not go home first. Instead, he goes to the larger towns in the area and begins preaching there – in Capernaum and Magdala, home to the woman we will come to know as Mary Magdalene.”

“Two years ago Beth and I walked from Nazareth down to the Sea of Galilee. It took us four days. On the pilgrimage we visited the ancient synagogues of Magdala and Capernaum where Jesus had taught before going home to Nazareth. Those villages were quite different from his hilltop hometown. They were on the Sea of Galilee, along busy trade routes, coming from Egypt and going on to Syria. In contrast, Nazareth was off the beaten path, high in the hills. It was a small, isolated village – maybe 300-400 people – full of conservative, traditional Jews, and somewhat closed off, sheltered from the rest of the world.”

“By the time Jesus finally gets back to his hometown he’s made a real name for himself in the more cosmopolitan region along the shores of the Sea of Galilee. The people of Nazareth have heard all about him. They expect him to do for them what he has done for those down in Capernaum and the other towns.”

“Jesus goes to his family synagogue on the Sabbath Day. He’s going to be guest preacher there. He’s handed the scroll of Isaiah and unrolls it to a familiar passage about the hoped-for Messiah who would open a new era, a new day of justice and peace among the people of God. And then he begins his sermon this way:”

“’Today,’  he says, ‘This scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’”

“So far, so good. Hometown boy makes a name for himself.”

“It will be the first and only time he ever gets that close to an outright claim to the messiah mantle. He should have stopped there, but Jesus keeps going. Jesus is up to something else, and that’s when he gets into trouble. The preacher’s good run is about to come crashing to a halt – and I have great sympathy for him.”

“God, he says, is breaking into history and calling them to account for the way they live. To illustrate this, he mentions two times in Hebrew history when God had intervened to save the people from certain destruction, through famine or drought. The problem is that both times God chose to work not through the most pious believers, like those seated in the synagogue that day, but, rather, through unexpected people, even reviled people – a non-Jewish widow and a non-Jew with leprosy, neither of whom had any standing whatsoever among those assumed to be God’s people.”

“That was too much for the congregation in Nazareth. First to equate himself with the long-awaited Messiah – sounding like blasphemy! And then to imply they were not among those through whom God would work – sounding like heresy!”

“Professor Tom Long says of preaching that at its heart is ‘the astonishing cry of the witness, ‘Something has happened! Everything has changed!.’”’ (Why I’ve focused on form and function,” Christian Century, 12/20/17, p. 29)

“That’s what the preacher is up to that day in Nazareth. That’s what Jesus is saying. Something has happened. Everything has changed!”

“But his listeners have neither eyes to see nor ears to hear. Their hearts are closed. That will be the story of the rest of the ministry of Jesus.”

“Those who are the most religiously observant will not be the ones who believe that something has happened and everything has changed. It will be the women and children, who don’t count for anything in that time, whom he honors. It will be the people rejected because of disease or disability or age or status in life, whom he heals and loves. It will be the sinners condemned by everyone else, whom he accepts. They will hear him. They will believe. Their lives will be changed.”

“But the people in Nazareth in the synagogue that day aren’t ready for that. They’re furious at Jesus for suggesting they’re not in God’s good graces. In their fury they push Jesus out of the synagogue and into the streets and to the edge of town and nearly throw him off the cliff.”

“Surely that experience reminded Jesus what he had just gone through in the desert temptations, when the devil took him to a high tower and told him to jump and the angels would save him. We don’t learn what saves him that day in Nazareth, but he breaks free and walks away, unscathed, and heads back down toward the towns along the Sea of Galilee.”

“In a way, the townspeople do exactly what Jesus calls them to do: they leave the confines of the synagogue and go out into the streets, out into the town, out among the people who are at the center of God’s concern. A summons to go out into the city should sound familiar to us at Westminster – something of a recurring theme these days.”

“If they are ‘to bring good news to the poor’ and ‘proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind (and) let the oppressed go free,”’that will not happen inside their house of worship. We will never address the crying needs of so many in our world if we sit behind these walls, comfortable in our religious rituals and never go outside to encounter the world. And if we do go outside we will not be able to do much by ourselves.”

“Ministry in the 21st century necessarily draws us out of the protection of our own way of doing religion and into coalitions with people of other faiths or of good will. This afternoon’s interfaith gathering in our sanctuary, Bold Hope in the North, will help prevent homelessness because we’re working with thousands of others whose religious practice requires them – as does ours – to leave their houses of worship and work together in the streets of the city for the common good.”[2]

“If we want to  join Jesus in proclaiming ‘the year of the Lord’s favor’ we will find ourselves having to stand up for things we had at one time counted on someone else to deal with. We will need to speak out against what we had previously accepted or ignored or let slide. We will go places we have not gone before.”

“We know those places, and we try to avoid them. It’s simpler to hide behind the mantle of our professed religion and go through the motions than it is truly to practice our faith. And it’s always easier to see that kind of hypocrisy happening in others, especially if they are within our own tradition, than to see it in ourselves. I am guilty of this.”

“This week when I read about Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, saying that evangelical Christians were tired of being ‘kicked around’ by the previous administration in Washington and, referring to the current administration, ‘are finally glad there’s somebody on the playground…willing to punch the bully.’ I reacted to that.”

“When asked about the injunction to turn the other cheek, Perkins said, ‘You know, you only have two cheeks. Look, Christianity is not all about being a welcome mat which people can just stomp their feet on.’”

“Tell that to Jesus as he’s pushed out of the synagogue by his pious countrymen and nearly thrown off the cliff, as he’s persecuted and hounded by the religious and political authorities of his time, and as he’s walking up the hill to Calvary.”

“Too often self-described evangelicals seem willing to set aside the kind of biblical mandate Jesus lays on us in Nazareth for short-term political gain. Not all evangelicals agree; in fact, there’s quite a discussion among them now. Many of them are wondering if the term ‘evangelical’ still has any shred of meaning.”

“But before we judge our sisters and brothers in the faith too harshly let’s remember that Jesus was speaking not only to them, but to us, as well. We should take care not to become obsessed with the speck in someone else’s eye and not notice the log in our own. In the cultural and political and religious climate of America today it is so easy, and – shall we not confess it – sosatisfying, to see all that is wrong in somebody else, in the other, those with whom we disagree.”

“The danger with putting on such blinders, of course, is that we can’t see where we fall short, as well. And then we become the righteously offended worshippers in the synagogue in Nazareth. We imagine Jesus is talking about someone else, not us, when he repeats those words from Isaiah about bringing good news to the poor, and when he says that God will choose to work through not those in the synagogue, not those in the sanctuary, but through the last people we would expect.”

“’Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing,’ Jesus says of Isaiah’s words. Something has happened. Everything has changed!”

“That synagogue scene is the start of the public ministry of Jesus. He’s not come to Nazareth to meet the religious expectations of his fellow townspeople or to play into their prejudice and affirm it. He’s not there to talk about religious things at all, really, about tithing, or keeping the Sabbath, or following the religious proscriptions about eating and farming and marriage and sex and family life – there were rules for everything, 613 of them in the Torah – but Jesus does not turn to them in his one and only sermon in his hometown synagogue.”

“That’s because Jesus isn’t focused on religion for its own sake. And he’s especially not interested in religiosity, that is, adhering to the rules, keeping the tradition, following the path trod for centuries, but missing the point of it altogether. As if nothing had happened and everything were the same.”

“If our faith doesn’t shake us up and wake us up and turn us around then we’re not paying attention. And in Jesus’ eyes there’s nothing worse than mouthing the faith and not meaning it. His most strident words in the gospel are reserved for hypocrites, those who profess religion but have no intention of practicing what God desires of us.”

“Jesus is challenging those of us who would follow him to reexamine our lives. Not somebody else’s life; our lives.”

“I know at certain points in my life I’ve found it was time to take stock of how I was living. Most recently that occurred when my parents died. Those of you who have gone through the death of a loved one know what I mean: something happens and everything changes. And we find ourselves asking big questions about the purpose of life. We look for new approaches, make new discoveries about ourselves, draw new conclusions about what really matters. We wonder what difference we’re making in life.”

“And if we profess to follow Jesus, as most of us do, we might ask how we’re part of the unfolding reign of God of which Isaiah speaks.”.

“Jesus is not concerned with getting the doctrine right. He’s focused instead on getting the practice of our faith right. He wants to get relationships right – not only personal relationships, but relationships among the human family, within our communities. Our faith is fundamentally about God’s hope for humanity, about just relationships among neighbors and among nations, about loving the most vulnerable among us – not about a religious creed or system, and getting it just right.”

“The preacher that day in Nazareth was digging deep and hitting home:  ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’”

“It was not about their religion. It was about their lives. It was, and it is, about our lives.”

“Something has happened. Everything has changed.”

“Thanks be to God.”

Conclusion

Yes, everyone in the world, Christian or not, should go out into the world and help others. Yet no one can do everything that needs to be done and that thought often is daunting and debilitating. Therefore, one needs to go through a process of discernment to determine what your vocation is or should be and then you need to go out and work to further that vocation. Also one needs to recognize that your vocation may change over time. Just get started.[3]

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[1] The service’s bulletin  and the sermon text are available on the church website.

[2] See Minneapolis Interfaith Gathering To End Homelessness, dwkcommentaries.com (Jan. 29, 2018)

[3] See these posts to this blog: My General Thoughts on Vocation (Feb. 6, 2014); Another Powerful Worship Service about Vocation (Feb.  2014); Other Scriptural Passages About Vocation (Feb. 17, 2014); My Vocations (Feb. 23, 2014); Where Is the Sense of Vocation in Roger Cohen’s Writings? (Dec. 7, 2016).

 

 

 

 

 

New Uses of New Spaces at Minneapolis’ Westminster Presbyterian Church   

The previous post covered the joyous celebration of the new addition at Westminster Presbyterian Church on Martin Luther King, Jr. Sunday, January 14, 2018. Now we examine how that new space will be used after looking at these photographs of the new addition (the last two show a 21st century version of stained glass windows provided by a film application from 3M).

The Westminster Counseling Center— which the church has long supported with funding, office space and administrative support — has new offices on the second floor of the new expansion to provide counseling by licensed psychotherapists, welcoming people of all faiths or none at all to seek counseling and mental health services in an open and welcoming environment. Such services are provided on a sliding-fee scale to ensure  high-quality counseling to those who could not otherwise afford it, no matter their circumstances.

The expansion will also soon house the Harman Center for Child & Family Wellbeing, a new and innovative early intervention clinic of St. David’s Center–Child & Family Development.[1] The Harman Center will occupy approximately 8,000 square feet of space on the second floor, and will primarily serve children from birth to age five who have experienced relational trauma. Services will include an infant team to assess and treat families with children in out-of-home placement, children’s mental health services and pediatric rehabilitative therapies, a clinical training site for graduate students in mental health, and a new home for the Center’s day-treatment program for young Somali children diagnosed with autism. A private space for Islamic prayer will be provided.

The new Recreation Room and adjacent Youth Room offer open, youth-friendly places for Westminster’s young people as well as youth groups from all over the country who often need a place to connect and stay.

In partnership with Hennepin County Library, Westminster will host an onsite senior community center two days per week to respond to the needs of the downtown seniors dispersed by the recent closures of two senior centers in the area. The church also will be providing a safe space for homeless people to store their belongings.

Westminster is planning two new worship services for Westminster Hall: starting February 14, a 6:30 p.m. Wednesday contemplative service called “The Clearing,” and in September, a 5:00 p.m. Sunday service.

There also are these upcoming inaugural events.

January 28 (2:00 p.m.)  Bold Hope in the North. This free and open-to-the-public event is co-sponsored by Downtown Congregations to End Homelessness  and the Super Bowl Host Committee.  100% of the free-will donations at the event will go to the highly effective Emergency Rental Assistance Program (80% of families who received this assistance have remained housed after six months). The program will be emceed by Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey  and  joined by senior clergy from the downtown congregations (Christian, Jewish and Muslim) and two former NFL Vikings stars: punter Greg Coleman and defensive end Mark Mullaney. Music will be provided by J.D. and Fred Steele, Amwaaj Middle Eastern Ensemble, MacPhail Community Youth Choir, Mill City Singers, Spoken- word teen artist Kaaha Kaahiye and Klezmer Cabaret Orchestra. Following the program, attendees will enjoy delicious food from Holy Land Market and assemble dignity bags for people who are homeless (consisting of hygiene products, socks, hand warmers, food, etc.).

February 25 (4:00 p.m.) Annual Youth Coffeehouse Cabaret will be presented by the church’s youth to showcase their talents through individual and group performances and a skit comedy.

March 2 (7:30 p.m.)Cantus, a male chamber a cappella ensemble that has an office and practice space at Westminster, will present the inaugural concert in Westminster Hall, a photograph of which is below. Additional details to be announced.

March 3 (10:30 a.m.—12:30 p.m.). Community Open House and Justice Choir Sing-Along. Tesfa Wondemagegnehu, Westminster’s Director, Choral Ministries, will lead all in the sing-along.

April 17. Harman Center Grand Opening with two events: over the lunch hour will be dedicated to the downtown business community and in the afternoon the broader community will be involved. More details will be forthcoming on its website: https://www.stdavidscenter.org/.

May 5 (5:00 p.m.-8:30 p.m.). Celebration of Open Doors/Open Future Campaign. Worship in the sanctuary to recognize the generosity of the congregation and leaders in the Open Doors Open Futures project. Vice President Walter Mondale, a Westminster member, will be a speaker, as well as several youth and the campaign co-chairs. Afterwards games and activities on both Nicollet and Marquette Green and a  buffet dinner and light appetizers. Watch the Westminster website for updates.

May 17-19. Windows into Palestine: Encountering the Heart of a People through Art. This collaboration among Westminster; its partner congregation, Christmas Lutheran Church of Bethlehem, Palestine; Bright Stars of Bethlehem; and Bethlehem Lutheran Foundation will include an art exhibit, Choral and Instrumental Music, featuring the Georges Lammam Ensemble; Food Tastings and Cooking Demonstrations; Chef Showcase – featuring Chef Sameh Wadi of Minneapolis’ World Street Kitchen and Chef Bassem Hazboun from Bethlehem; and  Spice and Crafts Market. Most of these programs will be at Westminster. Check the festival’s website for more details: https://www.windowsintopalestine.org.

Conclusion

Welcome all to this beautiful new space and inspiring programs!

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[1] St. David’s Center at its Minnetonka campus offers an exceptional preschool, children’s mental health clinic and pediatric therapy clinic as well as day-treatment programs for children with autism and mental health diagnoses.

 

 

 

 

Martin Luther King, Jr. Sunday at Minneapolis’ Westminster Presbyterian Church

This year’s celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr. Sunday on January 14 was a very special occasion for Minneapolis’ Westminster Presbyterian Church.[1] We welcomed the pastors and members of our local partner congregations, Liberty Community Church and Grace-Trinity Community Church, to hear the sermon by Rev. Dr. J. Herbert Nelson, II , the highest official (Stated Clerk) of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) denomination.[2] The Biblical passages for the day were 1 Samuel 3:1-10 and John 1: 43-51.

After the worship service, we explored the spaces in our new addition whose front exterior is shown in this photograph.

The following is a summary of this historic day by the church’s communications consultant, Kathy Graves, with the first photograph by Westminster member, Tom Northenscold, and the other two by Rev. Brennan Blue.[3]

The Worship Service

“A celebratory, soulful group of musicians from Westminster and its partner [congregations] welcomed people to worship. . . [followed by a reminder from] Tim Hart-Andersen, senior pastor at Westminster. . .: ‘Today is just the beginning. Many of us have worked long and hard to get to this moment, but our vision of a parking lot has grown into a vision for transforming our presence in the city. Our work is ahead of us.’”[4]

Alika Galloway, co-pastor of Liberty, Minnesota’s only primarily African-American PC(USA) congregation, shared the successes of her church’s 21st Century Academy, a rigorous after-school and summer academic program partially funded by [Westminster’s] Open Doors Open Futures. Daniel Vigilante, pastor of Grace-Trinity, described the support his congregation received from Westminster’s campaign. Five years ago, the congregation had expected to close because of dwindling numbers and resources when Westminster and Grace-Trinity formed a unique partnership. Today, Grace-Trinity is thriving and nearly self-supporting.”

“Rev. J. Herbert Nelson II [in the  photograph to the left] spoke [in his sermon] of the need to ‘get real about those being left behind.’ He urged the congregation to listen to what God is calling them to be, especially in the beautiful new spaces created by Open Doors Open Futures. “’Be consumed not with the love of this building but by a love of this community,’ he told worshippers. ‘Use this space wisely. You have much and have already used it for the glory of God. Take it and do a whole lot more. Let the world know you are standing firm.’”

“Worship concluded with [a call-and-response reading of the unique] “Litany for a New Day,” which offered these words [by everyone in the congregation]: ‘We hope this is where new life happens, where friendships are made and children are loved, where hands serve and prophetic voices are nurtured out of silence, where good news is proclaimed in a broken world and radical hospitality is our daily practice, where you, O God, are worshipped and another generation experiences resurrection.’”

The Reception

“Following worship, the congregation cut the ribbons’ on the expansion, which were actually handcrafted banners created by [Rev.] Beth Hart-Andersen from textiles donated by Westminster members and which were carried down the Trinity Staircase of the new space by Westminster youth as shown in the photograph to the right.

“Drummers [then] led a procession of nearly 1,100 people out into the new wing and down the four-story “Trinity Staircase” (and adjacent elevators) into the new 300-stall underground parking garage. Outside temperatures below zero led to a brisk and festive blessing of the garage.’

“As the youth group sang “Amazing Grace,’ they made their way back up to the first floor to inaugurate Westminster Hall with the premiere of composer Tom Trenney’s ‘I Will Make a Way,’ a setting of Isaiah 43:19, commissioned by Westminster for the occasion. Tesfa Wondemagegnehu, Westminster’s director of choral ministries, led the Westminster Choir in a performance that showed off the magnificent acoustics of the space as shown in this photograph.[5]

“’The new hall will allow the church to diversify its worship offerings as well as fulfill long-unmet needs for community meetings and congregational celebrations. ‘Westminster Hall is the heart of the new first floor expansion,’ said Hart-Andersen. ‘It will allow us to worship in a new key. The city is right here,’ he said, gesturing to a full-length wall of glass overlooking Westminster Plaza on Nicollet Mall. ‘We can see the city and it can see us.’”

“The hall comfortably accommodates up to 400 people. State-of-the art lighting and acoustics allow for a wide array of programming. Sunlight passes through a tree-like canopy overhead, speaking to passages in scripture that reference the power and symbolism of nature and life’s cycles.”

James Dayton, the lead architect, thanked the congregation for its steadfast support of the project. ‘My firm does this work every day, but you don’t,’ he said. ‘You had to learn a whole set of skills. And you did. This building makes manifest the faith of this congregation. Thank you for allowing us to be part of this.’”

“’Westminster is a church open to creative new ways to serve and engage the city,’ said Hart-Andersen. ‘This new wing gives us the tools to do that: easy access, multi-use space, enhanced technology, inspired green design, and much more.’” (A subsequent post will discuss how that new space will be used.)

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[1] The live stream of the service is on the church website, and the bulletin for the service should soon be there as well..

[2]  Rev. Nelson is the son, grandson, and nephew of Presbyterian pastors and the first African- American to lead the denomination, which has a 300-year history in the U.S. As Stated Clerk his duties include interpreting assembly actions, representing the church on various denominational and ecumenical councils, witnessing on behalf of the church to social justice

[3] Graves, Westminster Presbyterian Church opens doors on expansion to historic downtown Minneapolis building, Presbyterian Outlook (Jan. 19, 2018); Powell, Westminster Presbyterian to serve as a cornerstone of justice, Presbyterian Mission (Jan. 17, 2018).

[4] The musicians were Sam Reeves, Jr., pianist and Liberty Church’s  Minister of Music; Brian “Snowman” Powers, a Louisiana-bred saxophonist, composer and music producer; and Chris Koza, a singer-songwriter-guitarist and member of Grace-Trinity Community Church.

[5] The Westminster Choir also was joined by the church’s Global Choir (in which this blogger sings bass), and Youth Choir while the children’s Choristers danced for a performance of “Bonse Aba,” a beautiful traditional Zambian anthem, whose native language words translate in English as, “All that sing have the right to be called the children of God.