Wednesday Night Words is underway each Wednesday evening at 6:30 p.m. in Kendall Hall. Our first theological word for exploration was “year,” and we spent our time together exploring the liturgical church year. At the end of our session we worked with partners to write short prayers appropriate for different seasons, learning that there are some very talented liturgy writers around here!
ADVENT: Dear God, thank you for the promise of good things to come, so . . . let’s gather together with expectation in this season of hope, of peace, of joy, and of love. Amen.
CHRISTMAS: Dear Lord, we celebrate this day because we recognize we’ve been given the greatest gift, Emmanuel, you with us. We thank you for not separating yourself from us, for making a way for us to again connect directly to you. In a new way, we celebrate the joy of our salvation and invite you into this space this morning. Be with us as we go forth and direct our words and steps to be pleasing in your sight. In the name of Jesus we pray, Amen.
EPIPHANY: Dear God, thank you for the gift of your Son. As we are now in the season of Epiphany we look toward this season of light and life. May your Spirit guide us as we grow in your wisdom. Amen.
PENTECOST: Dear God, we are gathered here waiting for your Holy Spirit to ignite our hearts with the fire of courage and purpose. We invite you to come down among us and spread your radical Spirit of inclusion, of hope, and of healing. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
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Wednesday Night Words Starting September 16, we’ll offer a theological study session called “Wednesday Night Words” every week at 6:30 p.m. This will be a time to examine different theological words. Sin? Resurrection? Gospel? Advent? Common lingo for church folks, but why have we used them and what do they mean? We’ll look at theologians, Scripture, and share our own understandings too! For more information, see Amy Butler.
Artfully Defiant
Looking for a special spiritual practice to try, just for Lent? Consider joining us on Wednesday nights at 6:30 p.m. in
the Chapel, beginning this Wednesday, February 25th. Our seven weeks are entitled Artfully Defiant: A Lenten Adventure with The Artist’s Way.
We’ll be using Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way as a guide for exploring how it is we open ourselves to God’s creative work in and through us. If you are looking for an opportunity to explore your creative side . . . if you need a push in that direction . . . or even if you’re just looking for a new spiritual practice for the season of Lent: consider joining us.
Here’s our schedule:
March 4 Safe in the Arms of God
March 11 Do You Know Your Name?
March 18 Accepting Power
March 25 Being the NEW YOU Through and Through
April 1 Living Large, the Recession be Damned
April 8 Life’s Final Exam: Have You Learned to Really Trust God?
Questions? Talk with Pastor Amy (abutler at calvarydc dot org) or Caroline Armijo (caroline dot armijo at gmail dot com).
Answer the Call: Wednesday Night Worship
Each Wednesday at 6:30pm in the Chapel. We will hear about the different callings of people in our community. We will join in a “house church” setting with worship, study and sharing. Please contact Cheryl Branham if you have any questions.
Beginning October 1, we will meet weekly for worship, Wednesdays at 6:30 p.m. For more info please contact Cheryl Branham.
Photos from Refresh, September 17:
Photos from Refresh, August 20:
Refresh: July 23
This meditation was preached by Pastor Amy at our July 23, 2008 Wednesday night worship series, Refresh. Make plans to join us August 20 at 6:30 pm at Calvary when Paul Nixon reflects on the theme Receive.
Restore: A Reflection on Psalm 23 and John 4
I confess that I never gave it all that much thought before now . . . usually when I say or hear the words of Psalm 23 I don’t think too much at all-it’s almost rote . . . “the Lord is my shepherd I shall not want . . . .”
But I got to thinking this week that the writer of that Psalm must have been in some really bad place when he wrote those words. Just think: you have to be having more than just a bad day to write the words: “God leads me beside still waters . . . God restores my soul,” because it seems to me that restoration is no small matter.
For anything to get to the point where it needs to be restored, after all, is pretty close to the edge of just throwing up your hands and giving up altogether. Is it worth salvaging at all? Maybe not. Talking about restoration is different, say, than talking about adjustment . . . or even repair.
But the Psalmist describes an encounter with God that leads him and his battered, bruised, frayed and falling-apart soul right to the edge of a pool of life-giving water, cool water that trickles into all the broken places, fills in the dried out cracks and pools together all the crumbling bits until his soul is restored-reestablished-replaced-put right back into a place of possibility and promise, of life and viability.
She may not even have known it, but that was exactly what the Samaritan woman was looking for that day when she picked up her bucket and got ready to trek down to the well to get the water she needed for her day’s tasks. To her, maybe it felt like another thing on her to-do list, just one more thing she had to accomplish.
Maybe she didn’t even realize how close her soul was to crumbling into a useless pile of dust and blowing away altogether.
But Jesus knew.
He saw her making her way down the path to the well and he knew there was no reason she should have been coming to the well in the heat of the day. All the women of the village came to the well early in the morning . . . or as night was falling and dusk cooled the air. The desert where they lived was too hot to do the difficult task of toting water when the sun was burning hot and bright in the middle of the day. Jesus knew immediately that she was teetering on the edge of respectability-sanity, even.
Jesus opened their conversation by asking for a drink of water, and before she knew it, all the pain and disrepair of her broken life was spilled out right there at his feet. All those years of carrying it all, trying so desperately to pretend that it was a pretty, whole life . . . it was right there at the edge of the water that she could finally see what she really needed was to be restored; fixed; glued back together; taken from something jagged and almost hopelessly irretrievable . . . to something whole again. What she needed was to be restored.
I spent most of last week in New Orleans. I used to live there; we moved here a few years before Katrina. This was not my first time back since Katrina, but it was definitely the first time I saw significant progress.
New Orleans, if you’ve ever been there, is a quirky city, period. It will never be, say, Atlanta, with rows of neat strip malls and ordered housing developments.
But the devastation since Katrina has been just overwhelming. Aside from piles of garbage and street after street of deserted houses, the things I found most striking my first few times back were: the lack of color; all the dead plants-blocks and blocks of brown as far as the eye could see; it was the eerie silence of no traffic and the inky blackness of neighborhoods void of streetlights.
One of the worst experiences of my early trips back was driving by the house where we lived. We were just renters, of course, but it is a house with a lot of memories. Two of our kids were born while we lived there; I was ordained; my 3 year old son toddled through the living room one day, looked at the front page of the newspaper, saw a picture of Monica Lewinsky and said, “Hey! That girl lives in my TV!” You know, memories.
After Katrina, though, the house was destroyed. It had to be gutted all the way down to the studs. All the windows were broken out-you could look through from the front of the house to the backyard. Everything physical I associated with my memories of that house was gone, and to add insult to injury, a huge oak tree had totally flattened the garage.
Honestly, I didn’t think it could ever be put back to the way I remembered it.
But this time I drove by again-almost three years later. What I saw astounded me. The house is essentially the same. But it has been restored. It’s clearly an inhabited house-I could see toys on the front lawn. It actually has a lawn, with flower beds. The windows are bright and gleaming; the paint is new. In fact, not only is it clearly inhabitable again, there have been some significant improvements. The rusted out fence on the side of the house has been replaced. The ugly 60s scrollwork columns along the front of the house have been replaced with new, craftsman style pillars. Hanging on the outside walls are slick, white plantation shutters-they weren’t there before!
I didn’t go inside, of course, but I’ll bet even the turquoise laminate countertop has been replaced.
The house is restored, and in it’s restoration it is even better than what it was before.
This is exactly what Jesus was talking about when he offered the Samaritan woman at the well that day a drink of living water.
Jesus wasn’t offering her a 20 oz. Big Gulp; he was offering what the writer of Psalm 23 found when God led him beside still waters and restored-restored-his soul.
And this is what Jesus offers us. When our souls feel wrung out-extended beyond any reasonable expectation. When we’re tired and worn, at the point of breaking even though we can still put on a good face in the morning. And this is what Jesus offers us when our lives are devastated: empty, abandoned shells, void of life and promise and hope.
Restored. Brought back to a place of wholeness and peace. Rebuilt . . . and even better than we were before.
Come to the water. God wants to restore your soul. Amen.
