St. Margaret’s Church

Sermon for Pentecost Year C

Rev. Martha Kirkpatrick

May 19, 2013

Genesis 11:1-9; Ps. 104:25-35, 37; Acts 2:1-21; John 14:8-17, 25-27

“What does this mean?”

            Teilhard de Chardin, French philosopher and Jesuit priest who lived in the first half of the 20th century, asks this question: “Are we human beings having a spiritual experience or are we spiritual beings having a human experience?” I understand this to be a rhetorical question, one that invites us into the space between what we probably automatically assume to be the case, on the one hand, and what deeply and truly is, on the other. So much of our understanding of our lives as Christians rests on whether we understand ourselves to be embodied spirits, or human beings who go about our days — going to work, washing the dishes, brushing our teeth, listening to the news, and so forth — and occasionally, if we’re lucky, have something we would call a “spiritual experience.”  May I suggest that you are spirit — intimately and radically connected to Spirit, and thus eternal — having a particular, human, embodied experience.

             How we see it is everything. This is the great transformation that happened to Jesus’ followers. These spirits, in their particular inflection as Mary Magdalene, Peter, Andrew, Thomas, and the others move from knowing Jesus of Nazareth, experiencing his crucifixion, recognizing him in his resurrection appearances, witnessing his ascent into heaven, and, today, experiencing the descent of the Holy Spirit. And I want to suggest to you that if we are awake — that great injunction of all the wisdom traditions, to “wake up” — it is the path of our own spirit selves too. They experienced a radical shift of consciousness.

            What happened to these spirits? These embodied spirits started out living ordinary lives. Then Jesus came along and there was a recognition. They become Jesus’ students and followers, healing, witnessing, going out two by two. And they have moments of insight and a lot of incomprehension. They get it, and then they bumble and fumble. They hope Jesus — and their God — will produce some great victory for their people, the Israelites, the triumphant release from Roman captivity. Instead, as we know, he suffers an ignominious death on the cross, and the disciples scatter in fear for their own lives. And that could have been the end of it. Plenty of human movements end that way. But it’s three days later and strange things start happening. And as Jesus appears to Mary at the tomb, to Thomas and the others in the upper room, to the travelers on the road to Emmaus, to the disciples on the beach, his followers learn to recognize Jesus in new, more subtle ways. This is a major shift of consciousness. There are forces at work here way beyond their imaginings. They move from being blinded by grief, or overcome with remorse for their denial of Jesus, or stuck in a place of believing only what comports with their rational minds, or mired in nostalgia, wishing for the good old days. They move from these very human stuck places to an inner knowing. Jesus meets each of them in their own particular blindness, and they open their hearts and learn to see him in a new way.

            And then Jesus leaves, ascending into heaven, and that could have been the end of it. But it isn’t. They are advised to stop looking toward heaven, but to return to Jerusalem, which they do, and await joyfully the Holy Spirit. And there is this period of waiting. This time when they turn their gaze from the heavens, out to the world. God is with them, and they wait for power from on high.

            So they are in Jerusalem for Pentecost, the Jewish festival celebrating the gift from God of the 10 commandments at Mt. Sinai, a feast still celebrated in Judaism as Shavuot. And there is fire, wind and noise, as they are filled with the Holy Spirit. But there is more. They begin speaking in foreign languages – languages, not tongues — yet they understand each other. This is a transformative moment. This is another transformation of consciousness.This community becomes something it wasn’t before. And the church is born. They are claimed, called and empowered by the Spirit.(1)

            And they are asked a very pressing question: “what does this mean?”

            So Peter demonstrates. Peter responds to the question “what does this mean” and enacts the first task of the church. First, he draws on an ancient piece of scripture, the Book of Joel.  But, literalists take note! he alters it! He alters it in at least three significant ways. First, Peter changes the opening clause from “After these things” as it is in Joel, in its own time and context, to “In the last days.” A new time is being ushered in, a new beginning. Peter is speaking to this time, this here and now.  Second, Peter inserts the word “my” before “slaves.” Joel talks about “slaves” as an explicit socioeconomic class, the low rung of the social ladder. Peter changes this to God’s slaves. Slaves for God. Last week we talked about the difference between being a slave in the culture and a slave to God. To be a slave for God is to be free. It is to claim one’s true identity as spirit, and not to be defined by one’s place in society. Third, Peter adds an additional “and they shall prophesy” at the end of 2:18. The Holy Spirit is bestowed on all flesh, that’s the young and the old, men an women, so that they will prophesy. “The Spirit in Acts is a Spirit of prophecy.” (2)

            So, four things we learn from watching Peter as he answers the question “what does this mean?”  He draws on ancient scripture, he uses it as a reference point, a touchstone, a source of wisdom. But he interprets it for this time and this place to these people, adapting the old words to these circumstances. And there is the matter of identity; he proclaims that they are all God’s children. As the disciples have moved from becoming disciples to apostles they have grown from recognizing Jesus on the outside to knowing him from the inside.

            The work for them is to prophesy. Prophecy is not predicting the future, it is truth-telling in the present. It is naming God’s work in the world, in the here and now. It is proclaiming the Good News to another, by word and by action, that they too are children of God. That they too are spirit-bearers.

            As we’ve heard over the last several Sundays as we’ve read from later passages in the Book of Acts, these embodied spirits, now Apostles, will go forth from Jerusalem as though they are shot from a canon. They will come to understand that “everyone” proclaimed by Peter from the Book of Joel means a lot more everyones than they had ever imagined. They will encounter the Holy Spirit at work in all sorts of surprising places and with people they didn’t expect. Lydia. Cornelius. The jailer in the prison and the slave girl. They will learn to recognize the work of the Spirit, as they had come to recognize the resurrected Christ in their midst. They will be a church, bearing witness to the spirit of God. They will learn as they go. They will make mistakes. They will learn to live into God’s future, with all its twists and turns and uncertainty. They will live as strangers, relying on the hospitality of others. They will show the work of the Holy Spirit, and they will be taught the work of God as seen through the eyes of others.

            Someone comes to church with you some Sunday, and they hear scripture and music and prayers and they ask “what does this mean?” You are somewhere and it comes up in conversation that you are a Christian and they ask “what does that mean?”

            We live in a time when people are starved for meaning. There is a spiritual hunger in the world that is profound and deep. It is so deep that many people don’t know it for what it is, they only know it as a hole. A hunger that our society would seek to satisfy with the most meager and paltry and impoverished substitutes for God. These substitutes are everywhere, and they only leave people hungrier.

            A community of faith is a community of meaning. A person of faith is one who sees meaning in the world. It doesn’t mean we have all the answers, or can explain events. It does mean that we can see God’s presence in the midst of the turbulence of this life, and ground ourselves in God’s larger purposes, and understand every person we encounter to be embodied spirits. The work of the church continues, and it is our work too. This spiritual hunger is our mission field. Each one of us is called to engage it. Each one of us is fully empowered to engage it. We too live into God’s future, without knowing what paths that will take or where it will lead us. We are guided by scripture interpreted through the Holy Spirit in our common life together, knowing that our experience of God will be enriched and deepened through our encounters with others. We are nudged by the Holy Spirit into new horizons, where God is already at work. Amen.

(1)  Brian Peterson, “Commentary on Acts 2:1-21,” 2013, at www.workingpreacher.org

(2) Matt Skinner, “Commentary on Acts 2:1-21,” 2010, at www.workingpreacher.org

New Zealand seafood

Fourteen parishioners and friends enjoyed a fish stew, pork and beans, risotto made with coconut milk and bread made with cheese and manioc (tapioca) flour at our Brazilian Potluck last weekend. Dessert was fudgy chocolate brigadieros and banana cake.  Next month, the cuisine will be from New Zealand and Australia.  Recipes for our Saturday, June 8th, supper will appear on the Time and Talent Table this week.

The New Zealand Global Cuisine Potluck will be a special occasion because Deacon Tom Duplessie has invited a group from the Re-entry Center to be with us.  As hosts, St. Margaret’s folks will be responsible for most of the food, though some of the men may bring dishes made in their kitchen. Please come help welcome these guests.

According to NewZealand.com/travel, cuisine from this Pacific Rim  country draws inspiration from Europe, Asia and the Pacific Islands of Polynesia. “The best Kiwi cuisine is based on local ingredients harvested from the surrounding ocean, rivers, and rich pastoral landscape… The foodie’s choice includes lamb, cervena (venison), salmon, crayfish, \lobster, many species of fish and shellfish such as Bluff oysters, paua (abalone), mussels, scallops, pipis and tuatua (New Zealand shellfish), kumara (sweet potato), kiwifruit, tamarillo, feijoa and manuka honey.”

Come to the parish hall to pick up a recipe, or visit  http://www.food.com/recipes/new-zealand and select your own.

driving home in a beat up Toyota

It looks like a sunny May afternoon in the St. Margaret’s parish hall, the room filled with teens and adults from St. Margaret’s, First Church UCC, the First Baptist Church and the Game Loft,  gathered for the next installment of Encounters. But we know it is a cold December day in the fictitious town of New Salem, Maine, not far from Belfast, in 2009. In this “HBO miniseries,” the central characters are a class of 13-year-olds of diverse social backgrounds and family situations. All of us, including the adults, have a main character that we play, as well as play several other characters to fill out a scene.

Welcome to “Encounters Episode 5 — A Stranger in Need,” where things have gotten very interesting in the town of New Salem. A mysterious stranger has appeared, a 13-year-old boy who calls himself Drew has hitchhiked his way from somewhere south and is apparently headed for Canada. We play out the scenes, making decisions as we go depending on our character’s situation and character traits. Drew is picked up and taken home by a kind local family, the Bucklins, who privately express concern that he might be a run-away, and contact the local police officer. Christopher Bucklin, who shares his room with Drew, looks in Drew’s wallet while he is sleeping and discovers that he is in fact, Justin Bieber. He decides to tell no one. Justin/Drew goes to school with Christopher, where he meets the rest of the 8th grade class. The responses of the class to this stranger are unscripted; we play it out in character. Antonio is resentful. Drew is  handsome and is attracting the attention of a girl Antonio has a crush on. My character, Emily, likes Drew, and is very curious as to why he has ended up in New Salem. Christopher tells Olivia Drew’s real identity. Olivia has a huge crush on J Bieb, but she is also gossipy. Can she keep the secret? She agrees not to tell anyone in exchange for a promise of J Bieb’s autograph.

one last question at the end of the afternoon…

The school bus drops the students off, and, as they are walking home, Drew and a couple of his new friends notice they are being tailed by a black SUV. Drew quickly gives his trademark hat to a shy boy, Ethan, and scuttles away with the help of Christopher and his younger brother. Ethan finds himself confronted by a thug in the black sedan named Turk, who angrily demands to know where he got that hat and drags Ethan into the black SUV. The scenes follow in rapid succession, The thugs end up at the police station where they prove no match for the police officer. A frustrated Ethan has an angry phone conversation with his mother, who thinks he is fantasizing again and refuses to believe he has been kidnapped. Drew and Christopher realize they have to get Drew hidden, so they (miming) tie sheets together and climb out the bedroom window so their father, who is downstairs reading up on early church history, won’t know they have left. They make their way to an abandoned house, where they plan to hide Drew and make arrangements to bring him food and water. Drew is hiding in the closet, and he hears a door in the house creak, and footsteps on the stairs …. stay tuned for the next Episode…

Next we are sitting in a circle at in the Parish Hall, back in our real personae. As the clergy of the host church today, I read the parable of the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25:31-46). We talk about how living the Christian life is about taking care of each other, and how, when we don’t, we isolate ourselves. We explore how each character reacted to the stranger. We pass around our talking stick (actually, “Herbert,” a mechanical plastic 4-legged toy) and each person gets to say something (or pass) about what struck them that day. Patricia or Ray Estabrook gives a one-minute sermon, and we end with our acclamation — “This is the day that the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it!”

Thus goes a typical session of Encounters, our ecumenical teen faith group in Belfast. We always meet on a Sunday at noon, and begin with a reminder of our basic ground rules for how we treat each other, grace, and lunch. Our signature warm-up activities help us to listen to each other and our particular version of “fruitbasket” gets our blood moving and gets us ready for our roleplay.

We started the Encounters program last year, and are now in our second full “season.” The design team of the clergy from the three churches and the Game Loft had as the program objective to help teens see how God is at work in daily life, seen through parables constructed for the present day. The other objective is to have fun! After the “pilot” we got the feedback from the youth in the program, who to a person said “this was so much fun and much better than I expected!” We don’t take a didactic approach; we learn by doing and get to try on responses to ethical challenges through roleplay in a safe environment. I have watched shy children blossom in character, and there are many situations where a scene in New Salem mirrors a situation in real life, like a strained relationship with a parent or a bully at school. Roleplay gives us a safe place to explore what it means to be a Christian in the midst of these challenges.

We recently received a Diocesan grant to develop materials for use by other church groups who would like to develop a roleplay based program for Christian education.  Interested? find us on Facebook atwww.facebook.comBelfastEncounters, and contact me at St. Margaret’s Church in Belfast, or Patricia Estabrook at the Game Loft at estabrook72@hotmail.comor 338-3800.

The Rev. Martha Kirkpatrick

http://episcopalmaine.wordpress.com/2013/05/14/belfast-teens-living-and-learning-modern-day-parables/

St. Margaret’s Church
Sermon for May 12, 2013
Easter 7C
Rev. Martha Kirkpatrick

Acts 16:16-34; Ps. 97; Rev. 22:12-24, 16-17, 20-21; John 17:20-26

Occupational Hazards

   Let’s take a closer look at that text from Acts. This is a story of captivity of various kinds, and it’s a story of freedom. Freedom is a word tossed around a lot in our culture. This reading invites us to explore what we understand freedom to mean as Christians.  To orient ourselves, because we move back and forth in time, remember that whenever we are reading from Acts that is beyond Acts chapter 2, — and this is Acts 16 — we are reading about the early church, led by Peter and Paul, empowered by the Holy Spirit, engaged in mission and building community. This encounter in Acts 16 gives us another glimpse into how the Holy Spirit is at work in the early church.

Today’s passage begins with a slave girl. A girl held against her will, exploited for her special powers. What a week to be talking about a slave girl! So right away we are located in a world defined by systemic oppression. This is a person with no power, no status, no freedom. And we must remember that throughout the ages slavery meant one thing. It means you were sexually available. Everyone in Roman society had a specific place in the hierarchy, there were people above you, and, unless you were on the bottom of the social ladder, people below you. You were born in that place and there you would likely die. And being in that particular rung on that social ladder meant that you, whether you were male or female, were sexually available to everyone and anyone above you.  To be a slave was to be at the bottom of this ladder. Slavery of the most dehumanizing kind.

This slave girl has a particular gift — a spirit of divination. She can see things other people can’t see. Special powers are a double-edged sword. They can give us a glimpse into the sacred. But in the wrong hands, or in inexperienced hands, they can also be distorted and used for evil. Many of the worlds darkest figures likely had a sense of the infinite. Hitler. Stalin. Special powers distorted and corrupted become a force for great evil. At our seminar on Christian mysticism last week we talked about that classic heroine’s story, the Wizard of Oz, and how the ruby slippers function as a metaphor for unworldly power that can be used for good, but is dangerous in the wrong hands. This power is a prominent feature of mythology, which tells us how basic it is to the human story; special powers of sight, and their abuse, either by the person who holds them, or their oppressors.

The slave girl here is exploited by her owners for her special gifts. But then it gets interesting, because she recognizes Paul as a servant of God. Her divination, in her own hands, speaks truth. Interestingly she says “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.” So she takes the idea of slavery and turns it on his head. Not slaves within the social order, but slaves outside the social order. Slaves to God. To be a slave to God is to be free. She speaks as a prophet. She speaks truth to power.

She keeps at it for several days, making her strange prophetic pronouncement. And in the end, Paul cannot tolerate it anymore. Perhaps the truth, when spoken through unjust systems, can’t help but be distorted. (1) Evil attempts to manipulate the truth cannot be tolerated. Paul speaks to the spirit in the name of Jesus, and she is freed.

We don’t know what happens to this slave girl, we are left hanging. Perhaps this serves as a reminder that there is always further need of liberation. But we do know that she was liberated from the thing that was manipulated in the wrong hands. I am left with sense that when Paul orders the spirit to come out of her in the name of Jesus, she had experienced some interior liberation; a shift in how she saw herself.

And look what happens happens when someone disrupts the economic system in the name of Jesus. Look how the system responds. Does this sequence of events sound familiar? An absurd, trumped up charge. A mock trial. The scorn, and then the stripping and the flogging. The crowd joining in. Paul and Silas suffer in Christ-like fashion. The apostles run afoul of economic and social systems and they wind up in an inner most cell with their feet in the stocks.

So here are Paul and Silas, with things are about as bad as they can possibly get. And what are they doing but praying and singing hymns to God. Something I love about being a Christian is the knowledge that today, all over the world, in all sorts of languages and cultures, people are praying and singing hymns to God. Think about that. Think of all the systems that would seek to run our lives and direct our hearts, all the false gods that would claim our allegiance. The culture of consumerism. The self-important blogosphere. The entertainment culture. Not to mention all the dictators and oppressors in the world, large and small. And in the midst of that, there are people coming together all over the world, today,  to sing “Glory to God in the highest!” What could be more subversive than that? What could be more freeing than that?

And then suddenly there is an earthquake, and cosmic forces so violent it shakes the foundations of the prison. All the doors are opened and the chains unfastened. When the prisoners are set loose within the jails, the jailer wants to kill himself. What’s that about? Is he afraid the authorities — or the released prisoners — will kill him, so he wants to do it first? or is his identity so defined as “jailer” that he literally can’t imagine himself otherwise? This is what is meant by “dying to self,” the small self that has bought into this kind of identity marker. It sounds so small as to be almost impossible, but that was his role, his place in the social order. Without that, what would he be? Who would he be? In his own way he too is captive to a system. But somehow something breaks through. He hears Paul’s words “do not harm yourself.”  and he asks the question “What must I do to be saved?”

The story helps us to see the ways in which we are captive, and the ways that the Holy Spirit wants to set us free. It invites us to consider what freedom in the name of Christ is. This passage from Acts highlights the forces of economic slavery. This passage from Acts and the entire book of Revelation are about the gospel’s response to the Roman imperial system, and especially, its predatory economy that consumes people and the whole of creation, a system in which all are entangled. A system that not only controls outward lives, but penetrates the very psyche at a deep level. The Book of Revelation describes the predation of the Roman imperial economic system. Both the  slave girl and the jailer were controlled not only outwardly, but inwardly. The most insidious thing about oppression is that its victims start to believe it. When the three young women in Cleveland were freed from their 10-year captivity, one of the questions was “why hadn’t they tried to free themselves earlier?” Elizabeth Smart, who was herself abducted and held captive for 9 months and who goes on the road speaking about her experience, explains it. When you are treated like that, she says, you come to believe that you are worthless. Why would you risk escape, when you believe your life is worth nothing, that you yourself are worth no more than a chewed up piece of gum? The big thing that happens to both the slave girl and the jailer is that they are liberated from the inside, the slave girl is set free from her internal spirit, the jailer comes to see there is something to who he is beyond his role in the system. Something in each of them sees something in Paul, and that response is their opening. They are set free.

Freedom for Christians is not what we might think from the way the word is bandied about. We might think of freedom as simply the freedom to choose. But this is not what liberation in the context of Christianity means. Freedom is not simply standing at a crossroads, with the freedom to choose either path. Freedom of choice is necessary, but it’s not sufficient. Freedom is found in the choice of a particular path. Having an abundance of choices does not make us freer; in fact, it can make us less free. I don’t feel particularly free when I’m standing in the aisle at Rite Aid in front of hundreds of different varieties of shampoo. That’s not an enlargement of my life. In fact, I experience it more as a confinement. A predatory economy of too many choices all wanting me to buy something makes me feel decidedly unfree.

Freedom in the Christian context is the freedom to live into the fullness of the life for which God made us. It is the freedom to give ourselves wholly and completely. Freedom is found in the wholehearted “yes” to God. Human freedom is not the result of free choice, it is the reception of the free gift of God, the gift of fellowship with God and each other. (2)

This is what Paul offered, and what the slave girl and the jailer experienced. This freedom that is to be found in God is the promise at the end of the book of Revelation. The promise that no political or economic system is a match for the power of God. This is the promise: “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” “Let all who are thirsty, come.”

Amen.

(1)  Brian Peterson, workingpreacher.org, commentary on Acts 16:16-24.

(2)  faith-theology.com “The Meaning of Freedom” by Ben Myers.

St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church

Sermon for Easter 6C

May 5, 2013

Acts 16:9-15; Ps. 67; Revelation 21:10, 22:22-22:5; John 5:1-9

Rev. Martha Kirkpatrick & Ray Estabrook

Becoming People of the Way – the Encounters Program

   The more we read of these stories of the early church, the first followers of Jesus, the more I think they were on to something. Remember that in the first decades after Jesus, there were no churches, there were gatherings in people’s home, or down by the river. There was no creed. Their scripture was, for the Jewish followers of Jesus, the Torah, and the oral stories of Jesus, his life, his words, his deeds. Stories told by mothers to their children, stories told and enacted by street performers. The oral witness of Paul and Peter, and their encounters with all manner of people. The apostles traveled, sometimes ending up very far afield from where they thought they were going. This is the case with today’s story from Acts. Last week we heard about Peter’s encounter with the gentiles. Today it’s Paul and his companions. Note that the story is all told in the first person plural, “we set sail.” This is a community, and a fluid one. And like Peter, Paul has a vision, in Paul’s case its a mystery man from Macedonia, whom we never hear from again.  Paul and his companions were headed for Asia Minor, but they kept getting blocked. Their great plans get thwarted, they get stuck, no idea why or where they are going. Once again, ithe meaning becomes clear in retrospect. In the story-telling afterwards, they see what the Holy Spirit is up to.

   They are in some danger here, at the center of the Roman Empire, which is probably why they are outside the gate, at the fringes, and go down to the river to pray. And there they encounter a group of women, among whom is Lydia. Lydia becomes the first European Christian.  Not the first female European Christian, but the first Christian in Europe.

   What an improbable series of events led Paul to encounter Lydia. It almost didn’t happen. But it did, crossing boundaries of gender, ethnicity, geography, culture. Again, the Holy Spirit at work in unexpected places.

   In the Book of Acts, the early Christian movement came to be known as “the Way.” The followers of Jesus were people of the way. It’s not that they were members of an institution or adherents to particular doctrines. They were people who committed themselves to being disciples — students, learners, if you will — of a holistic way of life in Christ. (1) Their mission was to be open to being guided by the Holy Spirit, to encounter the stranger, to meet Jesus on Main Street.  To meet people where they were and to see the Holy Spirit at work there. To build communities of radical hospitality, which meant not welcoming the stranger into their space so much as to be the stranger and relying on the hospitality of the other in their place, as Paul relied on the hospitality of Lydia. And the more they did this, the more they could bear witness to God’s aliveness in the world.

What we do here on Sunday morning is to equip us for this mission as people of the way.  Dwight Zscheile asks this question of us: “What might it mean for the Episcopal Church to live into a renewed identity as people of the Way of Jesus in our time and place?” Our identity is rooted our central practice of the Eucharist, where we understand ourselves to be fed and filled with Christ’s essence. Our baptism sends us forth into the world for loving service. Our incarnational emphasis sees all creation infused with divine presence. We hold to the importance of Scripture and understand that that carries a responsibility to translate the gospel – by word and example — into language ordinary people who aren’t in church every Sunday can hear and speak, so that we all can see what the Good News is in our lives. And, to be the People of the Way in our time and place means encountering people of other faith traditions or no faith tradition with full and open hearts, to trust that God is at work there. To be People of the Way in our time and place is to step into these fields of engagement as we learn a holistic way of life in Christ.

   There are many things we are doing here at St. Margaret’s that are drawing us forth, helping us as a body to evolve as People of the Way for our time and place. We’ve talked about many of these new energies. Today we’re going to talk about our ecumenical partnership for teens in faith, Encounters. Our teenagers are on an important journey, a ground-breaking one in fact. This is not your father’s Christian ed. It is holy ground, and I am profoundly grateful to be standing on it. It has changed me. Our own Ray Estabrook, co-founder of the Game Loft and co-director of Encounters, is going to tell you about it.

Ray Estabrook
Founding co-Director
The Game Loft

Encounters is a joint project of St. Margaret’s, First Church UCC, First Baptist and The Game Loft. Some of you may have already heard a bit about this program, some  of you a bit more but we have not yet been able  to report to our supporters about what we are doing and more particularly why we are doing things the Encounters way.  At coffee hour I will be available to talk a bit about what we do at Encounters and answer any questions; right now I’d like to share with you some of our philosophy and thinking behind the program.

There are three thoughts I want to leave with you today. First, the idea of The Game Loft as mission, second, the idea of Encounters as an extension of that mission and finally the idea of ENCOUNTERS as engaging and equipping young people for ministry.

Patricia and I have always seen the work of the Game Loft as a mission to youth.  Because of the missionary nature of what we do we  value our connections to the church communities; we see ourselves, as it were, sent forth to do the work of the Kingdom and returning on occasion, to report, to reflect, to regroup at our natural home base, the local church. And now that we have our collaborative Christian outreach program, ENCOUNTERS, our sense of mission is even more defined. 

Most people do not think of the Game Loft as a mission. Most people, even many of the kids, see the Game Loft as an alternate recreation program, a place to keep the kids off the streets and a place for them to play games until something more important comes along.  And it’s true that we are called THE GAME LOFT….but if we called it the CENTER FOR TRANSFORMATIONAL BEHAVIOR… well; no kid would come, would they?

But like the church we are in the transformation business. Our mission is to promote Positive Youth Development through games and community involvement.  Positive Youth development is transformational change but what we need to know right now about this is that it is about HOPE.  We Christians live in hope and anticipation of the coming kingdom and labor here, as God calls us, to do the work of the Kingdom. Hope is very future oriented; it says we hope for something better tomorrow. When we invest our time, our talent, our money in youth we are saying in a most fundamental way, that we have hope for the future – because they are our future. The opposite of HOPE is DISPAIR, isn’t it? And it seems to me that our missionary work, for all of us, is that we are to be spirit bearers to a dark and troubled world – bringers of hope.

In the Game Loft and in the ENCOUNTERS program we work on instilling hope among the young people in our charge that they have a future, that they can make a difference, that they have a voice, that life has purpose and meaning, that they can be involved, that can be leaders in their families, among their friends and in their communities right now where the work of the kingdom takes place.

In the ENCOUNTERS program we have simply reworked the Game Loft model and made implicit the Christian message. We had to decide right at the beginning how we could design a program that would engage the attention of middle school age youth and have content that was relevant to them. We found our model in our Lord Jesus Christ and the gospels. Jesus pursued his ministry on Main Street as when he appeared at the pool in today’s Gospel reading. He taught his lessons using simple stories set in the context of everyday life and was active in the context of family, friends and community.  With that as our guide we set the action of the Encounters program firmly in the context of family, friends and community in the 21^st Century. Our basic premise is that for Christians, called to minister to the world, the work of the church occurs Monday through Saturday and that the fields of engagement are the localized worlds we all inhabit – the worlds of family, friends and community. Instead of Sunday being the day you set aside to be a Christian, Sunday is the day you return to church to refresh, regroup, reflect and report, before sallying out as spirit-bearers, as missionaries to the world. Therefore our focus is on equipping our young people for this calling by taking a clear-eyed and hard look at the work before them. Our slogan in fact is, like the Belfast bumper sticker, “Life the way it should be; Encounters the way it is.”

We look at families. I remember when I was a kid I thought my family was dull, dull, dull! How I wished I could have a different family; how I longed to visit relatives and friends and stay forever. A favorite activity at Encounters is the family skits we stage with the kids. We encounter all sorts of families – dysfunctional families like the Seeleys, where Mr. Seeley is illegally growing marijuana in his barn while claiming to be a revolutionary in the best American tradition (Yet, through his choices he will probably get arrested and leave his seven children without a father); or we encounter the Bucklins, highly functional and loving; or we encounter the Clarks, smothering their son with misplaced love while refusing to accept how different he is from other kids. We have a special program called ENCOUNTERS TV where we put these families up on stage and give us a chance to question them about their actions/or lack of actions.

We encounter friends and the peer group. We have the bully; we have the poor kid from the wrong side of the tracks; we have the foster kid; we have it all. And we explore through role play the meaning of friendship and more importantly what it means to live in relationship with other people. And we look at the subtle boundaries of class and status that divide people.

We look at community. We are pretty hard on adult role models, I have to admit. Jesus was hard on them to, as you know. Principals, teachers, police, businesspeople, church leaders – we take a hard look to see if they are living up to their responsibilities and commitments.

We do all this so we can look with unflinching eyes upon the world that we are bequeathing to our young people. Yes it is sensitive subject matter but – these kids are in Middle School…they are already experiencing “life the way it is” and I think this gives them a safe and structured way to consider these important issues. And constantly we ask, how does somebody of faith respond to all this? How do we equip ourselves to be effective ministers to this world? And we always end with hope. If you wake up and do the work God wants you to do then there is HOPE. There is HOPE when you know that your actions can make a positive difference; that you can do the work of the Kingdom no matter who you are and where you are. We always end with the great acclamation from the Psalm: “This is the day the Lord has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.

(1) Dwight Zscheile, People of the Way: Renewing Episcopal Identity (New York: Morehouse, 2012), 5.