Sabbatical Journey

Can you consider yourself to be on a journey if you are not leaving home? My answer is “Yes” on two levels. First, you do not have to leave home to take a journey. You do not have to abandon your daily or weekly routine. You do not have to alter your calendar or schedule. “Journey” is as much a state of mind and a perspective as it as a change in physical geography.

Second, anytime someone with whom you are in a relationship sets out on a journey, you—by virtue of the impending shift in relationship—will also journey. When a child, sibling, or spouse leaves home to go off to college, work, or for some other purpose, other members of the household experience the movement of journey. The shift in relationship can be one of measurable distance, frequency of contact/interaction, emotional/mental/spiritual development, or any combination of these three (plus other things, I’m sure).

Thus, I contend that all who are reading this are about to begin a journey with me. I invite you to not miss this journey. I am making plans of all sorts for this journey; plans to travel, read, learn, think, reflect, rest, grow, and experience things and places I’ve never known or seen. I hope you will do the same, even if your life’s circumstances or your personal preferences preclude changes of scenery and schedule.

I have challenged our church’s leaders to intentionally plan and execute a journey of their own during my sabbatical, and to invite and include the entire congregation in that process. I challenge members of the congregation to both hold our leaders to their challenge, and to support and journey with them along the way. The theme for their journey is “Make church…” I encourage you to help and join them in “making church” this summer.

One of the ways I invite you to journey with me is to follow our sabbatical blog. In it, I’ll be relaying information about the books I’m reading, places and people I’m meeting, and the questions this journey is revealing. If you have and use internet access, you can follow right here. Become a “follower” of the blog (by clicking the “Follow” button on the left hand side and following the instructions), and you can receive notifications when new posts are made.

Grace and travelling mercies,

© 2011 Todd Jenkins

WMDs

Words, the stealth-like weapons

we can unleash with relative ease,

whose half-life far-exceeds plutonium,

exacting force for generations to come.

Mass, not just the orthodox celebration

of Eucharist-focused worship,

but also measurable weight and

that overarching sense of totality.

Destruction, the dismantling of that

which has been constructed,

without the least concern for

design, purpose, material, or inhabitants.

We are forever facing two extremes:

“I couldn’t help but let that out!”

“I’ll never let you forget you did!”

Both of which enlarge the chasm.

Somewhere in the darkness lies

a tongue well-bitten,

a conversation purposefully forgotten,

hands of grace extended, embraced.

As morning finally arrives,

we will recognize its presence when

forgiveness is as fully self-accepted

as it is freely other-given.

Until that first light shines,

we can only limp away,

Jacob-like from our Peniel,

ever-seeking to see the face of God.

© 2011 Todd Jenkins

Preach it Yourself

Here's a link to a music/video representation of my May 8, 2011 TouchPoint scripture and sermon. My voice/words are not included, requiring that you preach the sermon yourself as you watch the video and listen to the music. I would be interested to hear what your sermon sounds like.

In the Breaking of the Bread

Bolder Dash

(For Curt's pray-ers and all who face desperate circumstances)

Fear assaults halls of prayer,
intimidates with balderdash,
“What good is petition
if it doesn’t come true?”

Reason peeks from behind Anxiety,
calculates known sequencing,
concurs with Fear’s assessment,
“Not very likely to happen.”

Faith blows in from four corners,
laughs at the absurdity,
“Prayer isn’t an exercise in probability;
but rather one of possibility.

Hope musters up from the deeps,
rolls away the stone of doubt,
“It’s not really prayer until
it approaches the preposterous!”

Courage starches the sails,
squeezes adrenal glands,
“Now is not the time for timidity;
it’s time to make a bolder dash.”

Dove descends in fire and cloud,
voice of gentle thunder,
“Unleash your wildest prayers of healing
for those whose faith & hope are fading!”

Ours is not the task
to determine what will or won’t,
but to fiercely ask for what we need
and wholly trust the holy Giver.

© 2011 Todd Jenkins

The Innocents

Ever notice how God
never dwells on blame?
Yet it’s a powerful tool of self destruction
and the beginning of the end
for many fragile relationships.

When guilt is allowed to overshadow grace,
everything that God intends is subverted;
as if knowing whom to blame, self or others,
will change the way we think and feel
or turn back the clock somehow.

It cannot be the will of God
for the innocents to suffer
or those who love them
to accept the burden
of what’s beyond their control.

When evil falls like acid rain
and scorches tender skin,
I curse the pain, wail in grief,
and shout before the hill,
“Come down from that cross,

hold this child in tender arms
and breathe your spirit deep
into this family’s broken heart!
Stop the clock – yea, turn it back,
and Lazarus us once more!

© 2011 Todd Jenkins

Go Gently

(For Wilbur Howie Sr. and all whose passing is grace.)

Much of culture demands we fight,
tooth and nail against going,
denying that we’re even moving in that direction,
color for the fading hair,
tucks and injections for the sags and wrinkles.

Fight whatever comes our way
with whatever we can arm ourselves:
radical surgery, medicine; harsh treatment, equipment;
all ways to deny journey’s inevitability,
pretending we can park indefinitely.

There is another way to travel,
not so much upstream always,
not eternally against traffic’s flow,
but putting up our sail and
letting breath blow us where it will.

A toast to all who find the grace
to tread gingerly upon the earth,
softly upon other lives so that
breathing comes as if from Spirit,
flowers bloom at every turn.

Going gently toward the place
where earth gives way to garden,
where hope is planted, not buried,
where time stretches into eternity
and living yields willingly to life.

© 2011 Todd Jenkins

Lent

So, what can I do for Lent, why should I do anything for Lent, and just what IS Lent? Forty days, not counting the Sundays, counted backward from the day before Easter to a Wednesday. Why forty? Because forty is a “Biblically epic” number (Ever notice that “forty” is the only number with a “four” in the English language that removes the “u”?). Think Moses on the mountain with God (40 days), Israel in its exodus wilderness (40 years), and Jesus in the wilderness at the beginning of his ministry (40 days). The English word “Lent” comes from the Germanic root for “Spring” which originally meant “Long”, signaling the lengthening of days as Spring approaches.

That Easterly backward-determined Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, so named because the early church marked itself (as many still do today) with the ashes from the previous year’s Palm Sunday palm branches which have been saved and dried for this purpose (recalling the palm-waving crowd in the gospel accounts of Jesus’ “Triumphal” entry into Jerusalem the Sunday before he was crucified) with the sign of the cross. The ashes remind us of our finitude, recalling Genesis 3:19 “You are dust and to dust you shall return.” The cross reminds of God’s love, mercy, grace, and forgiveness.

In faith practice, unlike in folklore and popular culture, Lent has always been about doing and not doing things in order to more fully allow us and more readily place us in circumstances conducive to a better understanding of what God intends for the world and expects from us. If and when we choose to give up or take on something (or both), the purpose is not deprivation or denial. It is self-imposed discipline (a dying art in our culture), chosen because we believe that a particular addition and/or subtraction from our daily routine will clear away the clutter or confusion and allow us freedom from the grind of daily routine and expectation.

Our hope and purpose is for God to meet us within the space of this freedom. This discipline is the metaphorical empty chair we set for the table of our lives, in hope and expectation that the Holy Guest will arrive. When the Guest arrives, we find that, beyond the meal of our own preparedness, the Guest becomes the Host and feeds us with food and drink we didn’t know existed (manna, Eucharist) that satisfies hunger and thirst we didn’t know could be sated.

Come to the table.

© 2011 Todd Jenkins