Monday, April 6, 2015

Easter Sunday with the First Presbyterian Church of Holt

It was my joy to worship with the First Presbyterian Church of Holt on Easter morning as they concluded their 150th Anniversary Celebrations.  Along with Kirk Miller, pastor, and Kathleen Henrion, associate pastor, and Dave Milbourn, honorably retired member of Presbytery and former pastor at Holt, I joined the procession and shared in the liturgy.  We celebrated Christ's victory over sin and death with organ and bagpipe, bells and brass, tympani and works of art!  I introduced the passing of the peace with these words. "Aliens or foreigners no more. Christ has broken down the dividing wall between us.  We are sisters, brothers, members of the household of God. The Peace of Christ be with you."  At the table during communion, I prayed, "Feed us with the Bread of Heaven, so we can fill the hunger of the world."   I thought how appropriate these words are for all of us in the Presbytery of Lake Michigan today.  As we also live into our future, may we claim the peace which Christ has already made possible, having broken down the dividing wall between us.  May we live in that peace and continue to be fed with the bread of Heaven, so we may fill the hunger around us.  

From Upstream Worship at FPC, Holt, Easter Sunday
In a time when doing more of the same things better and with more effort no longer produces the same fruit, we are called to adaptive leadership, adaptive change.  Holt, First's history gives witness to adaptive change.  The building they now worship in is their third church building.  When the community began to transform from a rural community to a suburban/town, they strategically moved from Cedar St, the main route south of Lansing, to North Aurelius Road, and build a new building.  A couple of years ago they added monitors throughout the sanctuary for visual aids in worship and introduced an alternative worship service they call "Upstream."

Crosses made from rafter of earlier church building
At an earlier anniversary celebration, I received a gift, three wooden crosses with a candle in the center of them.  The crosses were lovingly grafted by a church member from the wood of a roof rafter taken from the former church building.  The wood had been stored in a members barn over the years.  Every church household received a wooden cross.  These crosses are a physical link to several hundred of years of history in Holt.

This I Believe statement added to FPC, Holt Time Capsule
The culture in which we live and serve today no longer sends people through our church doors.  When our numbers and programs dwindle, we grow anxious, as if our identify were linked to them.   Our identity is rather in Christ as his disciples!  We are the household of God.  We are the body of Christ, the salt of the earth, the aroma of Christ!  We do what Jesus once did and continues to do today through us.  With Jesus, we are called to pay attention to our neighbors, love our enemies, and respond with compassion and healing to those in need.  And though we are not practiced in it, we must learn to give witness to the hope we have in God!  During this Easter worship service at Holt, First, members were invited to bring forward "This I Believe" statements and placed them in the church's time capsule, which will be opened in 2065.
 I pray members will also find appropriate and authentic ways to give witness to their hope.

Kirk Miller has been awarded a Lilly Foundation Sabbatical Grant for this summer.  The Sabbatical Theme is "Divin' into Dreamin'!"  The congregation will hold a series of events and retreat dreaming about what God is doing and wants to do through them.  This theme has a powerful connection with Easter for me.  Some years ago, I preached an Easter Sermon entitled, "Don't Bury Your Dreams!"  The next day I traveled with a church group to my congregation's sister church in Guines, Cuba.  I preached the same sermon there.  Many hopes and dreams were buried on Good Friday when Jesus was crucified on the cross, died and was buried.  His followers, who were so hopeful, were devastated.  Some started to return home.  Yet, God rolled the stone away and raised him.  The tomb did not, could not hold God's dreams!  This message resonated with my small congregation anxious about its future.  It resonated with the Guines Church having survived several decades of religious persecution.  Rev. Madruga, hosting us in Guines, shouted out the refrain like a antiphon through out our week together, "Don't bury your dreams!"   Since then, I've rethought this a bit....maybe we need to let go of some of our dreams, of what we have known.  And may we take up the task of paying attention to God's dreams, looking for what God is doing, and finding ways of joining God in it, with the gifts God gives us.  God's Dreams, though we may bury them for a time won't stay dead.  God raises them anew.  With the Holt, First members, may we be about Divin' into Dreamin!  And through the power of the Holy Spirit bring them to life.

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