Reflections

Holy Saturday - I Meet You

Tim Kim ·

‘I meet you. I remember you. Who are you? You destroy me. You’re so good for me.’ This is what elle says to lui in Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) after he accuses her of having no memory and so no idea of what it is to forget or not forget. Elle is a French actor making an anti-war movie in Japan just after the war. Lui is an architect and a veteran, elle merely a tourist. What does their 36-hour love affair amount to? ‘You destroy me. You’re so good for me. Plenty of time. Please. Take me. Deform me, make me ugly.’ A confrontation...

Reflections

Holy Friday - Separation

Tim Kim ·

Matthew

From noon on, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. And about three o’clock Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” When some of the bystanders heard it, they said, “This man is calling for Elijah.” At once one of them ran and got a sponge, filled it with sour wine, put it on a stick, and gave it to him to drink. But the others said, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him.” Then Jesus cried again with a loud voice and breathed his last.

The Psalmist 

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
    Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer;
    and by night, but find no rest...

 

Reflections

Holy Thursday - The Last Meal

Tim Kim ·

Mark 14:12-26

On the first day of Unleavened Bread, when the Passover lamb is sacrificed, his disciples said to him, “Where do you want us to go and make the preparations for you to eat the Passover?” So he sent two of his disciples, saying to them, “Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you; follow him, and wherever he enters, say to the owner of the house, ‘The Teacher asks, Where is my guest room where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’ He will show you a large room upstairs, furnished and ready. Make preparations for us there.” So the disciples set out and went to the city, and found everything as he had told them; and they prepared the Passover meal.

Photos/Video

We Turn Two and a Special March 29th Sunday

Tim Kim ·

We Turn Two This Sunday! 

Watch this video to hear about that and some other mind numbingly important announcements.

What About the 5th Week of March?!
Town Hall and Neighborhood Pilgrimage to Local Pie and Games

Being that our schedule calls for stuff on the weeks 1-4 of the month, a 5th Sunday presents a unique opportunity to do something different. 

On March 29th, we're going to have something like a town hall meeting where we'll talk for a little bit about the state of the church, some ideas for the future including how we are organizing leaders and volunteers, and then have some time for discussion/questions/ideas. When that barn burner is over, we plan on walking over (IT'S SPRING!) to Bang Bang Pie and then to Emporium Bar in Logan Square where there are (in theory) fun games to play. 

Details:
Sunday, March 29, Town Hall @ Gorilla Tango @ 1pm...then march from there.

Commentary

Two Great Recent Things on the Internet

Neil Ellingson ·

Ana Marie Cox, founding editor of the political blog Wonkette and currently a political writer for GQ, has an incredible essay at the Daily Beast in which she "comes out" as a Christian. The piece is calm and straightforward, but surreptitiously explosive. The context, a liberal political writer on a liberal news site, makes the simple and sincere profession of Christian faith by definition exotic and almost unrecognizable...

Sermons

Neil Ellingson - Learning a New Language - Feb 8th, 2015

Neil Ellingson ·

Co-pastor Neil Ellingson talks about how the old and strange vocabulary of Christianity can still teach us something about stuff today.

Two video clips were used in this recording that are you can't hear. They are clips from the Simpsons (where Bart goes to live in France and after a terrible time of being mistreated realized in a fit of anguish that he can speak fluent French) and Ghost Dog (a scene where two characters who are best friends talk to each other despite not speaking the other person's language).

Listen On:
Podbean
iTunes

Reflections

Learning a New Language

Neil Ellingson ·

Learning a foreign language is hard, especially after we've lost the soft, squishy brains of our early childhood.

Religion can be usefully compared to a language not only because it also is made up of a particular vocabulary and can be found in books, but because each religion comes with its own grammar and patterns of use - an unspoken underlying structure that determines HOW the religion is put to use in our daily lives, and thus how our thoughts, feelings, and perceptions are ordered, put together, and made meaningful - something other than a jumble.

Reflections

Demon

Tim Kim ·

The killing of Michael Brown and the lingering, malignant racism in our country that has led to such agonized and powerful feelings of justice not being served point to an undeniable reality that hurts all of us and that demands a response from our community.

That reality includes but is much bigger than the question about whether the officer who shot Michael Brown had valid reason to fear for his life. In a sense it doesn’t really matter what you think about the reliability of eyewitness accounts or the way the investigation and grand jury proceeding went down. What is impossible to ignore in the ghastly light of the violent death of another young, unarmed black man and its affect on the people of Ferguson is the following:

1. There are entrenched, gaping, racial and economic divides in our society.

2. Violence is bound up with those divides, both as a result of them and as a means of enforcing them.

 3. The mere fact that reactions to the decision not to indict Officer Darren Wilson have been so different in the black and white communities is proof of a wide gulf that separates the experiences of those groups.  Lets get biblical with our language here. There are those whose realities are shaped by powers and principalities most of us don’t ever see.  There are forces of darkness that most people in this country are privileged to ignore. To deny this experience isn’t a sign of greater enlightenment, it is a sign of arrogance born of self-righteousness.