Today is the first day of voting on the “floor”, and up until now, delegates have been meeting in subcommittees and then larger committees; today, items for the consent calendar are brought to the plenary session. At the moment, the body voted down a petition calling for term limits for bishops. This is just the beginning of five days of emotional policy-making in a huge room of people from all over the world, from all perspectives.

Sometimes, we go to these big meetings and come away with shoulders stooped, sighing to ourselves that “nothing ever changes.” Butsometimes it’s good to remember that there is indeed positive work getting accomplished in the name of Christ by United Methodists. Reading the advance reading material required for General Conference reminded me of all the good we are doing in the world, as a denomination.

Since the 2008 General Conference meeting, the United Methodist General Board of Church and Society enabled campaigns called “Prophet-Driven” and “John 10:10”, which supported ministry with the poor and adequate health care for all, protecting critical human needs funding from governmental budget reductions, ensuring an adequate revenue stream to meet basic human rights outlined in the Social Principles, and creating a position for a professional advocate against childhood sexual trafficking.

Did you also know that the General Board of Church and Society hosted daily prayer vigils on its lawn, (which faces the U.S. Capitol) during the debate over raising the federal government’s debt ceiling? Did you also know that the General Board of Church and Society, after two decades of advocacy, helped pass the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, which aims to enact fair sentencing to racial and ethnic minorities in the criminal justice system? Did you also know that the GBCS was a principal organizer and promoter of the “Lighten the Burden III” AIDS Conference in 2010, as well as the African-American Women and AIDS Conference in March 2011, in South Carolina. GBCS also partnered with the United Nations Foundation to create “Operation Healing Hope,” which raised money, and provided education and advocacy about obstetric fistula, a malady affecting over two million women worldwide every year.

The last thing I will mention is that the General Board of Church and Society also developed resources for battling heterosexism and homophobia. In my opinion, this small step towards advocacy is at least a step in the right direction, showing that hundreds of people are indeed willing to direct money and energy toward eradicating hate from our interpersonal interactions.

I am having fun translating the speeches from many of the African delegates who speak French. I get to poke Tish Malloy in the ribs and tell her what they said before the translator says it. But don’t tell anyone I am able to do this or otherwise I will have to sit in the glass booth and do it full time from now on.

Thank you for sending me here to be a part of this policy-making experience. It is good to be with my colleagues, both from Oklahoma and across the nation. I look forward to being with you and experiencing “Oh, Jonah!” this coming Sunday.

This all means I will miss this coming Sunday in order to travel. Rev. Jim Burns, retired pastor of Memorial Presbyterian Church in Norman, will be our preacher. Jim, as many of you know, is the father of David Burns and the grandfather of Christopher and Alli. Jim received a PhD in physics before pursuing a degree in theology and a career in ministry, and served as senior pastor of Memorial Presbyterian in Norman for over twenty years. In his retirement, he loves to indulge his fascination for baseball and spend time with his grandchildren.

I am already anxious to report to you about everything that happens at General Conference. Thank you for your support in sending me.

Thanks also to those of you who showed up Sunday afternoon to dismantle and remove several huge fallen tree limbs from the prayer garden. It sure never gets boring around here, does it?

This coming week, I will be taking advantage of my remaining vacation days for the year (which for us clergy ends June 1). We will have a guest preacher this Sunday, Rev. Rodney Newman, who is the Chaplain to the University at OCU. Rod came to Boston Avenue as an associate about the time I went to college, and I can safely say he is the “real deal”.

Rod was our associate in charge of adult education, mission, and several other things, before he went on to be the pastor at Purcell and now in ministry at OCU. Rod graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary and has done in-depth studies in Celtic Christianity.

When I asked him to come and preach on the day of the Blessing of the Animals, he said he actually re-arranged his schedule to make room for such an exciting opportunity. Some people I know would not touch this service with a ten-foot leash. So, as you remember, the first service (8:30) will not include animals, to defer to those in our congregation who have allergies or would just prefer not to worship with house pets. The 10:50 service will include a time of blessing. We do ask that you have your dogs on leashes and your cats and other kinds of animals in crates or carriers. Let’s look forward to celebrating Earth Day this coming Sunday with the creatures whom we love so much.

We have learned that our church was spared any damage from this wave of tornadoes, but the neighborhoods around it have suffered a lot of damage to trees and limbs.

I have offered our facility as a backup shelter for the Red Cross, and am waiting a return phone call from the Red Cross to see if we will be mobilized into action. If they need us, we will need volunteers at the church the entire time.

I also offered our worship space to the West Side Church of Christ, whose building DID sustain damage. I have not heard back from them either, but told them they could either join us or use our sanctuary when we're not in there.

If you have had damage and need help with limb removal, I have already heard from one church member who is willing to bring a chainsaw and get started, once the weather has calmed down. Please let me know at amyevenable@gmail.com if you need any kind of help at your house.

Thanks,

Rev. Amy Venable

Many thanks to everyone who gave of their time to prepare food, come to extra rehearsals, stay late to set up/clean up/hang banners and all the rest. Holy Week was a blessing to me, for sure, as was the whole Lenten season. I have thanked each one of the staff personally for all of their hard work and dedication during this important forty days in our religious year.

Exciting things await us in the Easter Season. As you know, Easter isn’t just one day, it’s a whole season that lasts until Pentecost Sunday. In this season, we will celebrate our mission to Bolivia with an evening of slides and video, bless our animals, worship under the leadership of the children one Sunday as they present “Oh Jonah!”, and spend time every Sunday asking what it means to be a resurrection people.

In the Easter Season, I will travel to Tampa, Florida, to serve as a reserve delegate to the Oklahoma delegation at General Conference and volunteer in whatever way I am needed. I am very eager to go and to come back and report to you that following Sunday, May 6th, about everything that happened there regarding our denomination.

This is a very exciting time for us. I pray that we all feel a sense of renewal and rebirth as we move forward into these next several weeks here at St. Stephen’s.

All throughout Lent, we have asked ourselves what it must have been like to be one of the people in the Bible, chiefly one of the women, who wandered in the wilderness for one reason or another, as Jesus had done during a 40-day season around which we shape Lent. What must it have been like to be driven out of your home by someone else’s jealousy, by famine, or by political choices of leaders who knew nothing of how their decisions would affect you personally? What must it have been like to be so powerless that survival depended upon having a man in your immediate family who would take care of you? What must it have been like to put tired, calloused feet into sandals every day and walk to freedom?

The irony of all of these questions is that these questions are not ones that only Biblical characters could answer. People answer them every day in our world, in places far from our own neighborhoods and more often than we realize, right within our neighborhoods.

This Sunday, the woman we’ll get to study will be Mary Magdalene. She is one who finds a way home from her personal exile via her friendship with Jesus, and sees him, resurrected, that first Easter morning. Maybe because she was a woman, maybe because she had battled “demons”, or maybe because the disciples had never witnessed an experience such as hers, they didn’t believe her report. Find out who set them straight this Sunday morning.

I have arranged for a guest pastor to take my place this Sunday, and his name is Ben Pascoe. I have known Ben since he was in seventh grade, and always knew him to be a bright and funny kid. He is now no longer a kid, but a seminary student at Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University, my alma mater. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Religious Studies from Beloit College in Beloit, Wisconsin, and has used his summers to work as a youth intern at our common home church Boston Avenue, as well as to star in a musical or two in his free time. He was a memorable Will Parker, standing up to Ado Annie’s father, who was menacingly played by one Brice Venable.

Ben is excited to have the chance to come preach at our church, and I have told him that “everyone there will be really nice to you and they will pay attention the entire time!” I am holding you accountable to that promise! I know you will be blessed by his brilliant and fresh exploration of the story of Eve. In his words, “Genesis is something of a specialty of mine!” I told him that was really handy since I was spending Lent in the Hebrew Scriptures with all of you. I will leave mid-week this week and be back in time for a full Wednesday on March 21st with our Ecumenical Lenten Preaching Series and luncheon and Taizé service.

McKenna, in "Not Counting Women and Children: Neglected Stories from the Bible," explores Hagar’s predicament from the point of view of a domestic at the lowest caste of society, a caste she came to know well during her time in South and Central America working with “servant class” women and sharing Bible stories with them. McKenna remembers some of the motel workers with whom she would share lunchtime cheering Hagar on as she ran away from Sarah. “They all agreed,” she writes, “that rather than live in humiliation and hatred and persecution it was better to run away. Having tasted a hope for a better life, she has to fight back or run away.” But then Hagar’s panic and desperation come to an end when God takes note of her, “just a maid, a pregnant slave and an Egyptian, not even a Jew!” She and her son are promised life and they find the courage to pick up and move on because they have seen God and lived, and lived with hope.

“God is the God of slaves and Egyptians and foreigners and those not wanted and feared by the Israelites, but it will take a long time and many stories to teach God’s people that reality,” McKenna says. “God is just as concerned about the hopes and dreams and future of those who are not Israelites as about those chosen to stand out among the other nations. All nations and all peoples are God’s children (the echo of Jesus in the gospel with good news to the poor—any and all poor).” As we walk this Lenten journey through the wilderness, we remember that we are not alone; we are accompanied by God, and we are accompanied by people from all walks of life and all levels of society, all children of God, together on the sojourn.

Quite a bit of his speaker series had to do with our “enslavement to Pharaoh” as we participate in workaholism. His premise was the more we work, the more is expected of us, the more we need, and the harder it is to let go of our responsibilities for even one day. Rest assured you will be hearing pieces of what he had to say about Sabbath living in sermons to come. But for this column, I will just share with you the image of using Sabbath time not just to go to church, go eat, take a nap and wake up in time for Sixty Minutes, but rather, using it to step out of the rat race, to reflect on our lives, and on our place in creation.

Brueggemann said, “Sabbath living is creating ‘waiting space’ with outstretched hands for gifts we don’t even know we will or can receive.” That kind of receiving can take place only when our hands are empty, not when they are full. On a related note, we can help our neighbors only when our hands are not full with other commitments. Emptying ourselves, ironic as it sounds, enables us to give abundantly to others. This pausing to reflect while not producing or accumulating helps us to get into sync with creation, hopefully in a way that fuels us for the upcoming week.

The Lenten Journey is, in a way, a time of Sabbath. You may have “given something up” for Lent, which is one way of stepping back from your usual routine. The emptiness left behind in that thing’s space opens wide your life for something else to come in. I’m so glad to be on this journey with you this Lent.

The Hebrew Scriptures are so rich with powerful stories about people trying to make sense of life; we see ourselves in those colorful narratives, bumbling, falling, going the wrong way, doing the exact opposite of what God intended for humans, and generally behaving in a thoroughly imperfect way. But even as imperfect as a Noah, a David, a daughter of Lot, or a Gomer might seem, there’s God, over and over again, offering a rainbow, a covenant, a new promise, a clean slate, or a suggestion of “Let’s try this again but with a different attitude.”

As I’ve said before in a sermon or two, the people in the New Testament didn’t have the New Testament for their reading pleasure. Their Bible was the Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures. The New Testament hadn’t been written and compiled yet because the people in it were still in the middle of living it! Their faith came from the Hebrew Scriptures, and from this Messiah who grew up in a Jewish family, a Jewish community, steeped in the Jewish Bible.

For Lent, we will walk through these weeks steeping ourselves in the stories of exile from the Hebrew Scriptures, re-reading and re-imagining the stories of women who wandered in the wilderness and found God there, just as Jesus did after his temptation. I hope you will find this series to be interesting and perhaps a little different from what you have been used to in Lent. My guess is that many of us will experience stories of individuals we’ve never heard of. Maybe we’ll see a glimpse of ourselves in there and more importantly, a glimpse of that God we know.

I sat there during her presentation feeling hopeful and smug at the same time, thinking about how at this point, St. Stephen’s boasts 1,020 members on her rolls, and about how full our services have been for the last several months. Rev. Jeremy Basset, the director of VIM in Oklahoma, made a presentation where he referred to a congregation whose nearly-new building always seemed to be under repairs. The pastor told him that although it was a new building, there’s so much use of all the rooms all through the week that the relatively new structure was already wearing out! Again, I thought of St. Stephen’s and the variety of groups we host during the week, many of which involve people who aren’t necessarily a part of our worshipping community. Smugness aside, I know we are a part of a denomination that has not shown overall growth statistically since
2008.

Dr. Butler Bass encouraged everyone in the lecture hall not to lose heart over diminishing numbers in congregations. She told us that we are on the verge of something new; a new awakening. This new awakening will not be without its birth pangs, and we will probably end up with a Church (capital C) that looks vastly different from the one of our childhoods, but it will still be vibrant, real and relevant. I came away from her talk feeling like perhaps sometimes, the best thing for us to do is get out of God’s way and let God work too.

Let’s keep doing what we’re doing, always looking for new challenges and opportunities. On that note, don’t forget to leaf through all the pages of this newsletter so that you can see all the important ways we will be wearing out our facility in February.

Jeremy was the pastor of the Winthrop, Massachusetts, United Methodist Church from 2006 to 2009 and now serves as associate pastor at First United Methodist of Checotah, home of Carrie Underwood and The Place the Tent I Borrowed Got All Bent Up in The Storm Last Summer on FreeWheel. He spent a few weeks this past year formulating a presentation based on the dissertation of Rev. Dr. Tiffany Steinwert that catalogs the voting history of our United Methodist General Conference on questions related to inclusion (or exclusion) of LGBT folk in our denomination’s history. The quote below gives you an impression of how non-partisan Jeremy’s faith tends to be:

“I have a clergy friend in Oklahoma and we call our relationship “The Spectrum”. We went to polar opposite seminaries, hold polar opposite theologies and ecclesiologies, and yet we both deeply consider ourselves and the other to be United Methodists.”

Every four years, delegates from all United Methodist conferences all over the world meet in one place and make big decisions on our theology and doctrine that pull the focus of the world’s cameras and journalists. Every four years, many folks wonder if two or three of these hot topics we vote on will split the church. To their query, Jeremy remembers, ”In 2005, I was in our United Methodist History class and the question came up, “Does anyone think the UMC will not eventually schism?” I remember …being the only person dumb enough to say I did not think we would split. Every four years on the hot topic issues when our church votes to change or retain our church doctrine, we are divided 45/55. One these topics, one could see us as two churches. But I don’t think two churches is the answer, as both churches will continue to have underage abortions, gay children, and pluralities of opinions on important topics.”

If you want to know what General Conference is all about, what items are under consideration this Spring, and how our denomination has viewed gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgendered individuals, this presentation is for you. I feel that we cannot have an educated conversation with our friends and co-workers about General Conference this year without hearing Jeremy’s presentation. Please be there Thursday, February 9th, at 7:00 p.m. in Community Hall.

Get to know Jeremy further at his blog, www.hackingchristianity.net

This scripture, Deuteronomy 18:15-20, warns that anyone who presumes to speak in [God’s] name a word that [God has] not commanded the prophet to speak will face some serious consequences. God, a loving and strict parent figure here, lays down the law (literally) throughout Deuteronomy, just as you may have done with your own children, or your parents did with you. “Come home by a certain time”, “Look both ways before crossing the street”, and “Don’t get into a car with a stranger,” we tell them. We give our children rules not to be mean to them, but rather, to protect them from harm. God warns us not to follow false prophets because God knows that that will land us in a heap of trouble, one way or another.

God sets out these rules as a part of the covenant relationship we enjoy with God throughout our whole lives. Dr. Walter Brueggemann writes that “Israel, as YHWH’s covenant partner, is expected to order its life in ways that are appropriate to this relationship. It is unthinkable that the God who is holy, glorious….who is the Creator of heaven and earth, will extend self in commitment without such an expectation.” (An Unsettling God: The Heart of the Hebrew Bible, Minneapolis, Fortress Press, 2009) In this first month of 2012, we continue to focus on how we must order our lives in order to fulfill God’s call on our lives, and to experience the life abundant to which Christ calls us.

Many of my colleagues balked openly at her presentation, which was frankly, sad, and in a couple of cases, downright rude. During the question-and-answer period, some showed a real fear that what they do in their jobs every week might be undermined by Heath’s work in forming home communities. My reaction to the presentation was quite the opposite! I was inspired by what she and her graduate students have taken on as a full-time project. Some of the students live in covenant communities, much like the one our former guest preacher, Shane Claiborne, described to us from his own life. They share the responsibilities of cooking, cleaning, buying groceries, and they live by a covenant of rules. They invite folks in from their low-income neighborhoods in Dallas for a weekly meeting that includes worship, prayer and sharing. They really and truly ask the old Wesleyan questions from the band societies: “How is it with your soul?” “How have you fallen short this week?” They hold each other accountable. They take up an offering each time that is immediately disseminated into the neighborhoods for whatever someone might need: A new air conditioner, a new school uniform, or a bag or two of groceries for the week. Their network of communities has reached out to many different types of folks, many of whom are from refugee communities and who speak six or seven different languages. It must look like Pentecost in some of these groups at times, when among the ten or so people around the circle, five or six different languages of origin are represented.

I was inspired by her presentation and am encouraged to read more of her books. Unlike some of my fearful colleagues, I feel that a rising tide lifts all boats. Let’s celebrate the fact that someone is doing great work in the Dallas area, especially to include those who are so far from home and who need to feel the love of Christ. Way to go, Elaine!

As I announced on Sunday, and as you may have heard via other sources, our Mayor, Cindy Rosenthal, is hosting an interfaith breakfast at McFarlin Memorial United Methodist Church this coming Monday at 7:00 a.m. to honor Dr. King’s work. I will be attending, and if any of you would like to go, you are asked to RSVP to the Mayor’s office in advance, so that they may have a head count. You are encouraged to send an e-mail to carol.coles@normanok.gov Our church office will be closed in honor of the holiday that day.

So, what else are you planning to do on Dr. King’s Day? Even if you have to work that day, how might you take a moment to mark this important holiday? Our president has asked us to use the day as a day to volunteer in some way or another. How might you and your family volunteer? Any of you who have ever walked with me more than a couple of blocks somewhere know that I love to pick up aluminum cans and recycle them. What if you took a walk in your neighborhood, plastic bag in hand, and cleaned up as you went? What if you made a donation to a worthy cause that day? What if you wrote a letter to an active serviceperson in our military that day? For more ideas, you might look at www.mlkday.gov or www.volunteer.gov

A second very interesting speaker will be Yousef Khanfar, a Palestinian-born photographer who has taken up his camera, instead of a gun, to promote peace in the Middle East and around the world. His first book, Voices of Light, provided a showcase of the everyday mysteries of nature. He was named one of the World’s Top Photographers in Landscapes by RotoVision Publications in London, and in 2009, the Fulbright Center for Peace in Washington, D.C. selected his book In Search of Peace, as the book of choice to be gifted in the Global Symposium of Peaceful Nations to their choices of the “most peaceful nations of the world.” He will be our featured speaker at our Roundtable Discussion on the evening of Feburary 26th.

Our third speaker for the month of February will be Rev. Jeremy Smith, a colleague of mine whom many of you have become acquainted with through the Progressive Retreat or by reading his blog, hackingchristianity.net. Jeremy has attended General Conference, the quadrennial meeting of our entire denomination, as a volunteer and has compiled a presentation on the history of the inclusion of LGBTs in United Methodist Polity that covers General Conference activity since 1972. Jeremy is a graduate of Oklahoma City University, as well as Bentley University and Boston University, where he received his Masters of Divinity in 2006. This past year, Jeremy was named Outstanding Alumnus from Boston University School of Theology, making all of us in Oklahoma very proud. Jeremy’s brilliant and thorough research, coupled with his delightful presentation style, make this presentation an educational opportunity that is not to be missed. We have set only a tentative date at this point, but stay tuned for details about this event, which will happen on a weeknight in early February.

We have a lot to look forward to in our community life together in the next several weeks.

The father of my best college friend advised us at their family table once that change is one of the few constants in life. I remember feeling sad when I heard those words falling on my 20-year-old ears, thinking how much I liked my life the way it was. I didn’t want anyone to move away, or die, or get sick; I didn’t want to lose touch with the great friends I’d made; I wanted all the wonderful things that were already in place to stay the same. Of course, it wouldn’t have bothered me at all for any of the negative details of my life to change! Bring on the change, when it involves erasing a negative!

Christmastime is a time when we notice what’s changed in our lives since the previous year, or since many years ago. My grandmother, who lived to be 96, made a habit of pointing out who was missing on holidays, each year a family member had died. The year her husband and my other grandmother died within ten days of each other, she opined, “We’ve got two empty chairs this year.” I groaned inside my 13-year-old head as she said it, wishing she could have just kept that thought to herself, as if not mentioning the two empty chairs would keep everyone from thinking about it. She was just voicing our sense of loss. She would remain the only grandparent, representing her generation alone for another decade around that same table.

Christmas was different that year. And it seems like the next Christmas was a little different too. Come to think of it, the FOLLOWING Christmas was different from the one previous to it. In fact, I can’t think of two Christmases that were exactly the same. Every year, it seems like there was someone who had moved away, or a new person in our lives who had moved closer. Sometimes, there was a chair set for a new family friend, or a boyfriend, or a new son-in- law, even. But somehow, the chairs would be rearranged eventually and less or more china was set out and the rituals took a slightly different schedule each time.

If we count on things not to change, we set ourselves up for disappointment. Life is so precious and fragile that there are no guarantees. I’ve come to look around the Christmas dinner table, or the crowd on the floor around the tree, or even the sanctuary on the 24th, and look not for the empty spots, but instead for the faces there, and to be grateful for them. It’s taken a long time to figure out that it’s what I’m supposed to do, but I think I’m supposed to give thanks for the faces that come back to the circle, and to welcome the new ones that appear, and to enjoy every last drop of the time we have together, just as we enjoy the last drop of the juiciness of the oranges we find in our stockings on Christmas morning.

This Sunday, we light the fourth Advent candle, celebrating the Sunday of love. We will worship through music and scripture, celebrating the service of Lessons and Carols, which will feature two of our choirs and very specially-chosen hymns and anthems. Please make sure to be in either the early or late service for worship this Sunday! The following Sunday will be Christmas Day, and we will have the 10:50 service that Sunday. We are giving everyone the early morning off so that they might stay home and enjoy a Christmas morning with family and friends before coming to worship.

Many centuries ago, the Roman Catholic Pope would give someone in one congregation a rose on the fourth Sunday in the season of Lent, as a way of relieving the solemnity of the season. The Advent season used to be celebrated as was a solemn season of preparation, as well, before it gained the “countdown” feel and party-laden atmosphere it has today. The rose-colored custom was extended into the Advent season in the form of a rose-colored candle, appropriately placed on the Sunday of joy.

Where do you find your joy in Advent? What hymns, songs, or stories bring you the most joy? Do you thrill to the chords underneath “Joy to the World” or are you more of a Springsteen’s “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town” on the radio turned-way-up kind of person? Hope to see you Sunday as we share the joy with one another in our morning worship, and in our evening of music.

“So when people get angry when someone says ‘Happy Holidays,’ I get angry that they are angry. If you want to keep Christ in Christmas, worry about things more important than the signs and decorations at JC Penney. You think Christmas should be about Christ? Then take up your cross and follow Jesus – not into department stores – but into the prisons, the hospitals, among the poor and the outcast. You get angry when someone doesn’t say ‘Christmas?’ Try getting angry over Christ’s children dying of malnutrition or AIDS. Try getting angry over the fact that the Christmas chocolate you love so much was kept cheap on the back of the working poor. Try getting angry over the fact that Christians are keeping people out of churches with their closed minds and closed doors.”

His words pretty much silence all of us, whether we feel strongly about saying “Merry Christmas” or prefer to say “Happy Holidays”. His words make the argument over a greeting seem like wasted breath if we are not living our call to be Christlike day‐in and day‐out.

I hope this Advent season has started to give you 􀆟me to reflect in the odd quiet moment here and there about what the hope and peace Christ’s coming into our lives means for our journey. What are we being called to do out of the joy and festivity that surrounds this baby’s birth? Who needs what we have to offer? How will we be called out of our comfort zones in the coming year?

See you Sunday for the next step on our Advent journey.