Final Blog

After nearly three months my Sabbatical Journey is almost to an end. I've been working this week collecting my thoughts about the experiences of the past few months. I've reveiwed the books I've read, looked at notes I took while traveling, viewed the many pictures I've taken and tried to put this experience in perspective. It won't fully happen right now. There is just too much to put my arms around. And there are things I still need to think about and digest.
Our church will have a celebration on Sunday, August 22. Some say it is a welcome back for my wife and me. I think of it more as a time to celebrate the renewal of our life together in the setting of a marvelous church. There will only be one worship service that morning at 10 a.m. I will be preaching if I still remember how. Following the service there will be a catered meal which is paid for by the Lilly grant that has allowed so many wonderful experiences this summer. I'll have some pictures and a whole table of items collected during my travels. They will include some prints of frescos from the catacombs in Rome and a communion token from Campbelton, Scotland dated 1823. We hope to have a booklet for those who want it containing the sermons preached this summer, the communion stories collected and a report on some of the things I've learned this summer. We also hope to have this booklet online in a few days.
Last week I spent a day at the Christian Church Historical Society in Nashville, reading some old documents written by Barton Stone. I also took pictures of two communion tables on display this summer at the Society. One is from the 1909 gathering of the Christian Church in Pittsburg. The other table, one familiar to us because it was designed and built by Mark Whitley, was used at the 2009 Assembly of the Christian Church in Indianapolis. One table is very plain, a table that might sit in our homes and be used as a desk. The other is designed like the trunk of a tree and has a glass top. If you look inside you can see the names of hundreds of people who wrote a prayer on a small piece of wood and had it glued to the inside of the table. The tables are light years apart in design. They speak to two groups of people separated by 100 years. A lot has changed in that period of time. I can only imagine what has changed in 2000 years.
But as much as things have changed I hope the meal is still at the center of who we are as a people, reminding us of God's presence among us through the spirit, reminding us of the need to show the same hospitality and love that Jesus showed when he sat at table so many years ago. It is right that our interpretations change as the world changes. The gospel must always become a new and fresh thing. But the change can never take us too far from the welcoming center of the Lord's Supper. It is there that we continue to be molded and shaped into cups capable of sharing the wine of life with the world.

Susan and I spent a remarkable day working at St Gregory's distributing food to around four hundred people. The workers began arriving around eight in the morning. Many of the workers are from the neighborhood and receive food themselves to help supplement retirement income. They worked like beavers crating in the food and placing it at stations around the Lord's Table where we celebrated communion last Sunday. The food consisted of wonderful fruits and vegatables from the nearby valley, fresh breads, some rice, cereal, beans and chicken sausage. At around ten thirty everyone stopped for coffee and a cookie. Then work continued until everything was set up around 11:30(see photo). At that time tables were set up for lunch. While the volunteers had been working setting up the food, Paul, the church's pastor and Sara Miles who worked to set up this food ministry as a way of extending the Lord's Table into the community, had cooked lunch (see photo). When all was prepared we ate together and got better acquainted. After the lunch was cleared away each of us was assigned a station where we distributed one item. I did carrots and Sue did plums (see pictures). The people who came in were given assigned times to show up. One group (the red group) comes one week for food and the other group comes the next week. I would say ninety percent of the people who came for food were beyond retirement age. Most seemed very appreciative for the food.
In the brightly decorated sanctuary with all the dancing saints it seemed the community of Christ was taking form again as food was provided for the tables of those with need and as community formed among those who volunteered to serve. In talking with those who served I learned some were devote Catholics, some attended St Gregory's Episcopal, some were not attending any church, and at least one woman said, "My mother would turn over in her grave if she saw her in church. She'd say,'What's wrong with you, going to church? You are a nice Jewish girl."
Today volunteers were brought together around the table not by a common creed or belief, but by a simple desire to care for others. It was a good place for Christ to be found.

Yesterday I attended three services that included communiion. Two were held at St. Gregory of Nyssa Church in San Francisco. It is an Episcopal Church started in 1978 by two professors from Yale who decided to return to pastoral ministry. One of the professors, so I understand, had the backing of a family foundation that funded much of the early work. They began meeting in another church, but after experiencing some growth bought the property where the present church is located. I’d been told by a professor at Princeton last year that I should visit this church if I was interested in seeing communion done in a different way.
The church is an inclusive church, not just in the makeup of those who worshiped, but in the symbols used to decorate the sanctuary, which consisted of two large rooms joined together. In some ways the sanctuary reminded me of an Eastern Orthodox Church with its many icons and symbols. But there were also symbols like a menorah that seemed to honor other faith traditions. When it came time for communion worshipers went from that part of the room where we were seated into a large open room where the communion table was located. We were taught a simple dance step, similar to what I imagined a Shaker might use, and as we sang we put our arm on the shoulder of the person in front of us and we “danced” into the other room until we had surrounded the communion table. Now we were not the only ones dancing. In the room where the communion table was set up there are paintings on the walls and ceiling of the room. (see photo). These are the dancing saints. They included person from long ago like Barnabas and Moses, but also persons who have lived recently like Thomas Merton and Margaret Mead. One saint did not have his halo, Desmond Tutu, because he hasn’t yet died. At the center of these paintings or icons was Jesus who was also depicted as dancing. I would classify this as the strangest thing I’ve seen while visiting churches on Sabbatical. I can’t say the service was especially meaningful, and yet I did take away from the service a sense that we are far too somber when we come to the Lord’s Table. While I’m not ready to start dancing, I hope I will remember that it is a feast, a gathering of joy that remembers the power of God to turn death into life, the power of God to heal and save us. At this table all the saints do gather, and I’ll bet in God’s presence there may be a few “happy feet.”
Last evening I attended a Eucharist at Grace Cathedral. It was held on the indoor labyrinth at the Cathedral. The assistant rector, Lauren Artress, is largely responsible for having revived the use of the labyrinth as a tool of spiritual formation back in modern times. I was a little disappointed that the communion service did not include the use of the labyrinth, except that the table was set up in the center of the labyrinth and we all set around it for the worship.
For the last couple of weeks I’ve been putting my thoughts and experiences together, re-reading notes from books and travel, and thinking about how all this has changed my understanding of myself and the church. It has been amazing how one experience has connected to another, how one internal conflict has found some resolution through the next thing I’ve seen or read. I found it interesting when I entered the sanctuary yesterday morning at St Gregory’s and saw all the paintings I immediately thought of the frescos that were painted over or removed from the walls of churches after the Reformation. And I thought of the frescos on the walls of the Catacombs in Rome. I wondered how our faith might be expressed were we to try and depict it in some art form.
Many things to think about and ponder, not just the next couple of weeks but hopefully for a long time after I get back into the daily joy of ministry.

Home Safely

After spending most of the day Friday traveling, we arrived safely home late in the evening. It will take a few days to get caught up with the time. I slept about five hours, dreaming mostly of Rome. I was looking for a place amid ruined arches. Maybe the dream depicts the job before me of making sense of the experiences I've had while traveling and reading. Right now it seems like a really big job. But I hope over the next few weeks, before I resume my ministry at the church, that I'll be able to organize things in a way that will help others taste a little of this banquet I've feasted on this summer.
One of the things that fascinated me on this trip were doorways. Maybe I was thinking about the Celtic understanding that a doorway is a "thin air" place, a place where God is especially real and present. Doorways mark the boundaries between where we've been and where we are going. God meets us in those places of change, inviting us into new ways of seeing and being. I feel my experiences this summer are bringing me through a new doorway.
On Thursday I went beneath St Cecilia's Church in Rome. There were a number of rooms beneath the ancient church that were a part of a large home that once stood on the sight. The home dated to the first or second century. It was the home of a wealthy family, a senatorial family. Cecilia lived in this home sometime around the end of the 2nd century. She was a Christian and she open this beautiful home up to other Christians in that Roman Community for worship. It was a house church. Cecilia was eventually charged with working against Rome, a charge leveled at Christians during the first three centuries in Rome. She was beheaded near the baths in her home. After Christianity became legal in Rome a large church was built on this site honoring the hospitality of Cecilia.
As I walked through the large rooms and stepped on some of the original tile that had covered the floor, I thought of the great community of faith that met there over 1800 years ago. I thought of the faith and generosity of Cecilia that enabled her to share the things that came to her by way of her status in life with Christians who were slaves and laborers in Rome. The church that is built over the house is very elaborately decorated. It is a place of beauty. But for me the presence of God was there in the ruins of that home, there in the place where Christians walked through doorways as equals to give thanks to God for the life that they shared and for the hope they had in the resurrected Christ.
One of the symbols carved on a gravestone from that period in Rome, now embedded in the porch of St Cecilia church, was that of a ship. It was a symbol of the church. Maybe it referred back to the story of the disciples in a ship with Jesus on a stormy night. They were frightened, but Jesus was there and they were not harmed.
The early house church where people came together to break bread, to read the old stories and to pray reminds us of the profound simplicity of our life together as a church. The church was and remains about the people who gather to love one another and to try and love others in meaningful ways.

Wrapping Up

In a couple of days we will say goodbye to Europe and head home. After five weeks of living out of one small suitcase apiece, Susan and I are ready for familiar surroundings. We look forward to seeing our family and will be anxious to see everyone in our church family in another five weeks.
We spent Monday evening and Tuesday with a friend from Bowling Green. Father Jerry Ridney, priest at Holy Spirit was in Rome for a 35th reunion of his seminary class. He went to school in Rome. He brought a friend from his graduating class who serves a church in Minnesota and we had a great time touring several plazas and then had dinner together at the restaurant of The Twelve Apostles (I’m not kidding). We talked about communion in the Catholic tradition well into the evening. I learned there are Catholic theologians who are looking at communion within the life of the church in different ways. I was glad to get a couple of names and titles of books to read. Jerry’s friend quoted Thomas Merton who said “if you do not love, you cannot experience communion.” The meal we shared sitting along the street at the Twelve Apostles seemed a lot like communion.
On Tuesday we took a bus to Tivoli to a villa built by a 16th cardinal. Jerry Ridney and Gregory went with us. It had a beautiful courtyard filled with fountains that were fed by water that came in from the mountains through Roman aqueducts. It is easy to see why Martin Luther was put out with the wealth and extravagance of the cardinals in Rome. I did try to remind myself that in those days many of the cardinals were from royal families and had little religious training. Setting aside the inconsistencies of such extravagance and I just enjoyed the beauty.
Today, Wednesday, I completed my search for art work depicting communion. I found a beautiful Last Supper scene in the Sistine Chapel done by Michelangelo. There was also a tapestry in the Vatican Museum dating to the Renaissance that had only 11 Disciples. Judas got left out.
My last visit to a religious site in Rome turned out to be the most rewarding. What I saw there, as well as what I’ve experience in my travels will make me look differently at the way faith is experienced and practiced. I can’t get into all that now, but I’ll share just a little of what I saw. I visited the Catacombs of Priscilla which is off the beaten path for tourists. Located along the ancient road Salaria, it is believed a woman from a Senatorial family gave the old mined out area to early Christians as a burial ground. It dates to the mid to late 2nd century. In some of the rooms some pictures remain on the walls above tombs. There are pictures of fish, an early sign for Christians. There are peacocks, early signs for resurrection. There are several OT scenes. The oldest know picture of Mary and baby Jesus is in the upper corner of one of these burial chambers. And there was what is called the “breaking of bread.” It is a drawing of five men and a woman sitting Roman style at a table being served bread by the host who is a man with a beard. There are seven baskets of loaves and fishes and there is a wine cup on the table. This picture drawn before the church had the support of the emperor seems to depict communion where men and a woman gather about Jesus’ table where there is great abundance. There is no cross or crucifix in the catacombs, nor are there images of judgment and torment. What does all that say? Volumes about what the church may have believed about life and death before the church managed to gain power by way of a Roman Emperor named Constantine.
I have lots to think about and digest over the next few weeks, but tomorrow is a free day to just walk around some of the plazas, eat as much gelato as I can, enjoy another good meal with Sue and gladly come home on Friday.

It is hard to comprehend Rome. I sat down on a bench outside the small temple of Julius Caesar (see picture). Just on the other side of the wall there was a mound of dirt where his remains were cremated. Caesar walked by that spot the morning he was killed by his adopted son Brutus. He should have listened to the street corner Etrusian preacher who near that spot cried out to Caesar, “Beware the Ides of March.”
Later in the day Susan and I toured Palatine Hill where Rome is thought to have begun and where a huge palace covered the west side of the hill. The palace overlooked the Circus Maximus where horses and chariots raced for over 500 years before crowds that could number 250,000. (see picture) The palace was so magnificent that many said it caused the god’s to envy Caesar.
A large banquet hall can be found overlooking a courtyard filled with fountains. Here the powerful, rich and famous gathered to feast. Caesar would be seated on a platform and guests would recline on couches where they would gorge themselves on such things as bowls of larks tongues and pigs stuffed with live birds before roasting and lots of wine. If they got too full and wanted more a feather was provided to help them get rid of what was on their stomachs (see picture).
Hard to imagine the standard of living built on conquest, on booty, and on slave labor. It was great for those who were in power, but the cost in human suffering is all around, from the Coliseum where slaves fought and died, to the stories of rape and violence, the good life had a high price tag for many.
I had to think of the humble birth of a man in a distant country occupied by Rome. No one in this great city would know anything of his birth or his death, which was happened at the hands of Roman soldiers. He would have no palace to call home. No one would fear him. Yet the one born in Judea would inspire a new way that would ultimately conquer Rome. The Caesars are dead now, just their images in marble remain. But the one born in the obscure hamlet of Bethlehem remains a living presence in the hearts and minds of those who believe. And at the coliseum a cross stands where Caesar once sat. Love not hate and violence is eternal (see pciture).

Grateful for America's gift to my Great Grandfather

My cousin Esther made us very welcome at her home near Thun, Switzerland. Her home is in a valley surrounded by huge mountains. No matter which way you look your eyes feast on unbelievable beauty. Wheat fields and grassland, gardens and trees, farmhouses and barns, streams and lakes are framed by mountains that rise 6000-9000 feet (see picture).
My cousin is a nurse and her husband a family practice doctor. They work together and have two children eight and eleven. I’ve appreciated all the time she gave me over the last three days. When we arrived on Tuesday there was a fresh loaf of zufla (see Picture) that Esther made to greet us. It is a Swiss bread my mother baked and one I sometimes bake. The bread common to our family on both sides of the Atlantic made me feel as though all our ancestors from Switzerland and America were at the table. Esther has managed to serve us excellent meals and act as our non-stop tour guide. She arranged for us to visit several churches on Wednesday and to talk with a friend of hers who was from Missouri but has lived in Switzerland for 13 years and is now a citizen here. He grew up in the Baptist church and attended bible college in Mayfield. I learned so much from him that I want to share, but that must wait until I’m back at home in Bowling Green.
What I want to share today is how this July 4 may be the most meaningful Independence Day I’ll ever celebrate. I know this because in a conversation I had Thursday with a distant cousin, Oswald Muller (see picture) tears welled up in my eyes as I was told how America provided a place where my great-grandfather, John Muller, and his family could go in 1893 to keep from either going to jail or being killed. It is a story I’d never been told. From letters written in the early part of the 20th century by my great grandmother, Rosetta Muller and found a few years ago, we thought my grandfather left Switzerland for economic reasons. He owned a mill and we thought his brother had opened another mill not far from John’s and stolen many of his customers. We had assumed John left Switzerland angry at his brother. We know that when he got settled near East Bernstadt,KY his wife and children followed. My grandfather, Emil, was just an infant when they made the crossing. Our family received several copies of letters written by Rosetta (from 1905-1937) to her sister-in-law in Switzerland and in some of those letters she mentioned that John had forgotten the wrong done to him and was just living in the present. Today I learned from the grandson of John Muller’s brother what really happened. John and his wife Rosetta had become members of the Taufers. The word in German means baptizers. The reformed church believed in infant baptism. That was the official religion in Switzerland and infant baptism records were used to register citizens and to let the state know who existed for tax purposes and the draft When this group of Taufers began preaching baptism by immersion and opposed the draft and war they were hunted down and either jailed or killed. Word was sent to my great-grandfather to either leave the country or he would be jailed or killed. So he disappeared. His mill was taken over by the government and sold. John immigrated to America and sent word to his father when he had settled near to send his family. Even in America he was afraid the reformers might find him, so he never wrote and he never returned to Switzerland. My guess is that is why he changed his last name to Miller to avoid any scrutiny by other Swiss families who had already settled in America.
For several weeks I’ve seen the destruction brought by Reformers bent on changing the church and wrestling political power for themselves. Little did I know I’d discover my own great-grandfather had to leave his native country and lose his business because of the intolerance of the Reformers in Switzerland.
America gave him a fresh start, a place where he and his family could believe as they chose, a place where the government could not put him in jail and or take over his business because he believed in something that wasn’t popular.
On this 4th of July I won’t be in the states, but I will give thanks for a nation where different people are welcome, where new ideas are encouraged, and where freedom remains our most cherished possession. And I will give thanks for the people at First Christian Church who are comfortable with differences and try to room for everyone at the table.
Today we are in Zurick and have toured Zwingli's church. He was a contemporary to Calvin and Luther. Some say Disciples' view of communion follow Zwingli most closely. After what I've seen I'd argue with that point.
Tomorrow we are of to Rome.