God’s New Creation

Dear Hyde Park Family,

So then, if anyone is in Christ, that person is part of the new creation. The old things have gone away, and look, new things have arrived!
(2 Corinthians 5:17)

Last Sunday we kicked off our new worship series “A New Creation,” and I concluded my sermon with a story about a man named Rodney. I’ve changed his name here, but he’s given me permission to share his story with you.

Rodney is one of the many people around the country who have discovered Hyde Park United Methodist since we began our new online worship platform at the start of the pandemic. When he sent the following email a few weeks ago, it simply blew me away.

I came across Hyde Park UMC’s ‘Making God’s Love Real’ recordings in a very intense search for meaning in the early months of 2020. I’ve been a very tough atheist for most of my life, but I’ve also dealt with very strong feelings of depression and anxiety for as long as I can remember, which have made me somewhat of a nihilist. 2019 was really damaging for me, but last year was full of healing and progress, in which you and HPUMC played a very big role.

I now consider myself a Christian and know I will make it through my hardest patches in the future thanks to the faith you sparked in me, as I’ve done this year. But I also still think rationality and science are the way to solve most problems in this world, therapy and medication are very powerful tools, and inequality across racial, cultural and gender lines is real. And the reason I can now break this apparent dichotomy is the listening of your teachings.

You do a great service to this world by helping articulate the complementary nature of science and religion with such a humane approach.

I remain forever thankful to you and Hyde Park’s United Methodist Church, and hope someday I can give back at least a fraction of the love I’ve received thanks to your worship services.

Since sending me that email, Rodney has told me that he hasn’t missed a service with us online, and that he is now getting involved in a local faith community near where he lives.

I think that deserves an Amen!

PARTICIPATING IN GOD’S NEW CREATION

Stories like Rodney’s remind us of why we do what we do as a church. God is at work in and through us, bringing healing to the hurting and hope to the heartbroken. And when you support this church, through your prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness, you are part of the new creation that God is making for people like Rodney all around the world.

Thank you for your support, encouragement, and generosity as we continue to live through this season of change, and into the amazing future God has for this church.

Grace and Peace,

Magrey

The Rev. Magrey deVega
Senior Pastor, Hyde Park United Methodist

You’ve Gotta See This!

Dear Hyde Park Family,

Back in 1993, while walking through Tyrone Square Mall in St. Petersburg, I saw my first Magic Eye 3D image. Or at least I tried to see it.

In case you’d never heard of them, Magic Eye 3D images are computer-generated pictures that on the surface, appear to be little more than colorful repeating patterns of lines and shapes. But if you stare at them long enough in a certain way, you begin to see an amazing, three-dimensional image pop out of the picture.

There was a display of them in the center of the mall that day, surrounded by a crowd of mallgoers who were captivated by them. After figuring out how to see them, I steadily moved from picture to picture, in awe of each one.

I was with a friend of mine who couldn’t figure out how to see it.

So, I did my best to explain it to them. “Okay. First you stand about three feet away from the image. Then stare into the middle of the picture, letting your eyes cross. Just a bit. Not too much. Then, let the picture get a bit fuzzy, see, so that you don’t focus on the shapes. Don’t focus on the shapes! Eventually, you’ll see patterns hidden in the shapes. And try not to blink, or you’ll lose concentration, and don’t focus on the glare in the glass, or your reflection. And whatever you do, just relax!”

Despite my yammering (or, perhaps, because of it), my friend still didn’t get it.

“Oh, just keep trying!” I exclaimed, “You’ve gotta see this!”

To which my friend, now more disgruntled with me than with their inability to see the image, responded sternly: “I don’t … gotta … do anything.”

I deserved that.

DOUBTING THOMAS

I imagine that a similar scene unfolded soon after the resurrected Jesus had appeared to all the remaining disciples except for Thomas. They must have peppered him for a full week. “C’mon, Thomas! We saw it with our own eyes! You’ll have to believe us! And you can believe it, too.”

“You’ve gotta see this!”

If we’re honest, there is a bit of Thomas in each of us. There is much about the Christian faith that we don’t understand, can’t figure out, and find hard to believe. But as we will discover this Sunday, when we begin a new worship series titled “A New Creation,” Jesus meets us right where we are. Jesus meets us at the point of our doubts and skepticism, and offers a personal, intimate experience of the resurrection for ourselves.

See you Sunday, online or indoors!

(Oh, and did you figure out the 3D image in the headline graphic? Let me know!)

Grace and peace,

Magrey

The Rev. Magrey deVega
Senior Pastor, Hyde Park United Methodist

Mary’s Boy

The Ballad of Mary’s Son
By Langston Hughes

It was in the Spring
The Passover had come.
There was feasting in the streets and joy.

But an awful thing
Happened in the Spring—
Men who knew not what they did
Killed Mary’s Boy.
And the Son of God was He—
Sent to bring the whole world joy.
There were some who could not hear,
And some were filled with fear—
So they built a cross
For Mary’s Boy.

Grace and peace,

Magrey

The Rev. Magrey deVega
Senior Pastor, Hyde Park United Methodist

A Personal Word About Race

Dear Hyde Park Family,

In the aftermath of the tragic shootings in Atlanta and Boulder, I offered a pastoral word and prayer earlier this week with which we can join in prayer and concern.

A PERSONAL WORD ABOUT RACE

A few people have reached out to me to offer their love and support in the wake of the rising violence and persecution committed to members of the Asian-American and Pacific Islander community. I am very grateful for those persons.

Today’s Midweek Message is longer than usual, and I thank you for receiving this personal word of reflection.

I have done a great deal of introspection this past week about my own race and ethnicity. Like a Pandora’s box with a loose-fitting lid, it doesn’t take much for difficult memories from my past to flood my mind. There was the trio of bullies in first grade who teased me every day about my name, my eyes, and my hair. There was the church member who gave me a ride from the church in his pick-up truck, motioning me to sit in the bed of the truck. “Minorities sit in the back,” he told me. There were the racial slurs I have been called to my face and behind my back in every decade of my life.

SPRAY-ON SECURITY

Once when I was about ten years old, I stared in the bathroom mirror and just wished that I had hair like the other kids. Not the jet-black hair that grew straight down on all sides, not the haircut that looked like someone just stuck a bowl on my head and trimmed around it. I was so desperate to fit in that in fifth grade, I started combing my bangs with a swoop to one side, like I saw on the other boys. I affixed every hair into place every morning with a ghastly volume of hair spray.

I did that every day for thirty years. That hairspray became a kind of enchantment charm to ward off my insecurities.

Over time, I thought this masquerade was working. I went from being the target of bullying to becoming a popular, high-achieving student. I became known for my academic success and my gentle demeanor. I was voted by my peers as having the quality of “Loyalty” during Homecoming festivities. My efforts to fit in had succeeded, not realizing until retrospect that it had come at the cost of subsuming my ethnicity. When I would refer to my being Filipino-American, it was usually as playful self-deprecation and comic relief, rather than out of pride. For most of my ministry career, friends have told me that they “don’t see me as a minority.” Church members have remarked, “Magrey doesn’t speak the way you would expect him to.” I’ve had clergy colleagues forget that I’m not white, even as recently as this past week.

Acceptance has sometimes come at a cost, reminding me of what I have had to lose in order to gain a sense of belonging.

It is very true that even my ability to subsume my ethnicity is itself a privilege not afforded to other minorities. For many, it’s not as simple as changing a hairstyle or speaking without an accent in order to feel like they can fit in. Many Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders have benefited from the “Model Minority” phenomenon, in which we are afforded recognition for actions and achievements that fit a prescribed stereotype, the very ones that benefited me in school: gentle, honorable, loyal, academically gifted. This mythology not only conceals a tragic history of racism against Asian-Americans, it offers beneficial perceptions not granted to other minority groups, especially African-Americans, who bear a greater historical burden of racial animosity, discrimination, and violence. Also, as a male, I have greater prospects for professional advancement and compensation. And as a heterosexual person, I am free in the eyes of the church to marry whom I love, and live out my sacred calling as a minister. This reality makes me sad and frustrated for many who are subjected to discrimination.

THE GREAT TENSION

Still, there is for me a tension between two polarities: Downplay who I am in order to fit in, or distinguish myself from others in order to be who I am?

I know I am not alone in this tension. The truth is, you feel it, too. None of us are immune from the conflict between the two deepest longings in each of us: to be who we are, and to belong. Between individuality and community. Between standing out and fitting in.

There are days when I’d rather not be asked by a stranger where I’m from. There are days when I’d rather just be known as a father, pastor, Floridian, and American, rather than use “Filipino” as a preceding adjective. There are days that I just want to belong. But there are also days when I want to be known for everything that makes me unique. I want to be able to speak with pride about who I am, without discrimination from others or being perceived as condescending of others. Most days, I feel a mixture of both these urges, and it is impossible for anyone else to know in any given moment what that mix within me is.

I know you feel this tension within yourself. It can become the basis of our own racial biases and prejudices, including my own. And this in part is what makes conversations about race so difficult.

We use well-meaning phrases like “color-blindness” and “unity” and “we are all part of one race, the human race.” Sometimes these ideas are helpful, but often they overly emphasize the communal at the expense of the individual. So, we swing the pendulum the other way, attending to people by their race, gender, sexual orientation, and other categories, often forgetting that no person is monolithic. I am more than one particular aspect of my identity, and you are, too.

Sound confusing? That’s because it is. Issues of racism and other kinds of discrimination are a hard, enduring mystery.

A FRAMEWORK FROM OUR FAITH

But it occurs to me that as Christian people, we have a framework for naming this mystery, and even learning to embrace it, rather than run from it.

We believe in a trinitarian God, whose very nature is both individual and communal. God cannot be solely defined as three distinct persons; nor is God a homogenous whole. As much as we may struggle over how to understand the trinity empirically, we can take heart that in God’s own nature is the possibility of finding the fullest, healthiest, and most life-giving expression of both being and belonging.

And if we are created in the same image of that trinitarian God, then we can in fact live out who we really are as individuals, as one vital community together.

But not only is the trinity a helpful framework for addressing racism, so is the other great mystery of the Christian faith: the incarnation. God was fully revealed in Jesus Christ through a personal, flesh-and-blood relationship with humanity. And because the Holy Spirit is working to make us more in the image of Jesus every day, we can then be an incarnate presence to each other. We can get to know each other personally, as fellow human beings, and hear the richness of all that makes us who we are. Issues of racism and discrimination separate us, but the incarnation offers a path toward reconciliation. When we hear each other’s stories, we can affirm one another’s dignity and worth, empathize with each other’s struggles, and celebrate each other’s uniqueness.

With the trinity and the incarnation, we can begin to realize a beautiful community of interconnected individuality.

And that is why I believe in the church. As much as Sunday mornings are still “the most segregated hour in America,” we have in our faith the model and the means to embrace the mystery of our racial differences. In the trinity, we can be fully individual and communal. In Christ, we can be in healthy relationships with people across our differences. Exploring our own racist tensions and tendencies need not be something we run from. We can learn to love one another, both as individual persons and as kindred spirits.

Writing this reflection has helped me process my feelings of grief over the events in Atlanta and around the country. But I remain hopeful in the work of the Spirit to remind us of the indomitable power of love. I hope my words can remind you of the basic right of every person to find their own balance between being and belonging. You deserve it, and so do I. We all do.

A POSTSCRIPT

In 2011, while serving a church in Iowa, I preached a sermon prior to beginning a three-month renewal period, in which I and the girls would travel to the Philippines to rediscover our ethnic heritage.

In that sermon, I talked about how my hair had become for me a symbol for subverting my ethnicity, and how I was choosing that day to feel free to be who I was. So, at the end of the service, in the chancel of the sanctuary, we had a church member who was a hairstylist take a pair of #2 clippers to my head.

I have kept that hairstyle ever since. It felt liberating then, and it still does.

And that was the last time I ever touched a bottle of hair spray.

Grace and Peace,

Magrey

CPR for Your Spirit

Dear Lenten Pilgrims,

We’ve all heard of CPR, cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Many of us have been trained to administer it in an emergency. Some of us may have even needed to receive it in the past.

If you’re like me, we often need a different kind of CPR, one to resuscitate a weary spirit and downcast soul. So how about considering this kind of CPR, one that you can even administer to yourself, starting today?

C: Cultivate Contentment:

Have you ever had one of those moments of nostalgia when you remember when life was easier and more joyful? All of us have. We often long to relive those memories, wishing we had now what we had back then.

So how about this? Consider the possibility that down the road, when you look back on today in the rear-view mirror, you might be actually living right now what you will consider “the good old days” tomorrow. In other words, there may be aspects of your current situation that you will not fully cherish until they are gone.

In the final episode of NBC’s The Office, a character named Andy said, “I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days before you’ve actually left them.” That sums it up pretty well. Count your blessings. Cultivate contentment.

P: Practice Mental Sabbaths:

Take a page out of the Jewish playbook of keeping Sabbath and designate a regular period of time to rest your mind and heart from anything that troubles you. Select several hours – or better yet, a whole day – for your mental Sabbath, in which you will not allow yourself to worry about anything, great or small.

The Israelites prepared for Sabbath by doing all of their required tasks in advance so that they could refrain from physical labor during their time of rest. How about doing the same for your mind? Cross as many stressful items off your to-do list before your Sabbath begins. Gather the scriptures, prayers, and personal effects that you will use to channel your worries away during that time.

R: Rekindle Relationships:

Relationships are wired into our being to ensure our survival. There is no greater way to combat threats – even low-level ones – than to do so in community. And, there is no better resource in your life than the relationships you foster with family and friends.

Ponder this truth: your ability to handle your worry is related to the strength of your relationships with others. In this moment, you can come up with at least a handful of loved ones with whom you have lost touch, for various reasons. Invest in those relationships, and you’ll realize that you are not alone. That sense of solidarity is a powerful antidote to worry.

I wish you well in the ways that you handle your worries, and I pray that you will recognize the constant work of God in you.

Enjoy your life.

It’s the only one you get.

Grace and Peace,

Magrey

The Meaning of Scars

Dear Hyde Park Family,

THE MEANING OF SCARS

Many of us have scars we wish would disappear. I have a burn mark on my right forearm from when I once touched a hot piece of equipment. Madelyn has a scar over her left eye from stitches she needed after falling off her bicycle. Grace has a scar on her cheek from when she was born. And I, like many of you, have scars that are invisible to the eye. They are from wounds in our spirit that reach deep within our past, etched by heartache, grief, doubt, or remorse. They are a lingering reminder of what we’ve been through, and what we’ve become as a result.

Consider the enduring scars of people in the Bible. There’s Jacob’s limp, or Adam’s sweat, or Paul’s thorn. Then there are stories from literary and popular culture: Odysseus’ foot, Luke Skywalker’s hand, Alice’s scrapes from Wonderland, and Harry Potter’s mark on his forehead.

Yes, scars recall old wounds. But they can also offer encouragement. They can remind us that in those moments when we could have played it safe, we chose to take a risk. When we could have chosen the easy way out, we decided to stay and struggle. When times got tough, we didn’t run and hide. Instead of giving up, we persisted through the pain, and survived to tell about it.

Sometimes, life’s most formative experiences are not the triumphs on the mountain top, but those born in the crucible of our deepest anguish. Those are the moments that stretched us until we thought we would break, bruised us until we thought we were bloodless, and pushed us until we thought we would never stand again. But the scars remind us that we did more than survive. We experienced the most powerful and central Christian realities:

Resurrection.

In John’s gospel, the resurrected body of Jesus still showed his scars. The nail spots in his hands and feet, the piercing of his side, the thorn marks on his head. Yes, he could walk through closed doors and ascend into the clouds. But when it came to proving the resurrection, he pointed to those scars. “Jesus showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.” (John 20:20)

Look back on your life. Yes, you have been through a lot. More than you might feel you deserve. And at the time, it was more than you thought you could handle. But look at yourself, at all those scars and bruises, especially the ones so deep inside you that only you and God can see.

There’s no reason to be ashamed of them.

No reason to hide them.

They are living proof that God has seen you through.

Grace and peace,

Magrey

The Rev. Magrey deVega
Senior Pastor, Hyde Park United Methodist

The Ultimate Chess Match

In Walter Isaacson’s bestselling book titled Steve Jobs, chronicling the life of the famous founder of the Apple Corporation, he relays a story of when Jobs was a teenager. He had grown up with parents who always desired Jobs to be raised in the Christian faith. So, they started attending a Lutheran church with some regularity.

When Jobs was 13 years old, he went in to see the Lutheran pastor, and in his hand was the latest cover of Life magazine, from July 12, 1969. On the cover were two starving children, victims of the ongoing war in Biafra, against Nigeria.

He asked the pastor, “If I hold up my fingers, does God know how many fingers I’m about to hold up?” And the pastor said, “Yes, God knows everything.” Then Jobs showed the pastor the cover. “Then does God know about this? And what’s going to happen to these children?”

The pastor stammered around with some answers: “Yes, God knows … We don’t understand…” Those kinds of statements.

Jobs then announced that he didn’t want to have anything to do with any kind of religion that believes in a God like that. And he never stepped foot in a church ever again.

“THE ULTIMATE CHESS MATCH”

The question of why people suffer, and God’s relationship to that suffering, is the hardest question we face in the Christian life. Preacher and author Tom Long has termed this dilemma “The Ultimate Chess Match.” On the one side is all we have believed or wanted to believe about God’s love and power. On the other side is the reality of a world where innocent people suffer and evil exists. The two sides are at war, in a game never to be fully resolved.

This Sunday, we will read a story from Luke’s gospel that more directly confronts this question than nearly any other in the passage in the Bible. It’s a story that the other gospels don’t try to touch; only Luke offers it, as an invitation to us to bring our most difficult questions about our own personal suffering, and find some redemptive hope in Jesus.

None of us are immune to suffering. If you or someone you love is going through a hard time right now, let’s come together this Sunday, and open our hearts and minds to the lessons that God would have for us.

Grace and peace,

Magrey

The Rev. Magrey deVega
Senior Pastor, Hyde Park United Methodist

IMPLEMENTATION TEAM UPDATES

In case you missed it, last week’s Midweek Message shared some important and exciting updates. You can read the Midweek Message, read the final report of our visioning process, and view the announcement video.

Ships into Submarines

Dear Hyde Park Family,

Today’s Midweek Message contains a final update and word of celebration about our visioning process, a link to an important announcement video sharing some exciting news, the latest update on resuming indoor ministries on campus, and finally, a personal word from me.

SHIPS INTO SUBMARINES

A few years ago, I had a conversation with a friend who was bemoaning the state of the Christian church in our country and our world. It was hard to avoid the statistics of membership decline, the loss of the church’s significance in our culture, and the general indifference people have toward organized religion.

“It feels like a sinking ship,” my friend said.

After a bit of a pause, searching for something to say that was both authentic and hopeful, I replied with a statement that I didn’t quite understand, even as I was saying it.

“Well, maybe the church isn’t a sinking ship, as much as it is God’s way of transforming it into a submarine.”

We looked at each other, my face just as puzzled as his.

Since then, I’ve had a chance to reflect on what I said, and frankly, it seems truer now than when I first said it. What if God is calling the church to change, not just in response to a pandemic (which is temporary) but in order to reach vast oceans of new people? People who live in a culture far below the surface of where the church has been operating? People who live, breathe, and view the world in such a different way that the only way to reach them is through risk and adaptation?

These were the kinds of questions that were in our minds back in 2016, as we laid the groundwork for what would be the start of our visioning process the following year. We then adopted a vision plan in December 2018 that would frame our future around four pillars: 1) deepen the discipleship of our congregation, 2) widen the reach of God’s love to new people, 3) unite together in common purpose, and 4) adapt to changes in our culture.

In 2019, a team of gifted and committed lay people got to work as our Vision Implementation Team, working steadily and deliberately, organizing more than 80 people in 12 initiative teams to fulfill the charge of the vision plan.

And even when the pandemic hit us in early 2020, we were already discovering ways to adapt that would enable us to not only survive but thrive during such a season of uncertainty.

Now, after two years of prayer and hard work, this week our Vision Implementation Team is sharing its final reports, which chronicle all that we have achieved as a church and the exciting plans that will guide us into the future.

You can visit the Vision page of our website, where you will see the report in three forms:

• A brief, one-page set of bullet points that highlight the results of the Implementation Team’s work;
• A ten-page executive summary, with further details about each of the initiative teams’ activities and actions;
• A 70-page full report, with full narratives about the work of each team.

And, you can watch a recently produced 20-minute video that announces many of the exciting changes we are working on as we prepare to return to indoor, in-person ministries.

IN-PERSON UPDATE

Our Executive Team, made up mostly of lay people serving as chairs of our major committees, continues to monitor the latest COVID statistics in our area. Like all of us, the team is happy to see the steady and clear decline in our local positivity rate, which is our chief criteria for deciding when to resume onsite ministries. The rate was 14% last month, is currently between 7-8%, and we are hopeful that it will continue to trend toward the consistent sub-5% threshold advised by the Centers for Disease Control. So, while we can’t yet predict when that will be, we are accelerating our preparations for that joyous return.

A PERSONAL WORD

Oh, friends. I know this has been a long, hard season for all of us. We are all experiencing grief and fear in some way, and adaptive change of any kind is itself a kind of loss. We find ourselves digging for resolve from reserves we never knew we had. That is true for all of us, including myself. I would be lying if I didn’t admit that this has been the most challenging season of ministry I have ever faced. But I’m heartened by the thought that we are in this together, praying for each other, working through the hard stuff together, and looking forward to a future with hope. Perhaps John Wesley said it best: “The best of all is, God is with us.”

Grace and peace,

Magrey

The Rev. Magrey deVega
Senior Pastor, Hyde Park United Methodist