Most of the time, I have to figure out what to write for my Midweek Message. This week’s message practically fell into my lap.
Last Tuesday, during our staff chapel, as we were preparing to pray for the joys and concerns submitted by the congregation last Sunday, our Business Administrator Meagan Kempton led our morning devotional with a piece she found online. It turns out that it was written by a clergy colleague of mine, Rev. Lisa Ann Moss Degrenia, of Coronado Community UMC in New Smyrna Beach. Rev. Degrenia gave me permission to share this remarkably profound and timely message with you:
TWO POCKETS: HEALTHY, FAITHFUL PERSPECTIVE
A well respected and beloved Polish Rabbi named Simcha Bunim used to say, “Every person should have two pockets. In one, there should be a note that says:
- ‘For my sake was the world created.’
- In the second, there should be a note that says, ‘I am dust and ashes.’”
Rabbi Bunim went on to say one must know how to use the notes, each one in its proper place and at the right time. He knows us well. When misused, we hunker down in one pocket and make a home. We use a note to justify, judge and deflect self-examination.
“For my sake the world was created – I’m all that and a bag of chips.”
“I am dust and ashes – Eeyore is my best buddy.”
But, when we open to the wisdom of the notes, we accept we are not one or the other. We realize we are both notes. Both pockets. We see the wisdom of the notes in the wisdom of God’s Word which goes back and forth, naming us and reminding us who we are – beloved and dust. We are both and we need both.
“I am dust and ashes”
When we are too proud, too entitled, too full of ourselves, too self-sufficient, we reach in a pocket and remember “anokhi afar va’efer,” I am dust and ashes.
- I am small
- I am worthless
- I am mortal
- I am unclean
- I miss the mark, I stray from the path – that’s what the word sin literally means in Greek
- I am like everyone else who has ever lived and who will live
- I need a savior
Psalm 90:3 NRSV: You turn us back to dust, and say, “Turn back, you mortals.”
Ecclesiastes 3:20b NIV: All come from dust, and to dust all return.
Luke 9:41 NRSV: “O unbelieving and perverse generation,” Jesus replied, “how long shall I stay with you and put up with you?”
In Luke 3, John the Baptist is right to remind us we are a “brood of vipers” and of our need of repentance, to turn back to God’s path, not just with our words but our actions.
“For my sake was the world created”
Then, when we are discouraged, overwhelmed and losing faith (when we feel like dirt) we reach in the other pocket and remember bishvili nivra ha’olam, for my sake was the world created.
I am a unique and beloved child of the King of kings
- Christ loved me enough to die for me and raise me to new life
- I am fearfully and wonderfully made
- I am called
- I am gifted
- I am empowered by the Holy Spirit to do great things for God
- God is using me in the salvation and transformation of the world
Psalm 8:4-8 NRSV: What are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor. You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas.
Psalm 139:14 NRSV: I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well.
We stand with Jesus in our baptism, water washed, anointed with the fiery dove of the Holy Spirit, named and claimed by God as beloved children.
Jesus stepped into the water not out of his need but of ours. To remind us of our great need – I am dust and ashes. To remind us who we are in Him- For my sake the world was created.
PRAYER FOR PERSPECTIVE
And then, Rev. Degrenia offers this powerful prayer, which I invite you to pray with me:
Eternal and Beautiful God,
The One who births us and names us
Grant us perspective
A holy centering
of truth, humility and our belovedness
Not too high that we fall away from you
our need of you
our need of others
Not too low that we fail to trust
to reach out for you
to reach out with you
In you, with you, for you we are
humble and powerful
unique and alike
common and regal
priceless and dust
Grant us perspective, Merciful One
A holy centering
Let no voice be too loud
Or too soft
So we may persevere in faith
in hope
in following
in becoming
Amen
Grace and Peace,
Magrey
THIS SUNDAY: MISSIONS CELEBRATION
Join us Sunday for our annual Mission Celebration. Our guest preacher is Derrick Scott. He is the Executive Director and United Methodist Campus Minister for the Campus to City Wesley Foundation in Jacksonville and St. Augustine, Fl. He has been leading ministry to college students and young adults for more than 18 years. He is passionate about raising up a new generation of leaders and laborers who will live as disciples of Jesus Christ to transform the world. Our Celebration also showcases the many ministries in our city, state and around the world that Hyde Park supports financially and through our volunteers.
Dear Hyde Park Family,
It’s harvest season in the fields and farms across the country, and a time of year I gained an appreciation for during my eight years serving in Iowa. Farmers are in their combines, reaping the benefits of their risk: planting last spring, waiting over the summer, watching as nature ran its unpredictable course.
Don and Jeanne Blackstone were members of my church in Cherokee, Iowa, and they invited me one day to ride the combine on their farm. Don told me it had been a good growing season that year, with the corn stalks surpassing that fabled standard of “Knee-high by the Fourth of July.”
He then corrected my misunderstanding of what constituted a “good harvest.” I had always thought that the taller a corn stalk gets, the more ears of corn grow on them. Not so, it turns out.
No matter how tall a corn stalk gets, it will never have more than two ears of corn. The difference between a good and bad yield is not found in the number of ears per stalk, but in the number of kernels per ear. It’s not about the quantity of the ears per stalk. It’s about the quality of the ears themselves.
As a city kid, my mind was blown.
GROWING DEEPER
This discovery on the Blackstone’s farm has since served as a helpful reminder to me of what constitutes a healthy spiritual life. We might have the false assumption that spiritual maturity is defined only as doing more and more things for God: more works of piety and more holy deeds, like notches in our belt or check marks on a to-do list.
But it’s less about the quantity of our actions and more about the quality and depth of our actions. It’s less about growing more impressive in the eyes of others, and more about growing deeper in our heart, soul, mind, and strength.
35-DAYS OF LOVING GOD WITH ALL WE’VE GOT
As our worship series “All In” draws to a close, our 35 days of daily activities are coming to an end. I would love to hear from you how these cards have been helpful to you.
Moving forward, here’s how these cards can help. You might repeat the 35-day journey during seasons of your spiritual life when you need to recharge. You can even shuffle the cards and go in a different order, to discover new patterns in your journey.
But in the spirit of “growing deeper,” you might choose to identify the handful of cards that were particularly meaningful for you over the last five weeks. Those activities that spoke to you and resonated with you may be an indication from the Spirit. You might choose to incorporate the activities on those cards on a more regular basis – daily or weekly – and make them a regular part of your spiritual disciplines.
Doing so would lead you to creating a unique “rule of life” that you can use to frame your spiritual practices. Like planks on a trellis, those select activities, practiced regularly, could become the structure upon which your harried and chaotic life can begin to bloom and produce the beauty of God’s love.
God may be calling you into a season of bountiful harvest in your life. A season of abundance, fruitfulness, and beauty. If so, it is less about growing more impressive in the eyes of others, and more faithful in the practices that will help you blossom.
See you Sunday as we conclude our series, and happy harvesting!
Grace and Peace,
Magrey
Dear Hyde Park Family,
One of the joys of offering our online service every Sunday is the new sense of connection we have with people around the country. For the last several months, a couple from Virginia named Claudette and David Collins have not only been joining us online, but Claudette has been singing in our choir. Through the wonders of technology, our Director of Traditional Worship Michael Dougherty has been able to include her in a number of our virtual choir selections. Last week, David and Claudette made the trip to Tampa and joined us for in person worship last Sunday. It was a joy to meet them, and afterwards they went out to lunch with Michael.
This is where the story gets really good.
Over the course of the lunch, they revealed that they were related to a woman named Mary Collins, who was born in 1827. She was born in Decatur, Georgia, but eventually moved to Tampa and lived in a little house in the Hyde Park area.
It was in that home – the very home of Mary Collins – where a small group of Christians began to meet to form a community that would eventually become Hyde Park United Methodist Church. That little house sat on the very property where 122 years later, God’s love is being made real each and every Sunday.
This is a portion of the newspaper clipping from 1913 containing Mary’s obituary:
“Born in Decatur County, Georgia, Mrs. Collins drove thirty-seven years ago through the country in a covered wagon to Tampa. Her husband, W.B. Collins, died soon after the Confederate war of consumption. Settling here she went to live in a little house in what is now Hyde Park, but which then was a native wilderness. Ever since she was twelve years old, she has been a devout member of the Methodist church. Before a Methodist church was organized in this city, services were held in her Hyde Park home. When the Hyde Park Methodist church was dedicated, she was one of its first members.”
Needless to say, when we heard this story from the Collins’, we were awestruck
THE FUTURE OF OUR CAMPUS MASTER PLANS
Little could Mary Collins have imagined how her property would evolve into the dynamic campus that we have today. Ever since her time, generations of Hyde Park members have been stewards of the properties and facilities of this church. And today, we have the opportunity to exercise that same faithfulness for the future.
When our recent visioning process concluded last year, it ended prior to our acquisition of the Women’s Clinic last June. Now that we have acquired the entire DeLeon block, it is time to update the campus master plans of both the Hyde Park and Portico campuses. The last time our master plans were updated was over twenty years ago.
So, last Tuesday, the Ministry Leadership Council approved the start of a discernment process, which will have the following objectives:
- Cast the net wide throughout the congregation for input, discernment, and buy-in;
- Engage key constituents;
- Develop a prioritized and time-phased set of recommendations relative to Hyde Park properties and facilities, including improvements, divestures, purchases, and usage;
- Recommendations will be consistent with Hyde Park’s vision and mission and represent good stewardship of resources that is sustainable over the long term;
- Final recommendations will be delivered to the Ministry Leadership Council for approval by the end of June 2022.
If you would like to be a part of this process, we would love for you to let us know by sending an email to questions@hydeparkumc.org.
Let us live out the example of our ancestral pioneers like Mary Collins, and carve out a future that will be claimed by future generations of this church.
Grace and Peace,
Magrey
