Who Leads Us Into Life

Written for my college fellowship's weekly devotional

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One week while I was abroad, I went to a Taizé-style worship service. I’d been to Taizé services in the US and expected to know a lot of the songs despite my very poor Hungarian. At the beginning, though, I recognized none of the music until people began singing this tune. The words they sang were in Hungarian, but I recognized them as the translation of the English lyrics I knew:

Bless the LORD, my soul, and bless God’s holy name.

Bless the LORD, my soul, who leads me into life.

Those two lines, based off the beginning of Psalm 103, still echo in my mind in moments of stillness. What does it look like for our souls to bless the Eternal God and God’s holy name? What does it mean that the LORD is leading us into life? With the Spirit’s help each day we can abide (1) more and more in Christ and in Christ’s relationship with the Father, and so we grow more and more in relationship with the One who redeems and creates, the source of all life, the One who does not treat us according to our sins but has mercy on us and distances us from our transgressions (2).

We pray. We read. We listen. We fast. We sing. We share bread and cup. And the “we” is essential; faith is not personal alone but also corporate. As the Trinity is in relationship, so should we be in relationship with each other. And through these things God’s grace works in us, entirely perfecting us and leading us into life, teaching our souls to bless the LORD in any language we speak.

Áldott légy Uram, szent neved áldja lelkem.

Áldott légy Uram, mert megváltottál már.

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(1) John 15:4-5, Jesus speaking to his disciples at the Last Supper: “Remain in me, and I will remain in you. A branch can’t produce fruit by itself, but must remain in the vine. Likewise, you can’t produce fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, then you will produce much fruit. Without me, you can’t do anything.”

(2) Various bits of Psalm 103

On Bread

The Gospel readings in the Lectionary for the past few weeks as well as the next couple are from John 6. This is all about bread. It's Jesus feeding the five thousand and describing himself as the bread of life. The alternate Old Testament readings for Lectionary match the bread theme, telling stories from Exodus, Joshua, and Kings about God feeding God's people. So I thought I'd write a little bit about places in which I've encountered bread.

Azerbaijan. In Azerbaijan, bread is sacred. It indicates abundance. Every meal includes bread, and there are many varieties. One does not throw away bread. If there is a bit of bread on the sidewalk, someone will pick it up and move it to a place where no one will step on it. Some people may even kiss bread, and bread is almost never criticized.

Hungary. In Budapest every other street has a bakery. The glass counters are filled with rolls, pastries, and even pizza, and on long, tall shelves behind the counter there are loaves of fresh bread. St. Stephen's Day, the saint's day of the patron saint of Hungary and one of the largest national holidays, is also the festival of new bread. Bread is not treated with the reverence it is given in Azerbaijan, but it is an important part of meals, and in the morning the city smells of bread.

A food bank in Oklahoma. "Bread!" One person yells it; everyone else echoes. We yell one word as we carry trays, throw items onto trays, pack items into boxes, fold boxes, stack trays on pallets, move pallets out of the way -- "Bread!" The back of the Regional Food Bank smells like bread, everywhere you look is bread, and for three hours your one goal is bread. Pallets of bread still good but too old to sell in stores sit in rows, and the bread travels from trays on pallets to trays on a metal table to cardboard boxes to people who need the bread. Loaves of wheat, of white, whole grain, pastries both American and Mexican, tortillas, flatbreads, snacks, biscuits, hamburger and hot dog buns, nearly anything baked and in a package -- "Bread!"

We Will Walk Hand in Hand: New England Annual Conference, Part 4

The morning of the last day of Annual Conference started with a worship service including the laity address. That service reinforced a lot of my feelings of unity and call from the night before. After that, we finished up the delegations (and alternates) for General and Jurisdictional Conferences. Most of Saturday, though, was problematic and frustrating, and the ending was far from satisfying.

And God's People Said: New England Annual Conference 2015, Part 3

Friday afternoon through evening at Annual Conference was probably my favorite part of all of AC. The business was pretty straightforward; what really stood out was the worship. The afternoon started with the Memorial Service, and we ended the day with the Service of Ordination and Commissioning.

Through Dim and Bright: New England Annual Conference, Part 2

Circle of hope, circle of light
Guiding our days, guarding our nights
Sustaining love, through dim and bright
Circle of hope

Friday was, for me, the most meaningful day of Annual Conference. The day started off with an incredible Bible study with Bishop Gregory Palmer, and there were three really powerful worship services, one of which I'll talk about in this post. However, there was also a lot of frustration and pain, particularly around the conversation about camping ministry.

With God's Help: New England Annual Conference 2015, Part 1

Listen to the word that God has spoken.
Listen to the One who is close at hand.
Listen to the voice that began creation.
Listen even if you don't understand.

This past week I attended my first Annual Conference. I'd been to an ordination service before and several years ago helped with childcare, but this was the first time I participated in the conferencing. I came in knowing that discernment, particularly discernment in the midst of politicking, can be hard, though I wasn't always prepared for exactly how hard and what form the problems took. At the same time, I wasn't fully prepared for the moments of great joy. This is the first of a few posts about how Conference went and what I took away from it.

Pre-Annual Conference Reading

New England Annual Conference starts tomorrow! I plan to be tweeting about it here, and the pre-conference booklet is here. Below is some of what I've been reading and thinking about leading up to conference.

Annual Conference and Connectionalism
Eric Little talks about the need for more evidence of our connexion throughout the year, not just at AC. He focuses on clergy but talks a little about how laity can contribute to this by carrying more of the load within the local church. But if we believe that connexionalism is one of the strengths of our structure, then we need laity engaged in the connexion as well.

Full Communion
This was about further conversations between the UMC and the Episcopal Church on forming a full communion relationship. It also mentions that the UMC is also working on entering into full communion with the Moravian Church. I don't have much to say on this, but I'm pretty excited.

The Church is not Glocal, It's Catholic
This semester, one of my Catholic friends asked me what I meant when I said I believed in the "holy catholic church" in the creed, and I responded that I meant the church universal, not just in the sense of all places but also all time. This post (and the three that follow it) talk about appropriate and inappropriate use of other languages and customs in worship, and a lot of the argument is based on that idea of the catholic church: "The Church's historic liturgy transcends time, space, culture, ethnicity, and language. That is, catholic worship is by its very nature multicultural." I'm not a huge fan of his recommendations for languages in the liturgy (so much Latin and Greek), but he makes good points.

The Global and the Local at Annual Conference
David Scott points out here the ways in which AC, which can seem pretty local, has elements of the global (especially with General Conference next May). Again, not much to say here, but I'll definitely have this in mind over the next few days.

And finally, a prayer for AC from Jeremy Steele:
A Prayer for the Methodist Church and Annual Conference