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Telling the TruthWhen we think about "telling the truth," maybe Pinocchio comes to mind, or maybe a being told as a child to admit it when you did something wrong.
But truth-telling goes far deeper than that, because our methods for deception (of others and even ourselves!) and truth-avoidance get more sophisticated and less conscious as we get older. During Lent, we work on telling the truth. It seems simple, but there are many ways we avoid the encounter with what is most real and true about us, about the world, and about God. We'll come at this practice from several biblical angles: Crying out to God, Prophesying, Confessing Sins, Walking in the Light, and Bearing Witness. |
April 9, 2023 -"Good News Tellers"
"Easter IS the joyful beginning of something completely new and bursting with goodness and grace and shalom. Just not avoidantly so, not self-interestedly so, not comfortably so. If resurrection is worth telling, it must emerge from REALITY, not self-fabricated optimism, not as an alternative story to death, but bursting out from it."
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April 2, 2023 -"Bearing Witness"
"When Jesus finally shines the spotlight on himself, what we find is a God who is not Superman, flying in to save the day. Not the General marching in to vindicate us. Not the feeder-of-thousands, instantaneous-healer. Not the proof-beyond-the-shadow-of-a-doubt showman. But a donkey-riding counter king, a truth-teller who will die for truth but not kill for it, a foot-washing, cross-carrying, blood-sweating, crying-out, breath-gasping, weeping, thirsting, dying God."
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mARCH 26, 2023 -"Waiting for Truth"
"Often we assume that we have the facts...and especially in times of conflict or challenge we can dig our heels in and be pretty adamant. But the truth is that we rarely see the whole picture when we make those quick judgments...More often, I only see what I see and I need to pause--we need to pause together--to let the eyes of our hearts adjust to new light, new info. We need to pause, slow down, because sometimes seeing the truth, the whole truth, means we need to go slow, not fast." -- Becky Przybylski, Guest Pastor
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mARCH 19, 2023 -"Walking in the Light"
"The LIGHT is not a concept or idea. It is a Person and a Personal reality, a way of being—not just being as an individual, but a way of being together in fellowship with God and one another—truly who we are, infused with grace that allows us to live honestly apart from fear and in the abundance of truthful love."
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mARCH 12, 2023 -"Confession of Sins: a practice of Grief and Hope"
"We are participants in the mess AND purveyors of Gospel possibility. Both of these are deep truths that we need to tell with equal honesty and conviction. Our tradition gives us the practices and stories to do this as we confess our sins and cast ourselves into the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus."
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mARCH 5, 2023 - "Prophesying: telling the truth to power"
"The prophets are prophets of death and resurrection. Even the ones before Jesus. Some would say that the prophets point to Jesus. But in this case, maybe a better way of saying it is that Jesus embodied and enacted the prophetic message: that death comes before resurrection."
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February 26, 2023 - "Crying Out to God"
"Deliverance happens when we tell the truth about our pain, about our need, and when we, even if it’s just a glimmer in the darkness, trust that there is someone who might be moved by this truth. This is the Truth that will set you free."
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February 22, 2023 - Ash Wednesday, "Human Like Jesus"
"Lent enshrines the mortality, the frailness, the need, the grief of our human condition. And as such it is probably the least popular, albeit powerful for those who are willing to open themselves to these simple realities.
The [church calendar] doesn’t just name these dimensions of human experience. It ties them to the Divine experience in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus."
The [church calendar] doesn’t just name these dimensions of human experience. It ties them to the Divine experience in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus."
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