I went to the modern day fount of all wisdom, Wikipedia, to see what a pilgrimage was at its simplest level. It says: a pilgrimage is a journey or search of great moral or spiritual significance. We usually think pilgrimage, if we think about it at all, as some once in a lifetime trip to a sacred location. The Holy Land is where Christians for 2000 years have gone on pilgrimage to see the land Jesus saw and walk the streets he walked. It is a prayer of the faithful that, by doing so, Christ will become somehow more real. Yet it is also true that our entire life is a journey. It’s so true that it’s rather trite. Yet in that triteness we may miss the deeper truth that our life is a search of great moral and spiritual significance. Our lives lived out up and US 42 are as apt a place for Christ’s intervention as the Damascus Road was for Paul. Too ordinary, you may be thinking. Nothing more ordinary 2000 years ago than a major trade route filled with dust, camels and thirsty travelers. The Damascus Road, like the Emmaus Road, became shorthand for pilgrimages because of Paul and because of the two travelers. But remember that when we share and know the stories that have happened up and down our ‘roads’ we will also find stories of God’s dramatic intervention in lives that were apparently hopeless. We will hear of God’s saints in schoolrooms. We will be encouraged by God’s response to prayers without ceasing that the faithful have offered up for years. We begin Lent this year on February 22nd: a time of preparation for Easter. It can be a pilgrimage that you make searching for significance, for meaning where you may feel it lacking. You don’t have to have a passport for a pilgrimage, but you do have to have an open heart and an open schedule to allow God the space and time to make the pilgrimage with you.

Pastor Susan 

The woman grasped my hand and fervently thanked me for the wedding ceremony I’d just finished officiating. “It was just so…so spiritual.” I murmured some appropriate words while silently thinking, “Actually, it was Christian.” By the fifth time I’d heard this same word used as praise, I began to think what we had here truly was a failure to communicate. The wedding, you see, was 90% from the UMC Book of Worship and most of you would have recognized most of what I said and did. Spiritual. Clearly a word that is actually trying to say a bit more. And the bit more is: not religious. There’s a whole group of people, it seems who could be called SBNR (“Spiritual but not religious”), who seek prayer without the practice of congregational life, Presence without their presence on Sunday and consolation without the commitment to a group of people they don’t get to preselect. Shorthand: no church, no committees, no contributions. Yet there is no question but that they are seeking God ‘s presence and seeking to be better people to their neighbors.

Now there’s a place perhaps that the SBNR and us church folk can meet, even if the meeting is Saturday morning at the gym or Thursday evening at softball practice or Monday morning on the way to the inevitable meeting. What the SBNR crowd misses is what Rabbi Heschel meant when he said that the source of all good action in the world is “awe and wonder” found in worship of God. Otherwise the good leaches out of actions from fatigue and ego. What the church folk crowd can miss is that all the worship in a year of Sundays does not excuse an absence of good action in the world.

In the New Year, perhaps we can be bold enough to be both spiritual and religious, both private and corporate, both hearers and doers of the Word. Invite all your SBNR friends to worship and then work for God…together. Happy New Year in which to serve Christ together.

Pastor Susan 

My most anticipated Christmas present ever came in a box from my brother that sat under the tree for two weeks, wrapped in Christmas paper, glittering with bows . I so eagerly awaited that gift. I picked it up over and over and shook it when no one was looking. Why?. It was because it had air holes punched in it. OK, so I was four years old and not that logical. But the air holes had me hooked. When Manfred the Wonder Dog emerged that Christmas morning I was as excited as if he’d been a real dog. Many years later, he is my Velveteen Rabbit and still in my house. What have you taken out of boxes over the years? Stop and let your mind wander back. Was it a childhood surprise? A gift from your spouse your first Christmas? A handmade surprise from your children?

Do you still believe that wonders can come out of boxes at Christmas? Or are your expectations much lower: a new iSomething, fuzzy slippers, jewelry. This year we can let go of our expectations of the Season. Give our family and friends an A right now. A pass from the usual tensions. True acceptance. The family God created on that first Christmas is beyond blood and boundaries, covering timeless distances. You are part of it. I am part of it. What we can take out of the box this Christmas truly is a living gift. One that needs the air around us to breathe. One that needs our very selves to live. This year, expect more, accept more. This year see all the children of God around you with eyes of grace. Include yourself. Join the story that began “In the beginning”, crossed Egyptian deserts to reach Bethlehem, and stretches from Galilee to Goshen. Merry Christmas! Open your box. It’s time.

Pastor Susan

It’s July and Shiloh meets on the first Sunday to celebrate the 4th of July “on the grounds” and under the tent with worship and witness and the Word. Then, ‘cause we’re good Methodists, we’ll have one our justly famous breakfasts together. It’s good to celebrate after a month in which we have also ‘celebrated the life of’ two members of our congregation. In listening to all the stories that families and friends shared, I was struck anew how God is present in what seem to be small moments. And many of those moments are ones of comfort : in times of grief, loneliness, confusion. But we make God a god of small acts when we do not acknowledge that small moments also occur in which we are called to confront and to challenge as well as to comfort. And these are never small acts.

Jesus was not hesitant to confront the Pharisees who placed law above love and were quick to label as ‘unclean’ those too poor to meet their standards. Jesus would challenge those who were tepid in their commitment. We follow a savior who knew that the comforting side of our faith cannot exist apart from the challenging and confronting side. “One person with a belief is equal to a force of ninety-nine who have only interests” wrote Peter Marshall. What do you believe Jesus called you for?

When we, as a faith community, invest all our appetite for risk and challenge into our jobs we can find ourselves rolling into church on Sundays seeking only comfort. Where then do we find the strength to challenge the poverty that exists in our own state by getting our hands dirty? Where do we find the desire to risk feeling out of place to make a place for someone not knowing their reaction? How does your comfort fit into the hierarchy of ‘comfort, confront and challenge?’ We know where Jesus placed it.

Pastor Susan

Beginning of summer strikes me as as good a time as any for resolutions: get up early and get outdoors, pray while walking in Creasy Mahan, re-experience cooking on the wonderful new parsonage stove. Perhaps you have experiences and projects you want to commit to this summer as well?

Don’t leave out spending time as part of the worshipping serving loving community that is Shiloh Church. There are new opportunities to fellowship during our ‘drop-in’ Coffee & Conversation Sunday School class that meets each Sunday at 10 at a table near the coffee pot. Each discussion is self-contained, hosted by Jim and Joe, and needs no advance prep so just come on by. SimplySummer@Shiloh begins its second season on Jun 15th at 5 pm complete with BBQ, new sides and homemade desserts. Contrary to gasoline, a full meal is still only $5 with free hot dogs for all kids.

This summer there will be activities for all ages of youth beginning with games at 6:30 on Wednesdays and youth groups from 7-8 pm. High School and Middle School each have their own groups and elementary aged children will be enjoying a VBS themed program each Wednesday night from June 15-July 18th. The theme is “Shake It Up Café” and is appropriately themed for an evening of food and fun.

My new project for the summer is to move “Beyond the Church Door.” I love greeting each of you on Sundays and honor the times we spend when hospitals and life’s difficulties bring us together for extended discussion. But this summer, I want to intentionally catch up with every person in our worshipping congregation for a time when I can listen to how your life is going: what excites you, concerns you. What are your hopes for Shiloh? Your concerns? This is a one on one time so, with no alphabetical pattern whatsoever, expect to get a call or email from me looking to find an hour we can meet for coffee, or sit on my patio, or visit at your kitchen table. I’m excited about this chance to ’get to know you’ all over again after being with you the past three years.

We don’t just ’start over’ when times are difficult. We can intentionally ’start over’ and get to know each other better, even if we’ve known each other for years. I’m looking forward to our summer together as we continue to life our lives together with the God who loves us enough never to leave us alone.

Pastor Susan

I’ve been sharing thoughts recently from a book called “Finding Inner Courage” by Mark Nebo with a group of women I have lunch with weekly at Sunrise, an assisted living home. We laugh over good food, catch up on our lives and I share thoughts on the spiritual journey for those who are now “elders”. This week we talked about the need, at any age, to believe God can still work in our lives. Most importantly, to believe that God can still surprise us with His Presence. As we come closer and closer to Holy Week, I was struck by Nebo’s reminder that the original meaning of the word ‘sacrifice’ was ‘to make sacred.’ It was not an idea of self-suppression or self-denial, but instead a call to shed that which separates us from God. True sacrifice, he said, is “the pull of the soul toward what is possible once we shed the pull of the past toward what has been conditioned.” I’ve been thinking about what I do or believe only because I’ve done it for so long and not because it moves me further in my walk with Jesus. It’s an essential question for all of us this season.

Part of giving up what no longer works is looking closely to all that we do almost without thinking as if we were on living our life on cruise control. The Psalmist writes that we are to “Be still and know that I am God.” [Psalm 46] and I often read that to mean to quit talking and sit still. Not my greatest spiritual gift! But the heart of the word for ‘be still’ in Hebrew actually means literally ‘to let go of something you’ve been holding with a white-knuckle grip.’ Let it fall. Let it fall and know God is God.

What are you clenching white knuckled this Easter season that God is encouraging you to just let fall, and know that God is God? A grudge? A secret fear? A mindless habit? A need to control?

Easter remind us that the goal of sacrifice is not pain but holiness. May our hands be open to receive the blessings God has for us this season.

             Pastor Susan