Over this past week and during this weekend we have embodied the hope and love of Jesus in so many significant ways including hosting Found House guests, Super Serve Saturday with Bust a Crust and writing holiday cards for those on death row, and packing and delivering the Thanksgiving Baskets to hundreds of people in our community.
We have served alongside of those of different ages and made new friends in the process. What a blessing!
During this week of giving thanks, I am grateful for you and the ways that you love, serve, study, pray, and worship together throughout the year as Hyde Park Community UMC.
This weekend in worship we will be continuing our series Holiday Conversations with “Truth Telling Conversations.”
Holidays are wonderful but they can also be hard. They give us time to celebrate and spend time with those we love but they also give us time and opportunity to think about the hard truths of those places in our relationships that are hard and where there is hurt and division. What we do in these situations is not always clear or easy and usually involves many emotions.
Thanksgiving is also a time when it is important to reflect on our history as a country, and the often uncomfortable truth about the ways that the story of the “Pilgrims and the Indians” has been romanticized and presented as the only version of the story in our culture for a time in recent history. Now we are learning that there are other stories and perspectives that are told in ways in which the cultural group we identify with is not always the hero. Hearing these versions of the story and sitting with the truth they name is not always easy. It can bring up hard questions, lots of emotions, and strong reactions. It is easy to grow defensive or to feel bad in these situations.
In John 8: 31-32, Jesus reminds his followers that when we are open to the truth, it will set us free. His followers at the time were hearing and trying to process a new perspective on a faith story they already knew well. As he reinterpreted the same story from a different angle, it brought up lots of questions and strong emotions for the people he spoke to and taught during his ministry. Those who were able to hear Jesus’ words and understand the sacred story from a new perspective where able to see God’s love and grace in an even more expansive way.
When we are open to listen, hear, and receive new perspectives on history, culture, faith, and our relationships, we find the freedom to grow and experience God’s love and grace in an even more expansive way. And when we grow in this way, we find that we are no longer so defensive about hearing other perspectives on a story. Instead we are grateful that others are willing to share their truth and perspective with us.
As this happens, we are all set free to love and appreciate each other in more grace filled ways.
I pray this will be the case for each of us as we gather together with loved ones around tables this Thanksgiving. May we listen and share in ways that bless each other and set us all free to love in more grace filled ways.
With gratitude and love,
Pastor Suzanne