Cascade Church Portland

Liturgical Flow:: Fear & Anger with Hillary McBride

Liturgical Flow:: Fear as Loss of Control

One of my least favorite stereotypes is that only Type A personalities like control. Type A personalities might be more inclined to take charge, but they are not any more inclined than the rest of us to be in control. 

Most every person is trying to gain control of their circumstances through their tool of choice.

Some use passive-aggressive avoidance
Some use humor
Some use others-focused service
Some use effusive praise. 

The desire to be in control is deep within all of us. We live in a wild and unruly reality and attempting to tame it is vital to our survival. It is the desire to control that leads people to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and shelter those living outside. To surrender trying to control the world around us is to surrender to a passive fatalism that is equally problematic. 

The error is to believe that we've succeeded. When our desire to control convinces us that we have control, we stop showing up to parts of our own reality. We start eliminating information that demonstrates that we aren't in control and we start surrounding ourselves with people, places and things that support our illusion of control. 

All of this is ultimately in service of keeping our fear at arms length. Control feels like the antidote to fear and it works for long stretches of life. But what happens when events like broken relationships, natural disasters or grim doctors consultations occur? We are forced back into a wild and unruly reality we've convinced ourselves doesn't exist. 

Liturgical Flow:: Presence with God

It was Father's Day when this sermon was preached. 

For some of us the weekend is a flood of good memories and a happy childhood. 
For some of us it is loaded with harsh memories and deep wounds.
For some of us it is a combination of them both.

What's tricky is that the emotions around our fathers gets attached to our picture of God as father. This can become a really helpful pathway to understand and engage with God, or it can become a barrier. 

As far as barriers to God, this is one that is really common and entirely unnecessary. 

Jesus talks about God as His father. There are parables where Jesus tells about the nature of God through the metaphor of father. There are reasons why we think of God in terms of an older man up in heaven. But what do we lose if we keep the parental metaphor and drop the link to gender? If God is a good and loving parent do we miss something because he's not male? Can we hold space for people who love God as father and for people who love God as mother and for people who connect with a God outside of gender? 

Liturgical Flow:: Presence with Self

Liturgical Flow:: Presence with Others

Mother's Day

Listen in to our new liturgical flow in action as we create space for grief, the release of shame and a celebration of joy. 

((Some moments of silence have been edited out of the podcast to avoid confusion on if the podcast was still playing)) 

Liturgical Flow:: Piñatas & a D.J.

When I started officiating weddings I was shocked to learn that none of what we traditionally associate with weddings are necessary for people to get married. 

Vows? Nope. 
1 Corinthians 13? Nuh uh. 
I do's? You don't. 
"I now pronounce you"? Nein. 

All that you need to do to make it official is fill out the paperwork with a couple of witnesses. You could wrap it all up at a courthouse in the time it takes any of our bureaucracies to stumble along. 

It reminds me of what we do with our church services. We think that they have to look a particular way because of what we have seen or experienced before. While this tradition is helpful in many ways, it can actually keep us from getting to the heart of what we could be doing. 

Good Friday:: Leroy Barber, Donna Barber, Sunia Gibbs, Andru Morgan, Treneil Washington and Mark Charles

Hear this amazing reflection on Good Friday with Leroy and Donna Barber, Mark Charles, Sunia Gibbs, Andru Morgan and Treneil Washington. 

Easter Sunday:: Why do you Look for the Living Among the Dead?

If you've ever walked through the Home section in a Target then you'll probably recognize the collection wall decals and nick nacks that feature the "true enough" sayings. These are the quotes and sayings that have a sliver of truth in them, but require specific circumstances to be true. 

 

On a number of occasions I've dreamt about hovering 4 feet by the power of my mind off the ground and it's yet to happen.  

If how badly you want something is the key to unlocking life, I would have conquered eating an entire sheet cake by now. 

There's still truth in both of these statements, so I'm not trying to invalidate the power of dreaming of realities that don't exist yet or the power of eliminating certain desires when I realize how weak the drive behind them is. The problem is that when we consume true enough, we usually end up deeply disappointed in the complexity of life. If we sit with deep wisdom we find truth that can negotiate this complexity. 

I think the Jesus story and Easter Sunday is deep wisdom that's been packaged as true enough wisdom. We've been sold calligraphy on a wood pallet and a decal for our wall, when it's always been meant to expose the deepest truths of life, loss, fear and hope. 

My hope is that we'll sit with deep truth this Easter Sunday in ways that illuminate the ways we individually and collectively have settled for the good news of true enough. 

Contemplative Practices:: If You Can Do Anything...

Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.
James 5:16
 

This one Bible verse filled me with so much hope and so much dread early on in my faith. 

The hope was linked to the feeling that my prayers could be powerful and effective. Power and effect meant that I would have the ability to enact real positive change in the world. Cancer could be miraculously healed, relationships could be restored and pain could be avoided if I could unlock this whole "righteous" conundrum. 

And that's where the dread came into the picture. There's a terrifying lack of specificity to being "righteous". What was I doing or not doing that could compromise this identification? Had I lied too often? Had I neglected to serve and help enough people? I was pretty sure I was a devout person that loved God, but the elevation to being righteous always felt just out of reach. 

Honestly, I thought that if you had ever considered yourself righteous it would immediately disqualify you from being righteous. It was like being humble. The only way to be righteous was to be afraid you weren't. 

The ultimate effect of this kind of relationship to prayer was that it all depended on me. If God was all powerful and was all good, than the only reason good things weren't happening was my lack of righteousness. 

That's a real easy place to pray from, honestly. I was praying all the time because more prayer equaled more righteousness and this was the best path towards getting my prayers to be answered.

The content of my prayers is what was the problem. It was filled with fear and anxiety. My prayers cycled around trying to find the right combination of self-doubt to unlock the righteous achievement to get my prayers answered. 

I think it's time to start declaring there are versions of prayer that shouldn't exist. Prayers to a petty and indifferent God shouldn't be prayed. Prayers that require anxiety to be answered can't possibly be prayed to a good God who created all things. This is such the antithesis to what we read about the character of Jesus who was demonstrating the nature of God in tangible ways.