Pastor’s Piece: Beginning on the same page

In years past, “weekly text study” was most often the domain of preachers. Neighboring, collegial preachers committed themselves to meet with peers weekly to prepare for next week’s sermon. Pastor Alison George and I commit to this good work on late Tuesday mornings at St. Paul’s church office. Not to be confused with texting and phone time, I choose to call this Scriptural text study time Our Weekly Reader, with a nod to the beloved educational children’s magazine. Together we read the assigned Scripture readings from the Revised Common Lectionary and begin to ponder preaching themes. We begin on the same page.

Now I invite you to begin on the same page with me in daily devotion. I’ll call this “Our Daily Reader.” Perhaps you will choose the same book as I, or perhaps you will choose another devotional. The spiritual teacher I have chosen is Ignatius of Loyola, who was a contemporary of Martin Luther; they lived five centuries ago. In “An Ignatian Book of Days,” author and editor Jim Manney writes that the Ignatian lens of spirituality is the conviction that “we can find God in all things, that our personal experience can provide authentic knowledge of God, that Christ beckons us to join him in his work of saving and healing the world, that God is the endless giver of gifts, that the inner life of the heart and our feelings reveal the leadings of God.” (Page vi of Jim Manney’s “An Ignatian Book of Days”).

In study, learning and reflection, we have many teachers. A Jesuit priest named Ignatius who lived in the 16th century is not my usual teacher. He was a Counter-Reformation priest! Yet I anticipate I will be changed through his way of inviting me to live a deeper spiritual life.

As the school and fall schedules begin, let’s open ourselves to the teachings of those outside our usual experience. You’ll notice the title “Movable Teach” in this issue. In some adult forums and children’s sermons and presentations, “The Teach” will be your pastor. But many more times, we trust, “The Teach” will be faithful lay leaders who prepare and offer so that all of us may learn and grow in our faith. The stirring of the Holy Spirit may surprise.

Isaiah 11:6 tells us that “…and a little child shall lead them.” Perhaps the confirmation adult mentors will discover themselves learning from the middle-school confirmand; perhaps the Sunday morning forum leaders will receive insights from someone they don’t expect; perhaps the Sunday school teachers and staff will discover that the children teach them; and, undoubtedly, this pastor will learn volumes as we share in our life together. We receive from the Great Teacher, and we are called to live faithfully.

May we check our sources. The page where we begin is important. May the information that we feed ourselves in media and language reflect the one who is our Source and Life as proclaimed in the first verses of the Gospel of John:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

In Christ, may we begin and end our days!

Pastor Rebecca Aardahl