the emmaus community and the abbeychurch | Ancient Faith. Future Hope.

Matt preaches on the invitation to wholeness and long journey of healing...

The band leads us in joyful song...

Michelle presides at Jesus' table of welcome...

There will optional anointing for healing at the prayer time...

Reba brings a poem.

Lucy is with the youth.

Tressa is with the younger children.

Come for the Bread and Wine, and stay for the potluck dinner afterwards.

The order of service leaflet will soon be available here.

Join us in house for 4:00pm or livestream online at this link.

Image:

The Healing of the Blind Man of Bethsaida By Iconographer Julia Stankova

Our friends at Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries are gathering this weekend for their 'Festival of Radical Discipleship' (which Matt attended in many previous iterations). Elaine Enns and Ched Myers have long been friends/mentors of several in our community - and their articulation of a faith that is at once both deeply personal and deeply political continues to speak to our condition. As part of the lead-up to their event this weekend, they have released a short paean/rant to the vision of radical discipeship (first delivered by Ched at the 2015 gathering, where Matt was presenting a workshop). We've pulled a few excerpts below, but do click the link to read the whole thing here.

The etymology of the term radical (from the Latin radix, “root”) is the best reason not to concede it to nostalgia. To get to the root of anything we must be radical... It is also curious and revealing that the notion of discipleship is so marginal in our churches. Curious, because discipleship is unarguably the central theme of the gospels... Radical Discipleship thus calls us to a double commitment: to reveal the roots of personal and political pathologies that continue to shape our imperial society, and to recover the roots of our biblical tradition: the messianic movement of rebellion and restoration, of repentance and renewal, and of a “Way out of no way” that has been going on since the dawn of resistance to the dusk of empire.

This Way was birthed when Creator scattered humans from centripetal Babel in centrifugal liberation. It continued when Abram and Sarai bailed out of Ur and Moses and Myriam busted out of Egypt, and when Jordan’s flooding waters stood up and Jericho’s walls came tumbling down. Though often beat down and always marginalized, this vision of truth-telling and reconciliation-dreaming was remembered when Elijah read the riot act to Ahab, and Isaiah sang a lovesong lament to the vineyard, and Jeremiah bought a field in the bear market of occupation, and Ezekiel saw the wheel within the wheel, way up in the middle of the air... It animated John the Baptist to go feral, troubling Herod’s business-as-usual and then turbulating a certain Nazarene into Jordan’s waters, as the old Spirit of the Way hovered above like a condor. Jesus then rebooted the nonviolent insurrection, accompanied only by clueless fishermen and stubborn women, by demoniacs liberated from centurion possession and peasants armed only with palm branches. He faced down the Mammon system with loaves and fishes in the wilderness, remembering the old catechism of Manna; redirected our attention away from Temples and toward wildflowers and birds; raised up street beggars and brought down fatcats to co-inhabit the Jubilee common-and-level ground about which his mama had sung to him as a baby...

Then came martyrs who rendered to God everything and to Caesar not much at all, and monastics who returned to the wilderness in the waning days of a decadent Roman empire in order to rediscover the evangelical disciplines of fidelity and poverty. The Movement was re-membered by medieval Franciscan nuns and friars, who bound themselves to nature and society’s poorest; and by 16^th century radical Anabaptists who refused to participate in the bloody religious wars of Christendom. Then by Baptist radicals, Methodist reformers, Quaker abolitionists and Anglican visionaries in Europe and the Americas against the grain of colonial plunder and genocide, and by 18^th century “Levelers” standing against the privatization of the Commons... Above all, this Way was preserved for us all by 19^thcentury African slaves under American apartheid, who knew who Pharaoh was and where the Promised Land was, and who journeyed there on an underground railroad... This ancient vision has animated practitioners from “every tribe and tongue”: Lutheran theologian Bonhoeffer and Catholic laywoman Dorothy Day; Baptist preachers Martin Luther King Jr. and Clarence Jordan; Archbishop Oscar Romero and missionary nun Dorothy Stang; and so many others, both famous and forgotten. From immigrant agricultural laborers organizing with the United Farm Workers...

This is what we mean by “radical discipleship.” This conspiracy of life, hatched in a distant Sinai past, has ebbed and flowed ever since, right down to our time and place. It lives among gay bishops and lesbian evangelists; Peacemaker Teams accompanying those under occupation in Baghdad or Bethlehem and Catholic Workers sharing life with the homeless; immigrant rights organizers celebrating Posadas sin Fronterasat the US Mexico border and tree sitters defying pipelines. It is embodied by every addict who walks the Twelve Steps to recovery, by every sinner who makes that long and continuing march up to the altar of repentance, and by every activist who seeks to comfort the afflicted with gospel compassion and to afflict the comfortable with gospel justice. Because only those who know their captivity can carry on this Freedom story.

AbbeyChurch Worship This Sunday with Potluck to follow

This Sunday May 25 ::: Potluck After Worship

AbbeyYouth after School

Seafood Feast with QomQem

Weekday Morning Prayer

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What is Radical Discipleship?

Prayer in the Way of Taize - June 20th

Benefit Concert from West Coast Reach for VICCIR

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