by Jason Byassee
Jason Byassee
Friends I want to tell you about two things you may not have heard about that took place during Advent.
One, a man posted a threat on Craigslist that he intended to commit suicide in one of the larger churches in Boone during a Sunday sermon. We don’t know that he had our church in mind, but he could have, or he could have meant Mt. Vernon, First Presbyterian, Alliance. There was here a sort of ecumenism of the threatened–we pray for our sister churches’ safety as they pray for ours. This poor man was convinced the church has mistreated him and his overwhelming troubles in life are the fault of hypocrites in robes and pews. If he were in his right mind, we could have told him that hypocrites are the only kind of people God has to work with. We are on our way to being saints, but aren’t there yet.
Yet this man was clearly not in his right mind. Most people I know have someone in their family with mental illness. We pray for them and hope they will one day be “clothed, and in their right mind,” in the presence of Jesus. Thankfully Boone PD seem to have apprehended him. We will have security at church for the near future just the same. We give thanks for those who protect us, including our own Bobby Creed and Brandon Greer. We also know our security in the deepest sense is in God alone. Thank you to Jennifer Whittington and our trustees who worked hard on this, as they always do, to take care of our facilities and of us.
A second thing is a brief retreat I took with some church folks recently to Mepkin Abbey in Monck’s Corner, SC. I have retreated there before years ago, and wrote of the abbey in my book An Introduction to the Sayings of the Desert Fathers. Trappist monks go to church 8 times a day–they pray for a living. And a handful of college kids, our lay leader, our chair of worship and of our prayer team and some others joined them, to chant psalms at 3 AM. Jaylynn and I saw a monk we knew years ago named Father Christian, age 99, whose bright mind reminded me of Tom Cottingham. As a group we prayed for our church (including after we heard of the threat above). These Catholic monks were impressed by how diligent we Methodists were in attending worship! I trust they came back refreshed and ready to serve and lead in our church, their jobs, our community, and their lives.
I hope to take more of you to Mepkin in the future after this first, experimental visit. Let me know if you are interested. Being with them reminded me of why we’re called Methodist. We are methodical about prayer, practicing it as often as we can, like a convert to a new sport, like someone who has fallen in love, we want to sneak away and pray at every opportunity.
Advent is about the hope of God breaking into the world, first in Christ, then in our hearts, soon in the entire universe in a way that will draw all flesh to worship him. Let us pray for those most lost, those who protect, those who pray, and all of us to be drawn anew into Christ’s tiny and world-commanding arms.