New Year’s Day worship will be on Zoom only at 10 am Eastern. Rev. Meagan McLeod will preach. Please contact us before 9 am Sunday if you need the Zoom link.
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Christmas Eve Worship
Please join us in Christian Community at 5:30 pm Eastern on Saturday, December 24, live or on Facebook for a Christmas Eve service of songs and readings ending in candlelight.
You can contact us before 4 pm Saturday if you need the Facebook link.
Please note that there will not be a service on Sunday morning.
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Sunday Worship 8/21
Please join us for praise and prayer in Christian community at 10 am Eastern in our air-conditioned community room. Pastor Katie will preach “”Not One More Day” from “Deuteronomy 5:12-15 and Luke 13:10-17”.
Hi Tab Family,
As Sana said in this week’s sermon, I too have doubts as to who carries me through this world, who at times holds me up and who holds me as I rest. There are many days where I forget it’s not just me out here left to flounder around, aimless and overwhelmed, under resourced and overworked.
Sana preached about what they do on days like that, having said:
“On those days, I lay down and feel the entire earth holding up my body. Even though my body is still the same, I feel lighter with the sensation that every part of the earth is holding every part of me, that it is not my own two feet carrying me through the world. (I want to believe.) On those days, I remember my spiritual ancestors and mentors, Mary, Rahab, Ruth, Tamar, Elizabeth, Hagar, Joan of Arc, Harriet Tubman, Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer, Pauli Murray, bell hooks, Bishop Flunder, Kelly Brown Douglass, Pastor Katie, and many other women, mothers, teachers, survivors, activists, saints, pastors, disciples and friends who were faithful to their call, who took on the yoke of Christ, embodied the belief that God is with us and God is for us.”
What an immense relief it is— to be held by this Earth and all our ancestors, all these saints, long past or still breathing, are here to hold us not only on our mission and through our ministry, but they are here to hold us in our rest.
There have been moments in my life I made it through which I cannot ignore and chalk up to my own willpower. Because this “life” business— this is real stuff. It’s no joke even though sometimes, especially since the pandemic started, I feel like I’m the latest star of The Truman Show. There have been times I’ve been lifted, or more aptly— dragged, from point A to point B by my ancestors, saints, mentors, and/or the Trinity. And while I am actually starting to practice taking credit for my own resilience and sheer stubbornness, I can still point to these moments that really had nothing to do with me, but had everything to do with those who have held me.
It’s such a relief to know I don’t need to earn this rest, this grace, this force that pulls me through.
In this time while Pastor Katie is on sabbatical, my prayer is that she feels held by the Holy Spirit and that she is yoked to Christ as she not only rests, but reconnects to her purpose, her essence, and to her ministry. It is my prayer that we as a family at Tab not only rest as well, but that we hold each other in this in-between.
Peace and grace be with you, fam.
Taylor Silvestri (they/them)
Dear Tab Family,
Do you pray to a Black God? Is the Jesus you imagine a Black man? What does it mean to you if Jesus was Black? How does it feel in your body to pray to a Black Jesus? Do you feel uncomfortable, excited, validated, scared, or surprised? I encourage you to play with this idea, not because Jesus was really Black, but because we can only meet Jesus in the crucified bodies in our midst.
We know Jesus was a brown-skinned Palestinian Jew living under an oppressive Roman Empire. Pastor Katie said on Sunday, “Jesus not only was one among the working poor of his day, we hear him begin to preach and teach that his very mission was to bring the good news of liberation to the poor.” We believe that God took human form in Jesus and dwelt with us on Earth. Or as John 1:14 says, “The Word became flesh and blood and moved into our neighborhood.” The reality of this particular incarnation has implications for our faith.
What does it mean that Jesus wasn’t on a hovercraft floating just a little bit above the earth, but that Jesus was a particular person living in a particular time from a particular sociocultural location? Moreover, how is that context relevant to us now?
In Epiphany season we examine how God is revealing God’s self to us now. When we look at Jesus’s particularities or how God chose to incarnate through Jesus, we know that God became flesh to preach and live out the good news, a message of liberation and love that stirred up fury and resistance from people who benefited from the empire. If Jesus lived today, Jesus would be Black in America, because he would be among and standing with the crucified class of our day. Pastor Katie says, “I think we would do well to just sit with this statement and notice what happens inside of us, and to our understanding of salvation and liberation as we see Jesus as Black.”
Writer Danté Stewart shares that when Black theologians and scholars insisted that Jesus is Black, “they were not talking about his skin color during his earthly ministry, though it definitely wasn’t white. They were talking about Jesus’s experience, about how Jesus knows what it means to live in an occupied territory, and knows what it means to be from an oppressed people.” In his recently published book Shoutin’ in the Fire: An American Epistle, Stewart talks about learning to love himself as a Black man after reading authors like James Baldwin and Toni Morrison. He writes,
“The more I read these works, the more I let them teach me how to love. Not the type of love that must perform to be accepted — the type that would allow us to embrace our humanity and never allow ourselves to believe that proving what could never be proved was the best we had to offer. The type of love that Toni Morrison writes of in “Paradise”: “That Jesus had been freed from white religion and he wanted these kids to know that they did not have to beg for respect; it was already in them, and they needed only to display it…..My world changed when I stopped sitting at the feet of white Jesus and began becoming a disciple of Black Jesus. I didn’t have to hate myself or my people or our creativity or our beauty to be human or to be Christian.”Pastor Katie reminds us that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Today “the Word has become Black flesh and blood and this incarnation is saving us. Jesus didn’t come to make me or you comfortable. Jesus came to save us, to free us. And he will continue to reveal himself to us, if we have eyes to notice and ears to hear.”
To watch Pastor Katie’s full sermon from Sunday, please go here.
Please feel free to reflect on any of the questions posed above and share your reflections with me via email at lanenalinda@gmail.com.
Warmly,
Sana DelCorazón
UTS Seminary Student & Member of Tabernacle United
African-American Spiritual
I want Jesus to walk with me (2x)
All along my pilgrim journey
Lord, I want Jesus to walk with me
In my trials, Lord, walk with me (2x)
When my heart is almost breaking
Lord, I want Jesus to walk with me
When I’m in trouble, Lord, walk with me (2x)
When my head is bowed in sorrow
Lord, I want Jesus to walk with me
Please join us live or livestream on our Facebook page at 6 pm Eastern on Friday, December 24, and on Zoom at 10 am Eastern on Sunday, December 26. The texts for Christmas Eve are Isaiah 66:10-13 & Psalm 68:4-11. The texts for December 26 are Titus 3:4-7 & Matthew 1:18-25.
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Sunday Worship 9/19
Please join us in Christian community on Zoom for praise and prayer from 10:00 am to 11:30 am. Sana DelCorazón will preach from Mark 9:30-37.
If you need the link please contact us before 9 am Sunday.
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Sunday Worship 9/12
Please join us in Christian community on Zoom from 10:00 am to 11:30 am Eastern for praise, prayer, and the welcoming of new members. Pastor Katie will preach from the Wisdom of Solomon 7:26-8:1, and James 3:1-13.
You can contact us any time before 9 am Sunday if you need the link.