So, my child is an atheist…Now what?

Rev. Jarrett Kerbel

So, your child has declared that they are an atheist. What do you do? Before you begin, remember the first words of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, “Don’t panic!” Why not panic? For many reasons including; 1. The happy news that your child is thinking about such matters in the first place, 2. The fact that you are not the first or only parent to experience this challenge, and, 3. The opportunity to engage your child in an ongoing conversation.

What I most often say in these conversations is simple, “I don’t believe in that god either.” The god our children reject is often a god worth rejecting. Like garbage in a sandbox, our kids pick up notions of god that have nothing to do with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Secular culture and the culturally dominant strands of Christianity communicate a dominating, controlling, puppeteer God who is cruel, judgmental, and capricious.

The first step is to ask for their objections, take those objections seriously, and share how you respond to such challenges in your faith. In my household we allowed for atheism as long as it was not ignorant atheism. My kids were required to put in the effort and engage the subject. I would always say, “I will respect your position when you can keep up with me in a discussion.”

For example, I will ask my children: “Where did you get that idea about God?” “Does God have to be that way?” Then I will share that I have struggled with these objections too and here is where I came out. My child would ask, “Why does God allow suffering?” Excellent question is the immediate answer. Then you might say, “How might you design a different world? What would that be like?” The most important follow up question is this, “Are any of those forms of suffering more powerful than love?” And then, “What if God wants that world you designed too?”

We believe in a God who took the place of the victims of this world, the position of the most powerless, and felt the suffering of oppression, rejection, torture, and execution. Our God does not stand aloof from suffering but tries to remedy it from the inside through always faithful, never failing, unbreakable love. Our God cries out against the unjust suffering and pain of human self-destruction because our God feels it too. Our God does not impose this suffering. God gave us a good creation that a long history of abuse has made toxic and harmful to human flourishing. Our God has even experienced death and turned it into a pathway for renewed life. Everything we experience as an enemy of life our God has redeemed.

That is a long answer and not totally appropriate for kids. However, it is very important that parents and grandparents show the example of educating their faith if they wish to guide their children. Which leads to a crucial point; you are the adult and you are smarter than your child. You have more life experience. You can absorb their rejection of things you hold dear if you remember that you are helping this child mature and they have a long way to go.

It only feels like rejection of you because it is. Our kids need to reject us and betray us to get the separation necessary for individuation. Trust that they will come back and lay the seeds of that return by engaging them in a gentle, open spirit now. Faith is a gift from God. We cannot control its transmission, but we can give our children the formation they need to know the true God - and avoid the false gods - when the time is right.

Blessings,
The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel
Rector

Give Thanks with a Grateful Heart

For the beauty of the earth, for the beauty of the skies, 

for the love which from our birth over and around us lies,

Christ our God, to thee we raise this our hymn of grateful praise.

Happy Thanksgiving to you!

We know that not everything about Thanksgiving, or everything about this moment in your life may feel like something to be grateful for. Yet, in everything there is something to find thanks for. The sun in the morning. A functioning heating system. The multicolored leaves. God's promises to be with us through whatever our trials. The freedom Jesus offers us in letting go of who we think we should be, in order to simply be Christ's followers, God's children. A community of faith to support us and remind us of who we are in Christ.

As you approach whatever Thanksgiving plans you have - be it dinner with family, friends, or heading to the Thanksgiving feast at this month's SUPPER at Christ Church and St. Michael's on Saturday at 3 p.m. - here are some prayer resources for your day:

A General Thanksgiving
(Book of Common prayer, page 836 - or online at BCPonline.org)

Accept, O Lord, our thanks and praise for all that you have

done for us. We thank you for the splendor of the whole

creation, for the beauty of this world, for the wonder of life,

and for the mystery of love.

We thank you for the blessing of family and friends, and for

the loving care which surrounds us on every side.

We thank you for setting us at tasks which demand our best

efforts, and for leading us to accomplishments which satisfy

and delight us.

We thank you also for those disappointments and failures

that lead us to acknowledge our dependence on you alone.

Above all, we thank you for your Son Jesus Christ; for the

truth of his Word and the example of his life; for his steadfast

obedience, by which he overcame temptation; for his dying,

through which he overcame death; and for his rising to life

again, in which we are raised to the life of your kingdom.

Grant us the gift of your Spirit, that we may know him and

make him known; and through him, at all times and in all

places, may give thanks to you in all things. Amen.

A Litany of Thanksgiving
(Book of Common prayer, pages 836-837, or online at BCPonline.org)

Let us give thanks to God our Father for all his gifts so

freely bestowed upon us.

For the beauty and wonder of your creation, in earth and

sky and sea.

We thank you, Lord.

For all that is gracious in the lives of men and women,

revealing the image of Christ,

We thank you, Lord.

For our daily food and drink, our homes and families, and

our friends,

We thank you, Lord.

For minds to think, and hearts to love, and hands to serve,

We thank you, Lord.

For health and strength to work, and leisure to rest and play,

We thank you, Lord.

For the brave and courageous, who are patient in suffering

and faithful in adversity,

We thank you, Lord.

For all valiant seekers after truth, liberty, and justice,

We thank you, Lord.

For the communion of saints, in all times and places,

We thank you, Lord.

Above all, we give you thanks for the great mercies and

promises given to us in Christ Jesus our Lord;

To him be praise and glory, with you, O Father, and the

Holy Spirit, now and forever. Amen.

Additional resources

While these two resources are taken from websites geared toward those who have children in their lives, they are good resources even if you are celebrating among only adults.

42 Bible Verses About Thankfulness

Gratitude Journal Prompts for the Whole Year

For each perfect gift of thine to the world so freely given,

faith and hope and love divine, peace on earth and joy in heaven,

Christ our God, to thee we raise this our hymn of grateful praise.

The pastoral staff at St. Martin's is here for you in both times of gratitude and times of challenge. Please call 215.247.7466 to make an appointment.

God's blessings be with you this Thanksgiving!

The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel

Rector

Building Community

The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel

I want to tell you about a terrific new committee here at St. Martin’s called the Community Building Committee. On election day this group provided hospitality to voters when they came to vote in our parish hall. Coffee, tea, and donuts created an atmosphere of good cheer in our foyer as an unprecedented number of voters came in to do their civic duty. Anne Thatcher and I mingled with the voters, greeting them warmly and thanking them for voting. I even met someone who wants to get her three-month-old daughter baptized!

While this committee is doing a great job, we all agree that building community is a ministry we share in common as the Body of Christ. The efforts we make to greet each other, build relationships, and welcome newcomers build the muscles and sinews that make us nimble and strong as a community that represents Christ in the world.

“Deep relationships, bold ministry” is the theme we are working on this year at St. Martin’s. That theme challenges us to see our presence and our activity at church as crucial to the character and virtue of our community of faith. When we take the time to relate and to invest in relationship, we learn to be there for each other in times of joy and sorrow. When we take the time to relate and to invest in relationships we find our life enriched, and even our direction in life altered. Want to find someone to join a ministry you love here at St. Martin’s? Be busy getting to know new people!

It’s easy to want the church to be here. It’s another matter entirely to choose to be the church when you are here and when you are away.

Here are some ways to be the church on Sunday mornings:

1. Wear your nametag!
2. Greet someone new. As you enter the church, during the passing of the peace, and after church simply introduce yourself to someone you don’t know. Simply say, “My name is ________, and I am not sure if we have met?”
3. Remember that families of all ages are welcome at all services. That joyful noise of children is a sign of life and vitality in our ministry!
4. When circled up with old friends, make room for newcomers by inviting them into your circle.
5. Move across the driveway to community hour in the parish hall after worship. Community hour is a time to meet, greet, and connect. This is a time of important ministry and the more the merrier.
6. If you have an event, activity, class, or ministry to promote, set up a table during community hour. Make it festive. Bring food, balloons, a banner. We would love for community hour to be a bustling hive of activity and opportunity.
7. Encourage your friends to come to community hour, and walk newcomers across the driveway so they know where to go.

St. Martin’s is a dynamic and multifaceted community of faith. To support such an active ministry, we invest in our bonds as a community. Those bonds will help us take risks together in the name of Jesus.

Blessings,
The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel
Rector

Shabbat Shalom!

Rev. Jarrett Kerbel

The community of faith that is St. Martin’s causes me to feel heart-bursting pride on a regular basis. That feeling welled up again on Friday evening last week when at least 30 of our members joined Shabbat services at Germantown Jewish Center.

We began by standing along the sidewalk on Ellet Street to express our solidarity and care for our Jewish neighbors. We were warmly welcomed by the congregation as they arrived. The grief caused by the atrocity in Pittsburgh was palpable and worn openly on the faces of our neighbors. Our presence was a response to that pain. Our ministry was to reassure, comfort, and accompany a vulnerable community in fear for their safety and in worry for their future.

At 6 p.m. we filed in to join Shabbat worship lead by Rabbi Adam Zeff. Lovely, heartfelt singing and prayer, even dancing, lit the synagogue up with a radiant spirit! Joy, love, and peace were celebrated as God's wish for us and in resistance to the forces of violence, hate, and misery that threaten our neighbors.

Shabbat Shalom! The peace of the sabbath was richly celebrated as God's restoring and life-giving gift. My spirit was refreshed by such faithful and energized invocation of God's promises.

St. Martin's parishioners at GJC.

As in so many cases, I left feeling entirely blessed by the experience. I had gone to be a help, and I left as the one who was helped. Thanks be to God!

Reflecting on that evening, so much of our ministry was on display. Deep relationships empower us to do bold ministry with our neighbors. Intentionally building those relationships in our neighborhood opens the way for healing and reconciliation, the ministry Christ gives us. Let’s not forget the legacy of antisemitism in Chestnut Hill where Jews were systematically excluded from its earliest days. Or, the long and sordid history of antisemitism in the Episcopal Church and white-anglo-saxon-protestant culture in general. By moving across the divides caused by our history of prejudice, we put a stitch in the ripped fabric of our community and joined God in God's work of mending the world.

Blessings,
The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel, rector



Find your fellow parishioners’ reflections on Friday’s shabbat service on this Facebook post - or add your own!




Save the Date for this upcoming series with our neighbors at Germantown Jewish Centre

God's Country? A Jewish-Christian Text Study on "the land" in Scripture
Sundays in February: 3, 10, 17, 24 from 1:00-2:00 p.m.
Germantown Jewish Centre, 400 West Ellet Street, Philadelphia, PA 19119

Rabbi Adam Zeff of Germantown Jewish Centre and the Rev. Jarrett Kerbel of the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields invite members of our faith communities to gather around sacred texts to explore the meaning of the land of Israel in our respective traditions. While in that land conflict rages, lines are drawn, and sides are taken, Rabbi Zeff and Rev. Kerbel intend to create a space of understanding, deep listening and dialogue where peaceful practices of conversation lay the foundation for peaceful outcomes not yet imagined. Rabbi Zeff and Rev. Kerbel have studied scripture together for five years and share a love for textual interpretation and an abiding concern for allowing concerns to be articulated in their full complexity with disagreements noted and respected. Texts will come from the Hebrew Bible, the Greek Testament and the Talmud. We will meet four times, every Sunday in February starting the 3rd from 1-2 p.m.
Registration coming soon!