Lutheran Church of the Redeemer Blog

Woburn Unites Candlelight Vigil

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 15:41:18 +0000

Faith and Everyday Life

Wed, 07 Sep 2011 00:24:07 +0000

Redeemer Youth Are Living Lutheran

Sun, 26 Jun 2011 01:57:49 +0000

The Rev. Laura Everett, Associate Director of the Mass Council of Churches, to Preach on June 12th

Wed, 25 May 2011 20:26:59 +0000

The Rev. Laura E. Everett grew up in New Jersey and became a Christian and a member of the United Church of Christ at the Community Church of Mountain Lakes (UCC), NJ. A graduate of Brown University and Harvard Divinity School, Laura has interned at Pilgrim Congregational Church UCC in Southborough, MA and St. Elizabeth's Medical Center in Brighton, MA. She is a member of Hope Central Church in Jamaica Plain, a United Church of Christ and Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) congregation. Formed as a Christian by both liberal and evangelical communities, Laura is passionate about healing the divided church. She currently serves as the Associate Director of the Massachusetts Council of Churches and is a registered state lobbyist on behalf of the 17 member denominations (including the New England Synod of the ELCA). Laura was a part of the US delegation to the 9th Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Porto Alegre, Brazil where she led the program for visitors. She serves on the board of the Boston Faith and Justice Network and the national United Church of Christ's Council on Ecumenism and Interreligious Affairs. Laura enjoys her yoga practice, riding her bike to work, knitting, composting and committee meetings. She was ordained on June 5.

Beer and Hymns?

Wed, 11 May 2011 11:20:53 +0000

The whole scene takes place in a mall food court: a fast food carousel in the heart of the temple of consumerism. This is not a place we would expect beauty or culture. A food court is all about efficiency - get your food quickly, eat just as quickly, and get on with your shopping. It is certainly not a place we expect to encounter the sacred. (By the way, I eat at the food court once a week with my kids, so I speak from experience.)

And yet, thanks to this flash mob, those unsuspecting people in the food court (and we through YouTube) encounter the sacred in the midst of the profane. I just loved seeing all those fast food signs in the background as the camera panned around the amateur chorus.

So often, we go about our lives never expecting to encounter God because we’re not in the right place. In fact, every place is the right place.· There is no wrong place. God is everywhere, if only we would listen and look.

This is one of the reasons Redeemer is hosting a night of Beer and Hymns. The name alone challenges our preconceived notions of where we can find and worship God. Indeed, worship can happen just as easily in a pub - perhaps even more easily for some - as in a church sanctuary.

Beer and Hymns, like the Flash Mob Chorus take us from thinking of the sacred versus the profane, to finding the sacred in the profane, to not making that distinction at all. And that is the beginning of "finding God in all things and all things in God."

Redeemer Welcomes New Director of Youth and Family Ministry

Sun, 01 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Katie has served as Director of Youth and Family Ministry at All Saints Lutheran Church in Albuquerque, New Mexico and Grace Lutheran Church in Palo Alto, California. She has also served in a number of other congregations and youth ministry settings. Katie received her Master of Divinity Degree from Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary and her Bachelor's degree in Theatre Design from Miami University in Ohio.

Katie is originally from Ohio. She and her husband Victor recently moved to Bedford, where Victor serves as an Air Force officer at Hanscomb AFB. Katie joined Redeemer as a new member earlier this month. She can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Take This Bread

Mon, 25 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000

This is how she describes her first communion. “And then we gathered around the table. And there was more singing and standing, and someone was putting a piece of fresh, crumbly bread in my hands, saying, ‘the body of Christ,’ and handing me the goblet of sweet wine, saying ‘the blood of Christ’ and then something outrageous and terrifying happened. Jesus happened to me.”

“This was my first communion. It changed everything. Eating Jesus, as I did that day to my great astonishment, led me against all expectations to a faith I’d scorned and work I’d never imagined. The mysterious sacrament turned out to be not a symbolic wafer at all but actual food - indeed, the bread of life. In that shocking moment of communion, filled with a deep desire to reach for and become part of a body, I realized that what I’d been doing with my life all along was what I was meant to do: feed people.”

I love the words she uses to describe communion: outrageous, terrifying, shocking, mysterious, astonishment, realization. These are all words that describe what the disciples felt in the dinner in Emmaus. Jesus happened to them just has he happened to Sara Miles, just as he happens to us at this table every week. Yes, he nourishes, forgives, heals, blesses us. However, as Miles’ story shows, Communion is not all that safe or predictable. It is mysterious, shocking, and even outrageous to say this is the place, at this table, that God is most present in all the Earth and that we eat Christ’s body and blood. Sometimes it takes a newcomer, a visitor, a person of another faith, to help us see just how radical, how subversive Communion really is. It is the place that Jesus happens to us...and we cannot control that. We can only receive it, stand in the mystery, be changed, and find our hearts burning.

Out of this first communion experience, Miles became a Christian and discovered her true calling - to feed people, just as she had been fed in Communion, and she started a food pantry at her church and went on to organize eleven pantries all over San Francisco.

Each Friday afternoon they serve about 500 families and give away 6 tons of food. Lots of churches have food pantries, but this is unique for how they do it. In an interview, she says, “We put up all these tables around the altar so that the entire sanctuary of the church looks like this fabulous farmers' market in heaven. There are icons and candles burning and flowers and beautiful altar cloths, and piles of Cheerios and potatoes and fresh vegetables and rice and beans.”

Isn’t that wonderful? A heavenly farmers market with the communion table in the center. At her church, people are getting fed and nourished on a Friday afternoon just as they do on Sunday morning. Jesus is happening there too. When we feed the hungry, when we gather our own pile of food around this table in the fall, when we serve at the Harvard Square Shelter, when we take meals to new parents, a men’s dinner, a women’s breakfast, when we gather for a meal with friends, Jesus happens there too.

There is a page on Miles’ church website is devoted to the shelter, and at the very end of the page, the very last line it says: “It takes so little to see God in the world. You just have to open the door.” That is what the Gospel writers telll us over and over again. The disciples opened a door to a stranger on the road and invited him to dinner, and Jesus happened. When we come up this aisle and eat together, Jesus happens. Jesus happens around any and every table, wherever and whenever people are fed. The presence may not be immediately recognizable, but its there.

It may not be as safe as you think.

It may change your life for good.

Just open the door,

come to the table,

taste and see that the Lord is good.

You just might find your hearts are burning.