Parables
We believe that the most "special need" we all have is to have a place we know we belong.Parables is a worship service for all abilities, particularly

Worship
Every Sunday at 11:00 am
Parables meets in the Social Hall
Openness and Compassion: February 2025
The Parable of the Mustard Seed
This year I tested positive for Covid for my very first time and experienced the “horrors of a Covid-headache” for about 24 hours. Not nearly the pain that many people live with every day, I’m sure, but it was the closest thing I’ve ever experienced to the transitional phase of labor in unmedicated childbirth. I lay silent in the darkened bedroom for hours alone, looking for any means to ameliorate the pain. I creatively “gave it” to Jesus to transform into something helpful to others, I befriended it, accepted it, and tried not to wish it would leave me alone. Soon. As day turned into night with no end in sight at the searing skull-crushing experience, I continued to drum up every coping skill, scripture verse, mantra, rocking and self-soothing possible, as the extra-strength pain medication wasn’t seeming to do anything.
My friend, Marnie, texted “How are you faring?” I couldn’t bear any light at all, but periodically I would check my phone for just glimpses of the time or word from the outside world that might distract if even for a moment. With her text, my 10/10 on the pain scale shifted immediately to a 9. I told her I didn’t think I could do this much longer without jumping out of my skin. She said this sounded really bad. It was. She asked me further about my experience of it. In a flurry of thumb typing I was able to spew out with emojis the emotions that come to us when we suffer and feel helpless in the face of it. She received them with goodwill and didn’t try to cheer me.
Despite the agonizing light from the phone, my pain level dropped to an 8.
On the other side of this experience now, it has occurred to me that my compassion for other beings’ suffering has widened in its wake. Being ill slows us down, allows us to see and appreciate with full depth the endless supply of cool water needed for hydration, frozen blueberries to chew for easing deep aches in the jaw, and the miracle of an electric heating pad in the face of severe chills. Clean water, fruit in winter, a warm home with electricity. How my senses are freshly sensitized to empathize more keenly for those who face illness without the comfort of a friend or the amenities of warmth and nourishment needed to sustain healing.
The seeds of compassion in us are often cracked open through our own or the suffering of someone we love a great deal. Which got me thinking of our parable for February 2025 at Parables:
“Jesus also said, ‘What can we say that the kingdom is like? What parable can we find for it? It is like a mustard seed which, at the time of its sowing, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth. Yet once it is sown it grows into the biggest shrub of them all and puts out big branches so that the birds of the air can shelter in its shade’.” (Mark 4: 30-32)
Compassion is like that. Once opened through suffering, it grows in any myriad of sheltering ways and includes and protects in its branches of care even the most aggressive of birds…even birds like the brown-headed cowbird, who prey on the innocent eggs of other birds and replaces them with its own eggs.
Hold it. WHAT?!
Think about it. In another gospel, Jesus says: “You have heard that it was said, You must love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who harass you so that you will be acting as children of your Father who is in heaven. He makes the sun rise on both the evil and the good and sends rain on both the righteous and the unrighteous. (Matthew 5: 43-45)
Did Jesus mean to include ALL the birds of the air in that parable of the mustard seed? I believe he did. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t need to create boundaries for behavior that causes ill-will…and it doesn’t mean that every bird invited to come will be able to accept the offer. We must be okay with that, too.
One of my favorite musicals is Les Miserables because of its capacity to make me cry at the sheer depth of humanity in so many scenes. And the scene where Jean Valjean forgives his right-and-wrong-loving oppressor, Javert, instead of repaying Javert’s years of abuse with revenge is one of them. Javert taunts and mocks our compassionate hero, and then when Valjean uses his knife to unbind him instead of slitting his throat, Javert almost begs him to shoot him rather than make him wrestle with the changes that this kind of Jesus-led compassion might make possible.
Alas, this kind of liberation is not what all can accept, for reasons only God can truly understand. Our deepest traumas are often unknowable to even us. This heartbreaking fact is one of the most tender truths of being human: it takes God’s grace in us to even accept the gift of grace. Marnie’s text could have arrived for me on Tuesday, and it’s possible I could have been too angry, too hopeless, too helpless, too beaten down or forgotten for too long to have been able to respond and find relief.
Which is why our work for the vulnerable in 2025 is more important than ever.
Because the way suffering opens the seeds of compassion in us over and over again is a grace, too. And the mammoth spread of the mustard seed bush/tree is worth trusting in, even though we have no control over which birds get invited.
This poem by Miller Williams speaks to the mystery of suffering, the small graces we often take for granted, and the truth that our compassion towards our enemies is a grace worth continuing to ask God’s help in cultivating.
Have compassion for everyone you meet, even if they don’t want it. What seems conceit, bad manners, or cynicism is always a sign of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen.
You do not know what wars are going on
down there where the spirit meets the bone.
May compassion rise in deliciously surprising ways for you, friend.
LeAnn

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Chelsea First
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Chelsea First United Methodist Church (Chelsea First) is a Christ-centered congregation with a positive, open, and engaging spirit. We are a church for everyone, at all seasons of life, and bring a grounded, engaged, and supportive approach to Christian worship while working passionately toward making a positive impact in our community.
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9:00 am | Meets in the Sanctuary |
11:00 am | Meets in the Sanctuary |
11:00 am | Parables - meets in the Social Hall |
We welcome the sounds and energy of children in worship. For parents who feel more comfortable visiting a "set-apart" location, a nursery room designed for ages three and younger, is available not far from the sanctuary; adults need to remain with their children in the nursery.
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Thursday- Friday 8-3 pm
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