Remain in Love

Love, its the theme of almost every song you hear on the radio, shows up constantly in our TV programs and movies, every novel seems to be a love story. We are surrounded by love, bombarded with it.

We crave love, try desperately to find it, to draw it to ourselves. Some of us find love illusive, we are disappointed in love.

Jesus tells his disciples that they are to abide in his love, to remain in it. He wants them to spread this love around too. He wants them to love each other.

These seem like pretty high orders. How can I love someone I may not even like, someone who has hurt me or others, someone who is just unlovable. Jesus seems to be asking too much, and in reality he is.

This Sunday, Mother's Day, we will consider the impossibility of Jesus command to remain in him and to love each other.

GEMS Sunday 2015

Every year, for as long as I can remember, we set aside a Sunday to recognize our GEMS (Girls Everywhere Meeting the Savior). This Sunday is GEMS Sunday.

The girls and their leaders have been working hard to prepare for this service. They will lead us in song, and movement. They will point us beyond themselves as we worship a God who loves us so much; a God who wants to have a relationship with us. It is exciting to know about such a God, to have a Savior like Jesus.

When we are excited about something we want to tell others about it. We want to share our excitement, maybe even introduce them to the reason for our happiness.

Long ago, the prophet Isaiah met God in a very personal way. It moved him so much that he volunteered to go as God's voice to his people. He put up his hand and said "Here I am, Send me". Isaiah is the only person in the Bible to ever volunteer to carry God's message.

We too have a message to share, a story of our personal encounters with Jesus. Can we say, with Isaiah, and with our GEMS "Here I am. Send me"?

Macie Numan

Yesterday we celebrated the baptism of Macie Danae Sergovich Numan, infant daughter of Anthony and Aimee. The picture of God reaching out to us before we are able to reach out ourselves is a wonderful one.

Blessings to this family.

Jesus in the Midst of Us

Luke tells us about Jesus' appearance to the disciples just before he records Jesus ascension into heaven. In terms of ink used, Luke spends a lot more of it telling about the visit than he does with what might have been the more amazing sight of a crucified and risen Jesus rising out of sight into heaven. One might wonder why that is?

Jesus ascension is a one time, historical event. It is important, because our advocate in heaven is flesh and blood, like us and knows us intimately. Jesus appearance among the disciples, though, is an every day occurrence. Jesus is among is, lives among us, is part of our everyday existence.

How do you see Jesus in your life? In the life of the church? Do we recognize him as being actively involved, or do we see him as far away, unreachable. Luke would have us look for him close by.

This Sunday, we will spend some time talking about the implications of recognizing that Jesus is among us.

I Have Seen Jesus

Dark on a Sunday morning, Mary Magdalene approaches the tomb where Jesus had been hastily placed following his crucifixion. She finds it disturbed, rushes for help, returns, and when everyone else has left, has an encounter with Jesus.

She doesn't recognize him at first, thinking him a gardener, but at the sound of her name, Mary, recognition flowers, her heart leaps, her sorrow and disbelief evaporates.

This Sunday, Easter Sunday, we will spend some time reflecting on this encounter and Mary's response to meeting Jesus in that cemetery.

Celebration

Hosanna!

While this word literally means "O Lord, save (us)" by the time it was being shouted by a palm waving crowd, accompanying a colt riding Jesus, it was likely understood to mean something like "Hail the King". The people were excited, celebrating, the Messiah was riding into Jerusalem to, in their minds anyway, make some major changes, bring Israel back to glory. Celebration was in the air.


We will celebrate this week as well. Our Sunday School children will swing palm branches and we will sing songs of celebration, hosanna. We are also celebrating the completion of the restoration of our building, damaged by fire in August.

Of course, neither Jesus ride into Jerusalem, or the completion of our building are the end of the story. Jesus ride was really the prelude to the beginning and we find ourselves in the middle of the story of salvation, the time between Jesus' comings. We are kingdom bringers and, as such, will celebrate God's goodness and the help extended to us by our community in our special Palm Sunday service this week.

A Snake in the Wilderness

Esteban March (1610 - 1668)

There's a little story, tucked into the record of the people of Israel's movement in the desert toward the promised land. It's a story about God's punishment for disobedience, but also of a loving God who provides a way to survive the punishment, a way to come out the other side.

The story is only five verses. Its a story of a grumbling people who are punished with poisonous snakes. The way out is a bronze snake and whoever had been bitten, if they would look at the snake raised on a pole, would live. The way out was given because God loved the people.

This little story is echoed in the gospel of John. Even the well known words of John 3:16 have hints of the earlier story. The difference is that the Son of God, raised, cures more than a deadly snake bite.

This Sunday as we continue to examine God's covenants with humanity we will see how the serpent raised in the desert is a foreshadowing of a new covenant.

Covenant: Abraham

"Isaac's Circumcision", Regensburg Pentateuch, c1300

Almost 400 years after the God makes a covenant with all of creation following the flood, God calls Abram to leave his home and start out on a trip to a new land. After he gets there, God makes a covenant with him giving his descendants the land he has been wandering around in. The troubling piece is that Abram has no children and age has not only crept up on him and Sarai, it has overwhelmed them.

Then, nearly 25 years after God called Abram to go, God appears on the scene again. Abram is now 99 years old, and again God promises the land to offspring, and promises to be their God. Abram and Saria get new names to announce their fruitfulness and Abraham, along with all of his descendants, and all of his household,  is required to carry a mark of this covenant.

The mark is intimate and becomes part of the very fruitfulness that is promised. The mark also produces blood, blood which seals this covenant, foreshadowing one to come.

Covenant:Noah

The season of Lent is upon us. During this season we will spend time talking about, and learning about, covenant, particularly God's history of covenant with God's people. We'll begin with the covenant God made with Noah and all of his descendants following the flood and we will end with the new covenant fulfilled by Jesus as we come to the end of Lent on Good Friday.

Domenico Morelli Noahs Dankgebet

The covenant God makes at the end of the flood is a broad one. It's not just for Noah and his family, but is made with all living things. Like other covenants with God, there is only a single source of action in the covenant, God. No demands are put on Noah and all the  living things that were with him in the ark.

God promises to hold death and destruction at bay and seals the promise with a rainbow. This Sunday, we will consider how this ancient covenant still affects our lives.

A Gospel of Restoration

The gospel of Mark relates the story of a Sabbath in Jesus life, early in his ministry, when he preforms two miracles of healing. Everyone in town hears about them and bring their sick to be healed as well. Jesus seems to have stumbled upon a ministry, something that would help the people right now, a work that would be of value. But, instead of capitalizing on his powers as a healer, he walks away to the disappointment and surprise of his disciples.

Jesus heals Simon’s mother-in-law. Orthodox icon.

It is an interesting and revealing story. Jesus sees his purpose as preaching the gospel and will not be tempted to abandon that purpose to do what would be easy, expedient. Instead he picks up and goes on to other villages to preach.

What is our purpose? Are we focused on it? Does it influence all of our decisions personally and as the body of Christ in the world?

This week we will try to wrestle with some of those questions in light of Jesus example.

Where Can We Find Hope?

Sometimes it seems like everything is going wrong, that the world seems to be getting worse and worse, that our lives seem to be littered with trouble. Hope in the face of illness and death, in the face of poverty, in the face of abuse, seems pretty thin sometimes, especially when we look inside of ourselves for the source of hope. When we think we can save ourselves from life changing challenges we often find ourselves at the end of a dark hopeless road.

This Sunday we are going to look into the Psalms for words of hope, particularly Psalm 62. The psalmist says that he finds his hope in God. He calls him a fortress, a rock, a refuge. God is the psalmist's salvation. He says God holds the power in the world.

In this hope, we have something to share with those around us who are struggling to see the way through, who feel lost and powerless.

Come and See

chosenrebel.me

This week the lectionary reading takes us to the Gospel of John and the growth of Jesus' little band of disciples. We meet Nathanael a man who grudgingly responds to Philip's invitation to come and see. His skepticism turns to amazement as Jesus tells him about himself without ever having met him before.

Meeting Jesus has that effect on people, all they need is an invitation to "come and see". Philip gets his friend in front of Jesus, but Jesus does the work of convincing Nathanael that he is indeed the promised Messiah.

This week , we will spend some time thinking about what the call to extend the invitation to come and see means for us in our world.

In the Beginning, God......

genesis1blog.com

"In the Beginning, God", these four words have been the source of controversy for decades.

What did the "beginning" look like? Did the world evolve into what it is today, or did it spring up, fully formed, in a week long symphony of creation? The debates fill volumes, each side berating the other, throwing scientific theory against faith based certainty. Every one of these arguments though, tries to fit God into something we can understand with our finite human minds. We try to put God in a box.

The Bible doesn't do that, It just says that at the beginning, God was there. It sets the tone for the entire history of the universe by centering it around God.

This Sunday, we will look at the beginning, our God, and his love for us in new beginnings in Jesus Christ.