We’ve been studying the Old Testament this year. This week we started the book of Samuel. In 1 Samuel 1, Hannah felt sad because she had no children. She could have become bitter and turned away from the Lord because of it, but instead she actually drew closer to the Lord through prayer.
God has the power to end our trials. So it’s not unreasonable to wonder why He allows us to go through the trials that we experience. But if we will draw nearer to Him instead of abandoning Him, He will bless and enrich our lives. In Hannah’s case, she eventually received the blessing she desired and had a son, who went on to become Samuel the prophet. Our own stories may turn out differently. But we can trust that He will bless us with what we need most if we will strive to stay close to Him.
This week’s service was on Juneteenth, so the pastor talked a lot about liberation! He emphasized that God is in all people, and when people are oppressed, it’s a sleight against God Himself. He also highlighted the parallels between oppression and the experiences of the person possessed by many demons, who Jesus liberated by casting out the oppressive influence.
This was Pride Sunday at my church! We had a guest pastor who was great.
He preached about lessons we can learn from parts of the Bible. First, when discussing Elisha upon the ascension of Elijah, we heard about how he followed him until the literal end, refusing to turn away even though Elijah said he would be leaving. When asking for a “double portion” of Elijah’s inheritance, this was the kind of thing only biological sons would ask at this time. Yet their connection was there all the same.
He also preached about Luke’s account of Jesus taking disciples on the road to Jerusalem. He asked people to come follow Him, and they said not yet, they had things to attend to first, and Jesus rebuked them. One said he had to bury his father, but that didn’t mean he was dead; rather, it could be understood that he had that duty and his father was still around. Jesus said “let the dead bury their dead,” which the pastor took one further: Let the traditions of the past that don’t contribute to God’s kingdom stay dead. We should keep our eyes forward toward Jerusalem, not behind us.
Watching an online stream for the first time in a while. Since I’m home recovering from COVID (and I now have Sundays off with my new schedule) I don’t have an excuse.
The Gospel reading was from Matthew 21:28-32, the parable of one son who did what his father asked of him and the other who changed his mind. When did you last tell someone you’d do something and then you didn’t?
This parable is about all of us! Even imperfect people can follow God’s will. Our behavior and our belief do not constitute our salvation. What matters is grace, love, forgiveness, and being present with Jesus.
“God’s will” pops up frequently in Matthew’s Gospel, from the Sermon on the Mount all the way through Gethsemane. Jesus even asks Himself if He’s following God’s will.
Paul later talks about how he keeps doing what he doesn’t want to do, and how it’s not him doing it but the sin within him. But we shouldn’t focus so much on our sinful nature. These choices are sins but we can take responsibility for them and act from a good place. Every day is a new opportunity to experience God’s grace, show it to others, and make it an intentional part of our lives.
“In our brokenness, we are living with a holy wholeness. Believe it or not, that is the will of God.”
Today’s sermon was on the story of the Good Samaritan! Where a man was beaten nearly to death by robbers on a road, where “good Jewish leaders” like a priest and Levite passed him by, but a hated outgroup, a Samaritan, went out of the way to tend to him and help him.
The priest added some important context: In this context, the person could have very much been a trap. There were many thieves on that road, and someone injured or pretending to be injured would be prime bait. Those who walked by weren’t being selfish or evil, they were being reasonable. The story wasn’t there to showcase what the priest didn’t do. It was to showcase what the Samaritan did. Going completely above and beyond to love his neighbor.
But our pastor challenged us to see it as more than a feel-good story. It’s uncomfortable. The road between Jerusalem and Jericho was commonly known as a dangerous journey. It’s about 3000 feet difference in elevation and full of curves—plenty of places for thieves and murderers to hide.
The priest and the Levite were afraid to touch the man in the ditch out of their fear of becoming unclean. This man had never felt so low.
What are the parts of Jesus’s teachings that challenge us? What are our vindicators? For the pastor, and for me, it’s my distractions. My mind is so busy that I can put off showing compassion to others. Even during services, I have to write notes either in a journal or on my phone (like I’m doing now as I watch this service ).
Distractions make us think that the most immediate things are the most important. Sometimes we measure our worth by how much we have accomplished. It’s a miserable mindset to be in and it makes us forget the needs of the world.
What’s most important is to love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love others as God loves you. Opportunities to show that love can come up anywhere, anytime! Compassion means keeping your heart and mind open for things to shift so you can do God’s work.
Today’s sermon was about hospitality and Mary and Martha when Jesus visits them. Martha is hard at work when Jesus comes, and Mary drops everything to show Him hospitality. Martha comments on how busy she is, Jesus defends Mary, and says she is focusing on what’s important.
But the pastor emphasized that this isn’t a rebuke of Martha. She had duties around the house to take care of, and she was helping in her own way. It’s more likely that they were affectionately jibing each other than authentically complaining.
“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
Our pastor talked about how we “did church” when we couldn’t be at church in the early months of the pandemic. She finished with challenging us to ask ourselves how we can help manifest the beloved community with our resources.
Rather than getting into fights over things we disagree with other Christians about, we should work with each other to fulfill God’s Kingdom here on Earth. Love others as He has loved us!
Our sermon this week started with a few passages about fig trees. Luke’s Gospel has a parable about a fig tree that was cut down after a year of not bearing any fruit; in Mark, Jesus cursed one that it would never bear fruit again; in John He talks about bearing good vs. bad fruit.
Sometimes we read passages like those that seem to contradict the verses about God’s love, mercy, and grace. But that’s what Biblical interpretation is all about.
Before Jesus came, Jewish people believed that when people died they didn’t have any kind of afterlife. Around the time of His ministry, He described the opposite of life as Gehenna, a valley where people burned garbage and where outcasts were sent. Some uses refer to it as a place where both body and soul/spirit would be completely destroyed.
As kids, we had trouble understanding punishment. If we did something bad our parents would put us in time out, spank us, even worse things. That can lead to deep emotional scars, like a fear that love is conditional.
Being a new mom, our pastor sometimes struggles with deciding how gently to parent her child. Not all behaviors are OK, that is true, but all feelings are valid. It’s OK to feel what you’re feeling but you should help people of all ages learn how to act on those feelings. “Parenting by punishment” isn’t the way to go, she continued, and that’s not how she thinks God works.
God wants a relationship with us. “I want to see you thrive and be whole. Today you may feel awful but tomorrow will be different.”
Wherever you see yourself in the fig orchard—nurturing, fruitless, or the one with the axe—let us give each other the best growing conditions.
This week’s sermon was about “contradictions” in the Bible. Our scripture reading was about how Jesus rebuked the Pharisee who called Him out for healing on the Sabbath. The priest emphasized that this was not Jesus countering scripture about the Sabbath. Instead, He was upholding what the Sabbath is for. When we encounter what seem to be contradictions, we need to recognize how different things can be serving the same purpose, just in different contexts.
Our service’s Scripture reading was a passage in Luke chapter 15 that contains three parables:
The shepherd who had 100 sheep but lost one so he searched far and wide and rejoiced when he found it.
A woman who loses one of her silver coins and cleans up all over the house to find it
The Prodigal Son, one of Jesus’s most famous parables.
I really liked this takeaway from the Word for God’s Children: “Some of these pennies are older and dirtier and more worn out than others, but they’re all worth the same!”
This week’s service was on the use of wedding banquets in parables. Jesus spoke of how when invited to a banquet, you should sit in the least-honored position rather than the most-, so that you can be exalted rather than humbled when asked by the host to move to a more honored position. The priest also emphasized that we should not just invite those close to us to our proverbial banquet; we should invite the poor, the needy, the disabled, and so on. We should make the feast all the world, ideally.
This was in the wake of the death of Queen Elizabeth, and as an Episcopal church, it obviously came out!
Our priest drew a parallel between Jesus getting called out for associating among sinners and Queen Elizabeth. Jesus didn’t just stay cloistered with the holiest of holy people, but rather, was around with the people who needed Him the most; those who are saved do not need saving, after all. He connected that by alluding that the British monarchy is responsible for a lot of terrible things, making it the very definition of “the sinners,” but nonetheless, those who show grace and compassion in such a sinful place are still doing good work.
This week our priest had a good perspective on the “woe to the rich” themes of Jesus’ teachings. Those who have wealth and are also generous and virtuous are never going to be able to avoid the concern that they’re not giving enough. There’s always more you could be giving. And the priest emphasized that that isn’t a bad thing. It’s an awareness of the struggles of this world and our place in it all. It’s something that one must live with if they have wealth and privilege.
This week’s service was about St. James, the (half-) brother of Christ and how we could learn from his example. He was one of the first Christians, and notably, rather than go out and about like many disciples, he stayed in Jerusalem. And yet, what he did was still incredibly valuable in starting the early church. They had different approaches to how to spread the Gospel, and yet, rather than focus on defeating each other and making sure everyone did things their way, they each brought what they could to Christ and His church, and together, they helped it spread to every corner of the Earth.
Okay, I will attempt to convey this one properly. The Gospel last weekend was the parable of a Pharisee and a tax collectorvwho both wentvto pray in the Temple area. The Pharisee prayed pridefully with self-righteousness and with loathing for others (even thanking God for not being like the tax collector). The tax collector would not even raise his eyes to Heaven, but repeatedly asked God to be merciful to him as he was a sinful man. To the Jewish people at the time, the Pharisees were well respected as they followed the law. Tax collectors were not. So one would have expected the Pharisee to be the good guy of the story and the collector the villain. However, Jesus turned this expectation on its head and the tax collector was “justified”. This serves as a warning to us not to be arrogant in our faith but to be humble, and recognize our own sinfulness. I hope I have not mangled the lesson.
Today is All Saints’ Sunday so our congregation lit candles for those who have left us.
I’d like to light a virtual candle for an old furiend, Yuoo Fennec. He was a kind, gentle soul and a gifted writer, artist, and pianist. I met him in my earliest days of finding the Christian side of the furry fandom and always enjoyed talking to him.
He passed away on January 8, 2009 due to complications from a blizzard. Here, in its entirety, is his piano solo “A Trip to Mt. Rainier”
We had a guest pastor who was great.
for an old furiend, Yuoo Fennec. He was a kind, gentle soul and a gifted writer, artist, and pianist. I met him in my earliest days of finding the Christian side of the furry fandom and always enjoyed talking to him.
Wish I could have gone to church in person or I could have too!