January 9 | Baptism
As we will be
celebrating Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan River this Sunday, baptize an infant
at the 10:45 worship service, and affirm our own baptismal faith, I thought it
might be beneficial to review what Martin Luther wrote in his Small
Catechism on the Sacrament of Holy Baptism. Many might remember the
words from their confirmation days, to others the language will be new. To
whatever of the two groups you fall, I invite you to listen to Brother Martin
with fresh ears.
IV.
The Sacrament of Holy Baptism
As the head of the
family should teach it in a simple way to his household.
FIRST.
What is Baptism? -- Answer.
Baptism is not simple
water only, but it is the water comprehended in God's command and connected
with God's Word.
Which is that word of God? -- Answer.
Christ, our Lord, says
in the last chapter of Matthew: Go ye into all the world and teach all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Ghost.
SECONDLY.
What does Baptism give or profit? -- Answer.
It works forgiveness of
sins, delivers from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who
believe this, as the words and promises of God declare.
Which are such words and promises of God? -- Answer.
Christ, our Lord, says
in the last chapter of Mark: He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved;
but he that believeth not shall be damned.
THIRDLY.
How can water do such great things? -- Answer.
It is not the water
indeed that does them, but the word of God which is in and with the water, and
faith, which trusts such word of God in the water. For without the word of God
the water is simple water and no baptism. But with the word of God it is a
baptism, that is, a gracious water of life and a washing of regeneration in the
Holy Ghost, as St. Paul says, Titus, chapter three: By the washing of
regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost, which He shed on us abundantly
through Jesus Christ, our Savior, that, being justified by His grace, we should
be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life. This is a faithful saying.
FOURTHLY.
What does such baptizing with water signify? -- Answer.
It signifies that the
old Adam in us should, by daily contrition and repentance, be drowned and die
with all sins and evil lusts, and, again, a new man daily come forth and arise;
who shall live before God in righteousness and purity forever.
Where is this written? -- Answer.
St. Paul says Romans,
chapter 6: We are buried with Christ by Baptism into death, that, like as He
was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should
walk in newness of life.
January 16 | New Year's Resolutions &
Temptations
For millennia, people
have turned to religion to renew themselves, leave their past behind and begin
again. Nearly all faith traditions have stories and rituals of renewal, from
baptism to Ramadan to reincarnation.
Gordon Melton, Professor
of American Religious History at Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of
Religion, has said that “the purpose of religion is to reintegrate members of
the community back in when they have gone astray," "It usually
involves some form of forgiveness and reaffirming status back into the
community."
According to Christopher
Hays, Professor of Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary,
these religious renewal rituals tap into a human desire for new
beginnings: "Anyone who lives in the world finds things get
tiresome and old, and the idea of renewal is a very powerful one."
Barna Group, a respected religious research group
located in Ventura California, some 2 years ago published the results of a
study on old and new temptations, titled “Temptations and America’s Favorite
Sins.” This research (conducted as part of a book project) revealed some new—and not so
new—aspects to the temptations facing today’s adults.
The Barna Institute’s
report makes for some illuminating reading. There is, for example, a
graph that lists the different temptations to which people admit, grouped into
old and new temptations. Then there is a graph that compares
and contrasts the different temptations to which men and women admit. There
are also graphs that display the results sorted by generation, religion, and
reason why people give in to their temptations. All these can be
found as part of the report on the Barna Institute’s website.
A graph that I found
particularly interesting is titled “The Ways We Resist.” The way to
successfully resist temptations that most people stated was prayer. Prayer,
I believe, as what helped Jesus when the devil tempted him during hi forty-day
fast in the Judean dessert. Because Jesus prayed, the devil was
unable to accomplish his goals. The devil was unable to sway Jesus from
pursuing his mission and ministry (Matthew 4:1-17).
Prayer is what we can do
individually, together, and for one another to help us to overcome in the face
of temptations that threaten to pull us away from God and God’s love.
I invite you to take a
look at the Barna Institute study on “Temptations and America’s Favorite Sins”
and to open your Bible and read the story of Jesus’ temptation by the devil in
Matthew 4 in preparation of this Sunday’s worship services.
January 23 | The Beatitudes in Recent Translations
As I am not preaching
this Sunday, I had some time to explore how others have attempted to capture
the meaning of next Sunday’s Gospel lesson in modern language. I
have tried to gather an array of different versions, to give you a window into
the ways people make Jesus’ Beatitudes their own, a spiritual technique
recommended for by Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuit order.
The first version comes
from Eugene H. Peterson’s The Message, a contemporary paraphrase of
the text of the Bible. Peterson paraphrases Jesus’ Beatitudes
(Matthew 5:3-11) as follows:
3 “You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of
you there is more of God and his rule.4 “You’re blessed when
you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by
the One most dear to you.5 “You’re blessed when you’re content
with just who you are—no more, no less. That’s the moment you find yourselves
proud owners of everything that can’t be bought.6 “You’re
blessed when you’ve worked up a good appetite for God. He’s food and drink in
the best meal you’ll ever eat.7 “You’re blessed when you care.
At the moment of being ‘care-full,’ you find yourselves cared for.8 “You’re
blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you
can see God in the outside world.9 “You’re blessed when you can
show people how to cooperate instead of compete or fight. That’s when you
discover who you really are, and your place in God’s family.10 “You’re
blessed when your commitment to God provokes persecution. The persecution
drives you even deeper into God’s kingdom.11-12 “Not only
that—count yourselves blessed every time people put you down or throw you out
or speak lies about you to discredit me. What it means is that the truth is too
close for comfort and they are uncomfortable. You can be glad when that
happens—give a cheer, even!—for though they don’t like it, I do!
And all heaven applauds. And know that you are in good company. My prophets and
witnesses have always gotten into this kind of trouble.
Next, I found the
following “Modern Day Beatitudes” by Kristen Sunstrum:
While
I might not agree with all of her choices of words or her perspective, I think
she demonstrates the benefit of making Jesus’ words personal for herself and
expressing them in a way that makes sense to her.
- Happy
are those who put God before anything else.
- Happy
are those who are sad, because God will be there for them.
- People
who are humble will be rewarded by God.
- Happy
are those who are happy with what they have.
- Happy
are those who are nice to others.
- People
who follow what God says, will be rewarded.
- Happy
are those who do what is right, and make other people happy.
- Happy
are those who follow God no matter what.
Ms.
Sunstrum has also turned her text into a “Prezi” presentation which you might
enjoy checking out online.
Thirdly,
there is the following excerpt from a longer set of “Beatitudes for a Modern Day” written by Jesuit priest John D. Alexander, S.J., specifically for the context of families.
- Blessed are those who
“recognize their need for God,” who acknowledge their dependence on God
and His gifts to them.
- Blessed are those who though
they are blessed with fine families and friends are still very concerned
with the pain and suffering of others, either nearby or at a distance.
These others are their human brothers and sisters.
- Blessed are the generous people
who give of their love, their time, their money, and somehow keep on
giving despite disillusionment and disappointment in seeing their efforts
go wasted.
- Blessed are those who respect a
person as an individual and do not prejudge him or her because of race,
color, ethnic, or economic background or sexual identity. They do not,
therefore, reduce that individual’s many good qualities to one rather
unessential characteristic.
- Blessed are the peacemakers who
before a rift in a family is frozen like ice and divides a family for
years, go out of their way to settle disputes, heal the bruised egos, and
restore peace.
- Blessed are those who mourn the
loss of a loved one and who, because of their hope in Christ, work through
this pain and anger without becoming depressed or bitter.
- Blessed are those men and women
who in the September of their lives still wonder how they can serve God
and others better. In their cheerful acceptance of pain and inconvenience,
they give witness to a strong belief in a loving God.
- Blessed are those people who
are most sensitive to pain and injustice around them. They help us to keep
our vision clear. By this example they help us to be patient, loving, and
forgiving. They inspire us to keep putting one foot in from of the other
in our attempts to walk the path of Christ in following the ideals of
these beatitudes.
(source: http://www.hnom.org/Beatitudes.pdf)
Finally,
I found the following modern-day The Beatitudes of Our Current Church Culture, written by Joe Abbey-Colborne, a Canadian
pastor, who critically names some of the values of a self-satisfied church
culture as a way of holding a critical mirror before our eyes and calling
Christians to repentance.
- Blessed are the
well off and those with ready answers for every spiritual question; they
have it all.
- Blessed are the
comfortable; they shall avoid grief.
- Blessed are the
self-sufficient; they wait for nothing, they have everything they want,
and they have it now.
- Blessed are those
who are not troubled by the injustice experienced by others; they are
content with realistic expectations.
- Blessed are the
ones who gain the upper hand; they take full advantage of their
advantages.
- Blessed are those
with a solid public image and a well hidden agenda; they are never exposed
and see people …in a way that suits their purposes.
- Blessed are those
who can bully others into agreement; they shall be called empire builders.
- Blessed are those
who can point to someone else who is a worse person than they are, they
will always look good by comparison.
- Blessed are you
when people praise you, give you preferential treatment, and flatter you
because they think you’re so great. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad,
because it doesn’t get any better than this.
I look forward to seeing you this Sunday and to
listening to LaVinnia Pierson’s sermon on Jesus’ Beatitudes.
February 6 | It’s All About That Grace, Not
Wo-orks, Not Wo-orks….
This weekly article is
written after an amazing “Fun with Faith” class session last night on the
Augsburg Confession of 1530 A.D. It is unfortunate that the original
document is written in language that’s a bit hard to understand and that no
simplified contemporary English version is available. However, it is
still worth to study this 16th-century piece of theological writing.
If you google “Augsburg
Confession”, most everything about it comes from Missouri Synod
sites. While ELCA constitutions heavily rely on it and refer
to it, I have found not found any study materials developed by our own
denomination. That’s rather unfortunate.
Last night, we focused
on the core belief of this document and of the Lutheran faith – justification
by faith alone. Article IV of the Augsburg Confession goes as
follows:
“Also they [i.e., the
Lutherans] teach that men cannot be justified before God by their own strength,
merits, or works, but are freely justified for Christ's sake, through faith,
when they believe that they are received into favor, and that their sins are forgiven
for Christ's sake, who, by His death, has made satisfaction for our sins. This
faith God imputes for righteousness in His sight.”
This doctrine of
justification by faith alone is so central for our faith that it influences
everything else that we believe. It influences how and why we
worship, how we become Christians, why we baptize infants, why we celebrate
Holy Communion the way we do and what Holy Communion means for us, how we
confess our sins, what we believe about forgiveness, what we expect from our
religious leaders, and much more. Yet, the doctrine of
justification by faith is so little understood. It is so little
understood, because it runs contrary to the way the world around us
functions.
Whether at home, in
school, or at work, everywhere else we expect get what we deserve and what we
have earned. [Unfortunately, life is cruel, and so very often
people do not get what they deserve or other, less-deserving people get what is
rightfully ours. But that’s a whole different story.]
In our relationship with
God, our Maker, we do not get what we deserve. If
we got what we deserve, we all would be condemned to eternal doom. The
salvation which God gives us, we did not earn. God
– in God’s unfathomable love and grace – grants us salvation and eternal life,
not because of anything we have done, but of something God Himself did – Jesus’
death and resurrection.
This important detail is
what sets Lutherans apart from most other denominations and religions. It
gives our faith a tremendous freedom to respond to the challenges of modern
culture and society. Instead of following strict religious rules and
laws and restrictions, we have freedom, the freedom to love, to embrace, to
accept, to hope, and to forgive.
There is still once
class session left, next Wednesday evening. Feel free to join us,
even, if you haven’t attended previously. Your perspective matters
and will enrich our conversation.
February
13 | How do Lutherans Study the Bible?
Last Sunday’s Bible
Study class was well attended and we had a lively, stimulating discussion, led
by Randy Shattuck. In fact, the discussion was so important that I’d
like to summarize it in this eNewsletter for the benefit of larger Bethel
community.
Picture this – the
discussion leader at a Bible study class holds up his Bible, kisses it
affectionately, then asks the class, “Is this God’s word?” For a
brief moment, silence ensued and some looked perplexed by the question. Finally,
the silence is broken by the surprising response, “No – Christ is the Word of
God!”
That’s how last Sunday’s
Bible study class began. Randy Shattuck then went on summarizing the
video that the group had watched the week before, titled “The Iron of
God.” The video itself was about the Philistines, their relatively
advanced iron-age weaponry, the inferior technology of the ancient Israelites,
the fight between Goliath and the young shepherd boy David, and the fact that
David forfeited the use of King Saul’s armor, relying on God’s power
alone.
So far so good. Had
the creator of the video left it at that, the video would have been perfectly
fine. Unfortunately, there were references to the number 666 and to
the “rapture” which caused Randy to be alarmed. Rapture
theology refers to the belief that, as part of Jesus’ second coming, believers
will be raised from the earth to meet him in the air. While
widespread among American Protestants, there unfortunately is no real Biblical
basis for such doctrine of a rapture.
Randy then steered the
discussion toward the topic of heresy. Heresy, the class agreed with
him, simply means “false teaching.” How is it, Randy asked, that
heresies develop? How does false teaching arise?
To avoid heresies, Randy
suggested that we ask the following 4 questions each time that we study
Biblical texts:
- What does the text say? What
can we learn from Biblical scholars about its historical context? What
is the literary context (chapter, Biblical book, passages before and
after) of the text?
- What was the intent of the
human authors?
- How have church
leaders historically read the text in later times?
- What does the text mean for the
church today? What
does it mean for us?
While introducing these
4 questions, Randy made sure to remind us that Lutherans are NOT Biblical
literalists. Within our theology, there
is room for critical historical scholarship. Within our theology, there is room
to allow that the stories of the Bible were written by real human beings, rather
than dictated literally by the Holy Spirit.
Randy went on to
contrast his 4 steps of biblical interpretation with a false way of reading
scripture that jumps immediately from asking “What does the text say?” to “What
does the text say about ME?’ Written
2,000 or more years ago, the books of the Bible were NOT written with you or me
in mind. The stories of the Bible are
NOT about us.
At the same time,
though, we deeply trust that the Bible is holy.
We trust that God’s Word is contained among the words of the Bible and
that God speaks to us through them.
By and large, we
Lutherans value the discoveries of scientists.
Many among our congregation even actively contribute to the advancement
of science and technology. By and large, we trust in modern medicine
and have no qualms with the theories of
evolution, genetics, and astrophysics.
At the same time, we
Lutherans are people of faith. We
believe that God is at work in the world, that God is active in our lives, and
that God uses the Body of Christ, the Christian Church, to accomplish God’s
purpose in the world.
So, how can we affirm
both the truths of science and the truth of faith? What must we do to understand God’s word and
to apply it to our lives? How can we do
so in a manner that affirms and respects human intelligence and the best of
Biblical scholarship?
Those are very important
questions that we must answer honestly,.
I am grateful to Randy that he brought them up last Sunday.
Please remember that
there wont be a Bible study time between services the next two Sundays. This week, we will set aside that time to
honor Pastor Ken Bancroft and next week, you will have the opportunity to greet
Pr. Ben Bergren and meet his family between services, as well as eat together
after the 10:45 worship service.
February 27 | Welcome, Pr. Ben Bergren
Postcards have been sent
out and received, the day of Pastor Ben Bergren’s first worship service with us
has come and gone, and a letter from him to you went into the mail today, and
on Sunday sign-up sheets for cottage meetings will be available in the church
entry. The purpose of the cards, letters, celebrations, and cottage
meetings is to mark the beginning of a new relationship, a new partnership in
ministry (between Bethel and Pastor Ben).
I very much hope that
you will make use of the opportunities to meet with Pastor Ben and to listen to
his vision for our community, just as he intends to listen to you, your
individual stories, hopes, and dreams.
These first few weeks in
the ministry of a pastor at a new congregation are important and they very much
remind me of the early stages of a marriage. First comes
the matchmaking (the bishop’s office’s matching of congregational and pastors’
profiles), then the dating (interviewing by the call committee), then the
engagement and arranged marriage (call committee’s recommendation of the lead
candidate and the congregational meeting and vote), finally the moving-in with
one another and the first weeks of sharing the same bed. For the
sake of the health of the marriage (Pr. Ben’s and Bethel’s ministry together),
it is important that we all do our part to make this marriage work.
What can you do? The
most important thing that you can do is, of course, that you pray for him and
his ministry with us. The next important thing, though, is that you
show up …. and I do not just mean that you attend church on Sunday
morning. I also mean that you show up with your unique gifts and
talents as we plan Bethel’s future ministry among the people of the Silicon Valley.
Welcoming a new pastor
gives each and everyone among us an opportunity to re-engage in the life of our
congregation. Maybe you feel more comfortable talking to a male
pastor? Maybe Pastor Ben’s preaching style is more to your liking
than mine? Whatever it may be – do come and start afresh, especially
in this season of Lent, the time of the year where we especially focus on
examining our relationships – with God, our neighbors, and our own selves.
In all these initial
activities surrounding Pastor Ben’s arrival among us, you may or may not have
noticed another wonderful change in leadership. After Pastor Ken
Bancroft’s retirement from his position as Bethel’s Visitation Pastor, LaVinnia
Pierson will be serving our community until mid-May as temporary “visitation
chaplain.” Her responsibilities include visiting with homebound and
sick members, bringing Holy Communion to them, working with Bethel’s Stephen
Ministers, and providing devotions for the monthly Evergreens meetings.
If you wish to contact
her, please either call the Bethel church office and leave a message for
LaVinnia or contact her via her cell phone or email (both are in the newly
updated church directory which will be available within the next few days).
I look forward to seeing
you this Sunday. As we are now done with partying between services,
our regular Adult Bible Study will resume this Sunday.
March 29 | All Glory, Laud, and Honor
This Sunday, the most
important week in the church year begins: Holy Week. Some 400 palm fronds
will be laid out and waiting for us to wave them. Our readings, songs,
and the palm fronds are designed to remind us that we, too, might have been
among the crowds who so quickly turned from ”hosanna’ to “crucify him!” – all
in the span of a week or so. We, too, might have welcomed Jesus
excitedly, trusting that he’d restore our nation to its previous grandeur and
power. Don’t we still want that sort of savior – one that can bring back
“Christian America” as it once was?
In our nation, the
presidential campaign season has begun – more than a little early, given that
the next presidential elections are still some 21 months away. With
the onset of those campaigns, we have heard the first politicians appeal to
Christian values as part of their political campaign platforms.
These political
appeals are not so different from demands 2,000 years ago that the Rabbi Jesus
be more of a zealot, one that would drive out the foreigners and restore the
Jewish nation. One who would restore the old-time way of
life. One who would slow down and alt the pace of rampant
change.
Do I need to say more?
Who are we to say that we would not have joined the cheering crowds and the
crowds who so quickly began to resent Jesus when he refused to live up to their
expectations.
We want easy answers
to complex issues, don’t we? In that, we are no different from the folks
at Jesus' time. Barabas was skilled at exploiting public
sentiments. That's why the crowd turned so quickly from
"hosanna" to "release Barabas" and to "crucify
him!"
This common criminal
and his supporters knew how to appeal to the to the longings of their
compatriots. Surely, many among us would have crowded the streets of Jerusalem,
calling on Pontius Pilate to release Barabas.
To help us join the
crowds, we will have a guest organist (Darryl Parker) at the 1st service,
and some emotionally stirring original compositions and sound-scapes by our own
Clayton Johnson during the 2nd service.
Please remember that
there won’t be any adult Bible study classes on Sunday mornings on Palm Sunday
and on Easter.
Blessings in Jesus’ name!
April
3 | Practice Resurrection
As we are about to gather in celebration of Christ’s
resurrection, I invite you to listen to the words of Clarence Jordan
(1912-1969), a 20th-century American Baptist saint. After earning a
Ph.D. in New Testament studies, Jordan founded Koinonia Farm (a
small interracial Christian farming community in Georgia) and chose the life of
a farmer and preacher, influencing many others through his writings and way of
life, most notable Millard Fuller, the founder of Habitat for Humanity.
Clarence Jordan once wrote that the
“proof that God raised
Jesus from the dead is not the empty tomb, but the full hearts of his
transformed disciples. The crowning evidence that he lives is not a vacant
grave, but a spirit-filled fellowship. Not a rolled-away stone, but a
carried-away church.”
What I hear Clarence Jordan say in this quote is that we should
worry less what people say they believe happened 2,000 years
ago and worry more whether we are living as if resurrection
still happens. If we truly believe that resurrection still happens today, then
we must partner with God in transforming despair into hope, apathy into
compassion, hate into love, and death into new life.
Another 20th-century American faith hero, the author and
environmental activist Wendell Berry ends his poem Manifesto:
The Mad Farmer Liberation Front with a passionate call to “practice
resurrection.” What would it mean, I wonder, not only to
“believe in the Resurrection,” but to “practice resurrection"?
Last Summer, at a preaching conference that I attended in
Minneapolis, I had the opportunity to listen to an astonishing young
philosopher and theologian from Northern Ireland by the name of Peter
Rollins.
I recently came across a video from 2009 in which Rollins, in
his typical fast-paced delivery, speaks to what it might looks like to practice
— or fail to practice — resurrection. Rollins begins with the intentionally
shocking assertion that,
“I fully and
completely admit that I deny the resurrection of Christ. This is something that
anyone who knows me could tell you, and I am not afraid to say it publicly, no
matter what some people may think.”
After a dramatic pause, Rollins continues,
“I deny the
resurrection of Christ every time I do not serve at the feet of the oppressed,
each day that I turn my back on the poor; I deny the resurrection of Christ
when I close my ears to the cries of the downtrodden and lend my support to an
unjust and corrupt system. However there are moments when I affirm that
resurrection, few and far between as they are. I affirm it when I stand up for
those who are forced to live on their knees, when I speak for those who have
had their tongues torn out, when I cry for those who have no more tears left to
shed.”
Jordan, Berry, and Rollins are all pointing out that it is less
important what we say we believe happened on a Sunday morning 2,000 years ago
and much more important whether we are partnering with God to practice
resurrection today. This Easter, these three modern prophets are challenging us
to ask, “How are — and how are we not – following Jesus’ example of caring for
the poor and of building the loving and grace-filled community?”
This Easter, may you open your whole self — heart, soul, mind,
and strength — to God’s call to new life and renewed love. May you experience
God urging and encouraging you — each day and in each new present moment — to
practice resurrection.
Wishing you a Happy Easter!
April 17 | David Brooks, Road to Character
On Tuesday morning, I
listened to an NPR interview with conservative columnist David
Brooks that I found interesting enough to purchase his most recent book on
Kindle, titled The Road to Character.
The book is about what
Brooks coins “eulogy virtues, “ as opposed to “résumé virtues.” Résumé
virtues are those qualities that we list on our résumés: skills that
we bring to the job market that contribute to our external success. Eulogy
virtues, on the other hand, are deeper. They’re the virtues that get talked
about at a person’s funeral, those qualities that exist at the core of our
being—whether we are kind, brave, honest or faithful; what kind of
relationships we formed, and so forth. Brooks continues, saying that “most of
us would say that the eulogy virtues are more important than the résumé
virtues,” then suggests that our education system focuses more
on cultivating résumé virtues than the eulogy virtues.
According to Brooks, we
live in a society that encourages us to think about how to have a great career
but leaves many of us inarticulate about how to cultivate the inner life. The
competition to succeed and win admiration is so fierce that it becomes
all-consuming. The consumer marketplace encourages us to live by a
utilitarian calculus, to satisfy our desires and lose sight of the moral stakes
involved in everyday decisions. The noise of fast and shallow
communications makes it harder to hear the quieter sounds that emanate from the
depths.
We live in a culture
that teaches us to promote and advertise ourselves and to master the skills
required for success, but that gives little encouragement to humility,
sympathy, and honest self-confrontation, which are necessary for building
character.
To give you a flavor of
Brooks own writing, l close with a longer quote from the introduction to
the book in which the author eloquently describes the kind of person he has in
mind when he speaks of “character.”
“Occasionally, even today, you come across
certain people who seem to possess an impressive inner
cohesion. They are not leading fragmented, scattershot lives. They have
achieved inner integration. They are calm, settled, and rooted. They are not
blown off course by storms. They don’t crumble in adversity. Their minds are
consistent and their hearts are dependable. Their virtues are not the blooming
virtues you see in smart college students; they are the ripening virtues you
see in people who have lived a little and have learned from joy and pain.
Sometimes you don’t even notice these people,
because while they seem kind and cheerful, they are also reserved. They possess
the self-effacing virtues of people who are inclined to be useful but don’t
need to prove anything to the world: humility, restraint, reticence,
temperance, respect, and soft self-discipline. They radiate a sort of moral
joy. They answer softly when challenged harshly. They are silent when unfairly
abused. They are dignified when others try to humiliate them, restrained when
others try to provoke them. But they get things done. They perform acts of
sacrificial service with the same modest everyday spirit they would
display if they were just getting the groceries. They are not thinking about what
impressive work they are doing. They are not thinking about themselves at all.
They just seem delighted by the flawed people around them. They just recognize
what needs doing and they do it.They make you feel funnier and smarter when you
speak with them. They move through different social classes not even aware, it
seems, that they are doing so. After you’ve known them for a while it occurs to
you that you’ve never heard them boast, you’ve never seen them self-righteous
or doggedly certain. They aren’t dropping little hints of their own
distinctiveness and accomplishments. They have not led lives of conflict-free
tranquility, but have struggled toward maturity. They have gone some way toward
solving life’s essential problem, which is that, as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn put
it, ‘the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between
classes, nor between political parties either— but right through every human
heart.’These are the people who have built a strong
inner character, who have achieved a certain depth. In these
people, at the end of this struggle, the climb to success has surrendered to
the struggle to deepen the soul. […] These are the people we are looking for. “
May 1 | How Does One Walk with God?
This Sunday, Bethel will be celebrating its 5th annual Fine Arts Fair. Note the subtle change from “Art” to “Fine Arts” which reflects the new addition of a musical program. Again the fair will include two art galleries (school in Torvend Hall, Church in the Fireside Room), a public display of art projects on our front lawn, and opportunities for prayer and reflection along a path around the campus. Visitors of the Art Fair have the opportunity to purchase baked goods in support of our youth program, enjoy a taco bar lunch, and listen to live music.
As Christians, we trust that we walk with God when we follow in Jesus’ footsteps in a manner that he has laid out for us. That walk includes awareness
- that we are God’s beloved creatures,
- that we have been created for a purpose,
- that God loves all His/Her children,
- that we don’t live in the manner that is pleasing in God’s eyes,
- that we are called to act justly and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God, and
- that we are Christ’s body on earth.
In light of this mouthful, what is “God Walk”? Worship? Prayer? Scripture study? Teaching?Service? Healing? Prophecy? Protest?
It is all of the above and more. The title of a book that my younger daughter’s class reads each day as part of their homeroom class says it all Love Does. Love, indeed, is more than a sentiment, love is action. Jesus has demonstrated that sort of active love in his life and death. Now it’s our turn to live lives of love in his name.
In addition to the art fair, we will also be lifting up in worship the 5 youth and their adult sponsors who recently went South to Tijuana to help build houses with Esperanza International. Their work is a helpful reminder to all of us that walking with God involves active stops along the way and it involves " Camina con Dios," walking with our neighbors, both near and far, so that they may have healthy, wholesome, and safe lives and homes.
Amen.
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