May 20 Reflections

Sunday-May 20 Ps. 104 is a hymn on creation. God the sustainer is evoked well in vv.27-28 as an open handed, open-hearted god. It sees life as having breath or spirit, all life. Does faith inform your view of our environment?

Monday-After firmly holding the cups of our lives and lifting them up as signs of hope for others, we have to drink them. Drinking our cups means fully appropriating and interiorizing what each of us has acknowledged as our life, with all its unique sorrows and joys.How do we drink our cups? We drink them as we listen in silence to the truth of our lives, as we speak in trust with friends about ways we want to grow, and as we act in deeds of service. Drinking our cups is following freely and courageously God's call and staying faithfully on the path that is ours. Thus our life cups become the cups of salvation. When we have emptied them to the bottom, God will fill them with "water" for eternal life.Nowen Tuesday- Music helps us to overcome any division we experience between body and soul, because the purpose of music is to the heavenly and earthly, the invisible and visible closer together." -- Christine Valters Paintner, PhD wednesday-It is never the brothers right next to us, but the brothers in the abstract that are easy to love.Source: Escape Routes Thursday-"We are each called to have [an] inner discerning presence that knows what or who to let into the fold and what or who to keep out. We each have times when this boundary becomes weaker and we say yes to too many things, experiences, or meeting other people’s needs. We all have experienced trying to avoid the wisdom of our inner gatekeeper and let in commitments that steal our energy, that lead us to become strangers to our deepest passions, until one day we may realize we don't even recognize our lives anymore." -- Christine Valters Paintner, PhD Friday-Forgiveness is a door to peace and happiness. Forgiving is not ignoring wrongdoing, but overcoming the evil inside us and in our world with love. To forgive is not just a command of Christ but the key to reconciling all that is broken in our lives and relationships. We get rid of an enemy by getting rid of enmity.Source: Why Forgive? Saturday-Friends cannot replace God. They have limitations and weaknesses like we limitations they can be signposts on our journey towards the unlimited have. Their love is never faultless, never complete. But in their and unconditional love of God. Let's enjoy the friends whom God has sent on our way.Nouwen

Pentecost column

All over the country, churches will try to infuse a bit of Pentecost energy into services today. Many will wear red as a symbol of Pentecost fire; some may have different languages heard; some may launch balloons or have recorded tornado sound blast through speakers, and cupcakes may celebrate the “birthday of the church.”  We will sing some hymns of the spirit that will be opened again next year. It can be a dispiriting experience.

Other more charismatically-oriented churches will hear speaking in tongues and see and experience being slain the spirit in religious ecstasy. Envious of the energy in Pentecostal services, some churches attempt to infuse services with a non-stop flow of energetic activity and words for a spiritual high. The Spirit gives purpose and energy. Look what frames Pentecost in the book of Acts: the selection of a new apostle and the work of the church in worship and teaching. The spirit is the center of ordinary life in the church.

In baptism we claim the Gift of the Spirit of Isaiah 11, ones of inspired decision. Pentecost has the capacity to harvest the fruit of the Sprit (Gal. 5:22). The life envisioned by God has these virtues, these powers, th4ese elements of the good life.

Creation-One of our readings is part of Ps. 104 today. In all likelihood it reflects other creation prayers. For me it helps to provide a biblical approach to creation. It gives religious meaning to the environment. In its way it sees entropy as the standard unless god renews the face of the earth, unless the Sprit is there to animate creation. Teilhard de Chardin wrote: “the day will come when, after harnessing space, the winds, the tides and gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, we shall have discovered fire. “

Every week we pray for the illumination of the spirit when we read the Scripture. Otherwise, they are merely words on a page. The Spirit continues to reveal God’s work in the word as it unfolds in our history. The light of the Spirit allows us to perceive Christ in ourselves and others. In John 16 the spirit of truth is one of continuing processive revelation as we move into the scope and depth of God’s way in the world. That selfsame Spirit is our attorney, our advocate and counselor, our helper, the one who speaks for us when we are unable to defend ourselves. The Spirit helps us to see the dual nature of Jesus Christ.

New life-Another reading today is Ezekiel 37, the famous valley of the dry bones that is captured in the old song. He has a vision of a battlefield of bones, not even a cemetery. The dry bones become reanimated. The spirit gives life to them. In other words, only god can bring new life out of death. What we see as relic can be raw material in the breath of the spirit.

The God of new life hates dullness, the dreary sense of trying to get through life in a rut in a dismal gray sameness. Pentecost has a sense of a spring cleaning, of shaking out the obstacles to the fruit of the spirit/It exorcises the dull drab spirit of complacency and routine and makes room for the spirit “who seizes hold of us but cannot be seized…who gives but cannot be owned (Hans Kung).” The ancient prayer Come Holy Spirit asks the sprit to warm what is cold, to bend what is rigid, to water what is barren, to heal what is wounded, and to give direction when going astray.

May 6 Sermon Notes

May 6 Acts 10:44 Many churches struggle with  identity and boundaries. How do we decide who is ‘in’ and who is ‘out’? The PCUSA has paid a price for including gays more fully into our ordained ministry. It is also an opportunity to reach out to a group of folks who were and are thrust to the margins of social life. In an effort to keep out those with whom we disagree, or those who are different than we are. The question each church and denomination must answer is, will we have the courage, like Peter, to reject traditional distinctions made on the basis of religion or culture in favor of welcoming everyone into God’s family?, Barreto writes, "ethnicity is a projection of our own anxieties and hopes, an inclusive impulse to identify who we are but also an exclusive effort to distinguish between 'us' and 'them.'

I John 5:1,  love to the emphasis on belief, it is clear that love of God is inseparable from love of one's Christian sisters and brothers. Does it extend further as in the Good Samaritan story or the story of Acts? At the end of the previous chapter (4:20-21), the author argued that one could identify love for God by whether or not there was love for the brother or sister. One loves God's children by loving God and keeping God's commandments.  Love for God and love for God's children are integrally connected...one love cannot exist without the other.

John 15:9-friends the interaction of abiding-the vine can only be understood in light of its definition as an abiding in love, and the fruitfulness of this love, as described in John 15:16 only makes sense in light of the vine.natural image of life(and love)no longer slaves but friends, not on the basis of anything that they have done for him but on the basis of what he has done for them. He has made known to them everything that he has heard from the Father. In John, love (the belovedness of friendship, the depth of comrades, of a military unit/buddies,a team as in that championship Season)) “Don’t walk in front of me… I may not follow-Don’t walk behind me… I may not lead-Walk beside me… just be my friend” ― Albert Camus“Why did you do all this for me?' he asked. 'I don't deserve it. I've never done anything for you.' 'You have been my friend,' replied Charlotte. 'That in itself is a tremendous thing.” ― E.B. White, Charlotte's Web mutual knowledge, like love and commandment-keeping, go hand in hand.Perfect on a sunday when we are giving scholarship to students on the cusp of adulthood.

Jesus’ initiative is underscored in John 15:16. He does the choosing, against American creed of choice. We have been singled out as friends of Christ.. And for those of us who wish to abide in his love, this is surely good news, that we do not carve out a position as Jesus’ branch-friend and that our abundance does not depend on us; we might not even be able to imagine precisely what it will look like since we aren’t the ones doing the pruning and can only see our part of the vine. We merely choose to abide in the love that has drawn us in, and then we blossom.Stamper

The music you will hear this morning during the anthem  will not only be the carefully considered work of Greg and the choir but this particular piece has an interplay that gives us good insight into the image through the ear with its interlocking intertwining music and vocals.