Be Set Free

It’s now an all-too familiar scene: people walking down the sidewalks, sitting in their cars or even pews - bent over. Sitting at the dinner table, in Bible study, at work – bent over. Crippled by the hunger to be connected 24/7, the  need to be needed, and the desire for information, these modern day bent over people are in bondage to their smart phones, their iPads/Kindles, handheld video games. When was the last time you were set free from these technology devices – when were you set free to stand up straight and get a new perspective?

by Barrie Maguire

Read Jeremiah 1:4-10 & Luke 13:10-17.

A young boy and a bent over woman – not usually the people we would think of as chosen by God. Yet young Jeremiah was claimed by God to be his messenger, and Jesus called the bent over woman close to him that she might be set free. As seems to be the biblical case, God works outside of the rules, outside of the expectations of society to do God’s work.

Imagine spending 18 years bent over. Add to that, you’re a woman in a time where you really are treated like an animal, like a piece of property. Who talks to you? Who would marry you, much less give you children? Who takes care of you? Who runs into in the street like they never even saw you? Who gets frustrated because you’re moving too slow? Being bent over, the scenery rarely changes on those dusty roads. And yet one morning, bent over, you hobble to church to hear this guy Jesus say something profound.

No one really wants to be near you at church – you’re too different, too unclean. You can’t see what’s going on, but you’re guessing it’s something special – there’s an unusual hush. Suddenly your name is called out by this Jesus! And before you know it, you have been set free and are standing up straight, getting a new perspective, taking in hundreds of shocked faces – shocked by your healing, shocked by the work on the Sabbath, shocked by the humiliated look on the synagogue leader’s face. All you can do is start praising the Lord.

If we’re honest, we’re all a little bent – maybe physically over our computers, or emotionally crippled from a hard relationship. We could all use a perspective shift – to see people more as God sees them, to look out beyond our own two feet. Maybe one reason we come to church on Sunday mornings is to hear God speak to us. Maybe we need this compassionate God to set us free once more from the ailment of internet addiction or crippling fear and doubt. Maybe we need to witness one more time someone else’s healing. Maybe we need to hear that God values life over rules, that God doesn’t care about cultural expectations.

God is calling your name, calling you for a purpose beyond being bent over. So come, be set free that you might rejoice in the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, and get a new perspective.

Grace and peace,

Pastor Kate

Live Wet: Reaffirmation of Our Baptismal Vows

"Water water everywhere and not a drop to drink" (from Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner") could be a description of the church today.  We have plenty of water, but is it living water?  Will it nourish?  Why aren't more people knocking down our doors to quench their thirst?

Renewing our baptismal vows reminds us of the source of the only living water that can most effectively quench our thirst:  Jesus Christ.  Being sprinkled or dunked in baptism within the presence of the congregation marks each of us as a member of the one family united by our baptismal vows we make before God to love, care for, and nurture one another.  This sign of the cross which we receive on our foreheads with water is our invisible tattoo which marks us as belonging to God - as children of God.  This tattoo reminds us to remember who we are and whose we are.

In John 7: 37-38, Jesus calls to us, "Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and let the one who believes in me drink...Out of the believer's heart shall flow rivers of living water."  Jesus is the true water of life who turns this symbol of water into reality.  Baptism, as one of two Presbyterian sacraments, is the visible sign of God's invisible grace.

The Bible is full of stories of water and its power to drown and its power to revive.  Through these stories we are reminded of God's power of creation to bring order out of chaos and God's power to revive that which is dying or dead.

Baptism, at God's initiative, happens only once, yet it takes a lifetime to complete.  At our death, baptism is completed into eternal life.  So, how do we live into our baptism and our baptismal vows that we have received washing and cleansing, putting sin behind us?  It's a lifelong and daily journey to become more and more like Christ.  Our daily discipline can be to die to sin each day and rise to new life in Christ as we remember our baptism.  How can we use such daily practices to use water as a way to care for creation - all God's creatures and living things?  This can be our daily question upon awaking.

Let us renew our vows to let Christ's love flow through us like living water to bless others.  In this we will have our thirsts quenched.

Grace and Peace,
Pastor Shelley

God Holds a High Bar: Fear Not

Do not be afraid.  Fear not.  Cast away your fears.

Easier said than done, isn't it?  Is this naieve comfort spoken by the inexperienced or young?  Is it just whistling-in-the-dark comfort?  Or do these words spoken by God's prophets through the ages and by gospel writer Luke (Luke 12: 32-40) have any real and valid assurance for us?  We can easily spool off our fears.  As pastor I fear confrontation or preaching bad theology or saying the wrong thing at a critical time or having people leave the church when they get mad.  What do you fear?  Not enough money for all your medical expenses?  Serious injury to your child?  Losing your job to downsizing? Having your spouse leave you?  Being discovered in that white lie you told?

God's response to "Fear not" is:  "It is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom." (Luke 12: 32)  Is this more "too-good-to-be-true" news?  God's kingdom is our greatest treasure!  A clue to finding/seeing/claiming this greatest treasure is in verse 34:  "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."  If our hearts are with Jesus Christ, there we will find our treasure.  If our hearts are filled with a little or a lot of faith, there we will find our treasure.  God's kingdom is ours through our faith - a faith of grace that we cannot earn or deserve or achieve or create for ourselves.  It is God's good gift through God's good grace.

The rest of Luke 12: 32-40 challenges us to respond to this promise by being ready - being expectant - being alert.  Like a faithful Scout, we are to be prepared.  Being ready and alert doesn't mean waiting around, patiently doing nothing.  We ready ourselves for the good gift of God's kingdom by living each day as if God's kingdom is already here.  We prepare by giving away ourselves - our time, our talents, our material treasures, our gifts of kindness/humility/compassion.  We find fun in giving ourselves away just as God delights in giving to us.  Today's scripture ends with the master (translate: Jesus) fastening his belt (ie. pulling his long flowing robe up out of the way by tucking it into his belt), inviting his guests to sit and eat, and then SERVING them.  The unexpectedness of the master serving the guests is the topsy turvey nature of God's kingdom, which we discover as we serve others.  Thus, Jesus shows us the pattern for our discipleship in which we receive and respond to God's gift of the kingdom here on earth.

Grace and Peace,

Pastor Shelley

God Holds a High Bar: Be Rich Toward God

No matter how we repeat Jesus' story of the greedy farmer who wants to build a bigger barn to store all his grains from his abundant crops, we can see a scolding or moralistic sermon on stewardship coming from a mile away.  (Luke 12: 13-21)  And when we add Colossians 3: 1-11 in which Paul scolds us for our licentious, selfish behaviors, we turn off our hearing aids or daydream ourselves into la-la land.

Instead.....I hear encouragement and promise of transformation into new life in these scriptures.  I can identify with the farmer as I de-clutter my overstuffed house in preparation to move.  The initial estimate from the moving company was as loud as God's voice to the farmer to motivate me to begin to discern between the essentials and non essentials in the accumulation of my life.  My house (and therefore my daily living) has been filled with things that please me and make me happy.  But my blue pottery and my pewter collection need regular dusting and my yarn calls out to me when I should be studying.  My over abundance of possessions possess my attention and distract me from attending to God.  And when I allow my choices of going, doing, or playing to be the only forces to shape me and form me, I allow too little time to be shaped and formed by God's Word.

The encouragement and promise of these scriptures is that my things don't need to dominate nor define me.  I CAN de-clutter both my things and my time in an effort to discover the true wealth that comes from God.  I am finding freedom in my trips to Goodwill, Salvation Army, and the library.  I am already imagining the discoveries others will make as they select my goods for their uses.  I'm practicing discerning what I value as I see my things and my choices more clearly through the eyes of God.  I am being re-clothed into new life and there is plenty of abundance in this simplicity that allows more time for God to speak and me to listen.  God's bar of abundance is a high one that can be obstructed by our desire for too many things, too much entertainment, and too much time pleasing ourselves.  But as I clear the path toward God's high bar, I find that the bar becomes closer, clearer, and is calling to me.

Thanks be to God that God is faithfully steady in holding this bar as I tiptoe toward it.

Grace and Peace,
Pastor Shelley

God Holds a High Bar: Prayer as the Pinnacle

Jesus' disciples ask him, "Lord, teach us to pray as John taught his disciples."  Hooray for disciples who want to pray!  But...I'm not sure prayer is so much teachable, as it is something to be practiced, practiced, practiced with much patience and persistence.  Beside, weren't they paying attention to the Master Prayer who prayed in their midst?  What better example and role model could they have had?

But, Jesus wants to encourage his disciples so that they continue to deepen a more intimate relationship with God.  Jesus provides what we consider the first half of The Lord's Prayer that most congregations pray every Sunday.  We're faithful members of the Jesus club when we recite it, considering the authority it carries.  See Luke 11: 1-13.

If I were to encourage folk as pray-ers, I'd advise simple prayers:  Ann Lamott has hers down to "Thank you. Thank you.  Help me.  Help me."  I'd also advise against self serving prayers as the ONLY way to pray.  In Jesus' words, I see him challenging us to also ask for forgiveness, for guidance, and for deliverance.  Jesus also presses us to be urgent and persistent in praying. Ask.  Seek. Knock.

But is praying just about us - our actions - our faithfulness - our persistence?  Jesus teaches us more about God and God's persistent faithfulness in this scripture. An underlying assumption is that God is eager to provide for us and powerful and persistent enough to wait on us.  What if it's God's generosity that our Lord will give us so much more than we ask for? What if it's God knocking at OUR door?  What if praying is aligning ourselves with God so that we participate in God's kingdom here and now?

Now THIS is good news.

Grace and Peace,
Pastor Shelley