One of my regular “go-to” exegetical blogs offered an intriguing wondering question this week on the Matthew 3:1-12 text. “I wonder who baptized John.”
It’s easy sometimes to sit where we sit and venerate the inspiration of God in the life of John and other prophets. God had a special connection with these folks, right? They aren’t like us. God was guiding them and they were going where God led. Only they were creating new understandings of where God was leading, not just for themselves, but where God was leading the faithful community through them. They were both being discipled themselves and discipling others.
We have a tendency in life to stick with what we already know, rather than slowing down enough to listen and observe how we might be led to new understandings. As John baptizes others, and eventually Jesus, in waters of repentance, he has an understanding that something even more transformative than what he is doing will come to pass. He is imagining that future that God is bringing into being. But he is doing so while also living into the new thing he is doing himself. John was working out a new ritual, inspired by God, but still needing discernment and time to understand what this new thing meant. You have to wonder how God may have been at work in others who John encountered along his own journey to this understanding.
If we remember that prophets are among the great cloud of witnesses, both as disciples who followed and as those who discipled others, then what might that mean for each of us? We’re the earthen vessels of God’s goodness, capable of being connected just as John was. What should that mean about how open you are to the inspiration of God?
Seeing in the Dark
Isaiah 2:5, the prophetic oracle as we journey into Advent, prompts us to walk in the light of the Lord together. But for us to walk in this light, the light needs its natural opposite of darkness to accompany it. Not to be in opposition to the light, as we so often assume and attach those sorts of connotations to it, but because the light and the darkness are complementary parts of a larger whole. Think for a moment about what we hear in Genesis, darkness, and light, water, and land are separated from each other but remain as linked pairs that offer different aspects of a larger whole. And John begins his Gospel drawing from this sense of the beginning of all things,
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him, not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” (John 1:1-5)
God is present in the darkness and the light for all of the time, God creates out of this darkness. Our lives depend on a cycle of light and darkness. We need our times of resting and being re-created in the darkness of sleep and our times of rising in the light to do the daily work of living. The light of God allows us to see and to trust in this creative darkness to inspire and refill us for our days. How do you need to trust more in what might be discovered in the richness and inspiration of God’s darkness?
Once You Start Looking
This last Sunday in the Church year is known as Christ the King Sunday and in each of the 3 years of the lectionary cycle we encounter different readings that highlight the uniquenesses of Jesus’ kingship. In this year of the cycle we read Luke 23:33-43, the passage at the cruxifixction of Jesus when one criminal recognizes Jesus’ innocence and asks to be remembered. This criminal carries an awareness of his own brokenness into this moment and through his own awareness, his own ability to see who is truly before him, recognizes the unique sort of king that Jesus is.
Sometimes our ability to see, to really bring awareness and compassion to our encounters, requires us to start looking for something first in order for us to see it when we encounter it. We hear about grandeur, power, and strength in much of scripture and so we often look for the presence of God in more powerful forms of those characteristics. But what if, as we see in this text, the God we are looking for in traditionally kingly ways shows up in a grandeur that is more focused on the beauty of rich and authentic relationship and presence. What if the power that God shows is a power that seeks to share and empower others instead of to wield authority over others. What if the strength that God demonstrates is the strength to stand alongside of others in the midst of brokenness instead of strength that lifts us beyond the troubles of daily living. What if we need to be reminded to look for this sort of kingship that Jesus shows us on the cross and to live it out with each other as we begin another year in Christ?
Stewards of Shalom
This week we encounter Isaiah 65:17-25, where the prophet brings the word of the Lord, “For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; …be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating.” This scripture and many others like it remind us of the ways that God is always making new. And we need these reminders that God is always engaged in this creative endeavor, this work of making new again and again, because we all know how hard it is to embrace newness and change. Yet our God is a God of new things, of constant creation, and invites us to be fully invested, even rejoicing, in the possibilities of participating in this. We are invited to be stewards, the caretakers, of God’s creative force lived out in the world. Maybe that feels overwhelming. I think we often feel that we are “only” small parts of God’s larger story, that God’s activity is more directed toward us. But what if we begin to think of the ways that God’s story comes into being through us? That God’s kingdom newness is birthed through our ability to be stewards carrying God’s shalom – God’s peace, love, and just action – in every encounter we might have.
in peace,
Pastor Christy
I Am With You
What does it mean for us to hear throughout scripture that God is with us? For Moravians, this is part of what our celebration of the Chief Eldership of Christ is about. Christ is the Chief Elder who sits among us in every Board or committee meeting, in every classroom, in every small group that gathers. Christ sits at all the tables and gatherings of life with us. This is the uniquely Moravian perspective on the immanence of God, the promise God that is present to us in the world.How should this knowledge that Christ sits among us in our conversations shape more clearly, or even transform, our ways of being with and for one another? How should it be impacting everything we undertake together?This week we’ll be dropping in for the oracle of God that Haggai delivers in Haggai 1:15b-2:9, where we hear about the work of rebuilding the Temple out of its ruins. Haggai offers the word of the Lord to the people, “Take courage,” he says, “for I am with you.”
Unburdened or Yikes!
Jesus is trying to share a set of core values with his disciples, these are like the building blocks for the ways Jesus is teaching us and his disciples to live out the law of love. How can this list of blessings and woes be the core values for a rule of life? How can they be building blocks for discipleship? Well maybe we need to hear them and hold them with fresh ears to the language that Jesus uses.
We generally hear the word “makarios” from the Greek translated as “blessed” or “happy”, but “unburdened” or “satisfied” are equally accurate translations. The word “ouai” from the Greek is usually translated here as “woe”, but it truly does not mean “cursed” or “unhappy”. A better sense of “ouai” might be expressed as “yikes” or “watch out”, it is a declaration intended as an attention getter or a way to emotionally impact our tendencies and direction. And we have to remember, in the perspective Luke offers us on Jesus, the reign of God is among you right now and it is available for you to participate in by the setting of your heart and mind and the actions of your mouth, hands, and feet.
If that’s the case, we are asked to reassess our lives, our actions and internal perspectives on the world that guide our actions, in light of these core values.
- Unburdened are those who are poor because you are already relying on God’s kingdom.
- Unburdened are you who hunger, because your need will be satisfied.
- Unburdened are you who weep, because you will be surrounded by support until you can laugh again.
- Unburdened are you when people hate, reject, insult, or condemn you because of acting in Christ’s ways.
- Joy will come to you from God in different ways through this law of love.
- But, yikes, watch out if you are rich, because you are surrounded by your comfort already.
- Yikes, watch out, you who have plenty now, because you will be hungry.
- Yikes, watch out, you who laugh now, because your mourning and weeping will come.
- Yikes, watch out, when people speak well of you for that’s what was done in the past with false prophets.
How are we being asked to actively reassess our lives? By looking at our lives alongside these core values. How do we live in relationship with God in ways that leave us unburdened? By creating these realities. How do we live in relationship with God in ways that don’t lead us to say, “Yikes, watch out!”? By catching ourselves when we are feeling a bit too satiated and comfortable.
The last segment of this passage backs up this more nuanced reading with its list of straightforward commands: love your enemies; do good to all, but especially those who meet you with hatred; bless those who curse you, pray for those who offer mistreatment; treat people in the same way that you want to be treated.
If these core values, the building blocks, are the recipes for living that help us to be present to God, then to come in ways that allow us to unburden ourselves with God and not need, yikes, reminders that we are straying too far away from God’s hope for us, then they can offer the structure we need. But the structure without something to help it hold together, becomes frail and fragile, easily torn apart and knocked over. For the bricks to hold together, some mortar is needed to bind us. And it is the cloud of witnesses that has the power to do this binding together through the years, through all the variations that life has presented us with. These core values, these beatitudes, only work when we are in deep, meaningful, and trusting relationships with each other. We can only come to God and be unburdened when we have each other to share the weights that we encounter in life. We can only be in solid relationship with God and one another, when we aren’t, yikes, watch out, too comfortable in our self-reliance and separateness.
How does adding the mortar, the relationships that bind us together in the cloud of witnesses, change what we can build?
From Pastor Christy
The boxes have been moved in and I’ve begun to have a few initial conversations to help me orient myself to your congregation’s patterns and traditions. I look forward to meeting many more of you very soon, with my first Sunday coming up on October 20. I understand that a single service has been planned for that morning in the Sanctuary at 10:00 a.m. with a lunch to follow in the Fellowship Hall. As I prepare to join you, I thought a little information about what to expect as I arrive might be helpful.
For my work with congregations who are in transitional times, I prefer the term Transitional Pastor to Intentional Interim Pastor. Yes, I am coming to help you take an intentional look at aspects of your life together and help you listen for where God is calling you now and into your future. I am also coming to help you capture the wonderful and ripe opportunities that a time of transition presents congregational families. I come as a shepherd for this time of journey and so “Transitional Pastor” better fits that role of looking for the treasures waiting to be discovered or finding aspects of your life together that may feel as though they have been lost along the way.
To help me get started in our transitional journey together, one of the first things I want to do is spend some time in one on one conversations with as many of you as possible, these can be individual meetings or meetings with a couple or family grouping. I have worked with Jen to create a calendar of times when I am available for these conversations and I invite you to schedule a time during the day or evening that best suits you within that calendar. When you schedule a time, please also indicate if you’d like to meet with me in the church office, at your home, or over lunch, coffee, or dinner within the times I am offering. Please call or email Jen in the church office to schedule.
I will be setting out some open office hours soon and this is a time when I welcome drop in visits with me at the church. I will also likely set a drop by “office” hours time in one of the local spaces away from the church, so that you can catch me in a more informal setting if you’d like. (I’m open to suggestions of nice spots where I can set out my laptop, work, and have members easily join me for a conversation…)
In the grace and peace of Christ,
Pastor Christy
