The forty day season between Ash Wednesday and Easter morning (minus the Sundays) known as Lent is something of an enigma for many Presbyterians. If you grew up Protestant before the late 1960s, Lent was likely not a part of your spiritual upbringing. In fact, many mid-century Protestants would have probably shunned the season (and other liturgical seasons like it) as being "too Catholic." It is true: the Protestant reformers of Europe did push back on many of the calendars, observances, and seasons that marked medieval Catholic worship in Europe and later brought to America, concerned as the new Protestants were about liturgical rites taking on a life of their own and overshadowing the preaching and teaching of the New Testament.
However, our English word "Lent" simply means "spring" and as a Christian observance, its roots are much older than the squabbles of the Reformation era. Lent originally developed as the final season of spiritual preparation for those new followers of Jesus being readied to be baptized on Easter Sunday. As these preparations usually called for self-examination and repentance, the six week period became known as a time of intense piety and sacrifice. Some of that spiritual DNA comes down to us in the form of "giving up something for Lent," but in the ancient baptismal preparations, the spirit of that sacrifice was less about "going without something I love" and more about "making more room in my life for prayer, worship, and service." The point of Lent was not to add to your spiritual suffering, but to take away from your daily burdens — for Jesus' sake.
That last point is instructive for us. Lent need not be a dark, serious time of feeling more guilt. Indeed, as a springtime season even the creation all around us welcomes more sun after cooler months. Rather, let Lent be some weeks during which we offload one or more of life's distracting comforts ... in order to make room in our daily lives for what the Protestant reformers would have called "deeper piety" — personal examination, silent prayer, spiritual reflection, preparation for public worship, acts of mercy among our neighbors, etc. If eating less chocolate or binging less Netflix or skipping Starbucks in the morning helps you welcome fresh piety ... great! But remember, the point is not so much additional suffering (especially first world suffering!) for suffering's sake, but rather additional prayerful consciousness for Jesus' sake. Less of one thing makes room for more of another. Lent need not be any more complicated than that.
So, no, Lent is not a native experience for many Presbyterians of certain generations. But since the late 1960s there has been among American Christians, Catholic and Protestant alike, a much greater awareness that we could probably stand to learn from one another the various ancient practices of discipleship, of following Jesus. I for one am grateful for Lent's arrival on our Presbyterian scene in recent decades. I appreciate its sharper focus, its simplicity, and its call to pay closer attention to how we are remembering our baptisms and following Jesus in our daily lives.
This month, we will follow the ministry of Jesus through the gospel of Luke, as the lectionary gospel readings serve up living examples of his lordship and love. I'm looking forward to making this Lenten journey with you for the first time.
February 28, 2019
January 30, 2019
Gifted Gifts
Presbyterians have a large gene labelled Modesty running around in our spiritual DNA.
Most of our parents taught most of us to 1. stay nice and quiet during the worship of God, and 2. never to brag. Makes sense. You can add to these parental prohibitions a strong emphasis in our Reformed tradition on glory always being given to God and not to humanity. Even faith itself is a gift, we say. Boasting is the cardinal Presbyterian sin.
Given all of this, the invitation to talk about ourselves in the context of faith and church likely leaves many of us feeling a bit uneasy. Even more, the language of "spiritual gifts" might sound to some like it better belongs in one of those other Christian churches, perhaps one on a cable access channel. Bottom line: Is the naming aloud of our spiritual gifts — be they communal or individual — a form of bragging? Is it, inevitabily: "I have the spiritual gift of wisdom ... Look at me!"
The New Testament is chockablock full of language about the gifts Christ gives to his church, in every generation and in every place. Ephesians 4 is my favorite example, where the apostle lists a sacred chain of invisible gifts that are given by the Spirit for building up the visible church. The logic of Paul's gift-talk seems to run like this: God gives good gifts to those God calls to faith, gifts for blessing the whole of the faithful, all so that the faithful can become the kind of persons whose lives and love bring glory back to God amid a watching and wanting world.
It is this logic that hedges against bragging. Our gifts come from God, not us. No one can claim original ownership. And when gifts bear fruit in the church and in the world, the taste of said fruit will develop an appetite in others for the divine, not for us. Glory (emphasis, reputation, legacy, credit) goes back to God, not to us. In short, spiritual gifts are gifts to be given away. There is no room in that chain of logic for self-referential bragging. But given the mandate to use them for blessing, there is also no need to keep the whole matter under wraps. Indeed, there is a real sense in which we need each other to help each other discern what our own gifts might be. That calls for conversation, and prayer, and encouragement.
There is freedom in the grace of gifts, freedom to ask of our lives and of a congregation's culture: What particular invisible gifts has God entrusted to me and to my visible community? All disciples and all communions share Jesus in common, as well as his faith, hope, and love. But beyond those sacred universals, what are the particular marks of God's gifting grace in our history? Asking these questions, sharing in this discovery, and celebrating our findings — this activity is not bragging; this is stewardship. To whom much is given (by God), much is expected (by God). Staying clear about what has been given TO us helps us stay alert to those moments when grace invites us to give AWAY the spiritual blessings Christ has deposited in our communion.
What gifts of a spiritual nature has the Holy Spirit invested in your life?
Most of our parents taught most of us to 1. stay nice and quiet during the worship of God, and 2. never to brag. Makes sense. You can add to these parental prohibitions a strong emphasis in our Reformed tradition on glory always being given to God and not to humanity. Even faith itself is a gift, we say. Boasting is the cardinal Presbyterian sin.
Given all of this, the invitation to talk about ourselves in the context of faith and church likely leaves many of us feeling a bit uneasy. Even more, the language of "spiritual gifts" might sound to some like it better belongs in one of those other Christian churches, perhaps one on a cable access channel. Bottom line: Is the naming aloud of our spiritual gifts — be they communal or individual — a form of bragging? Is it, inevitabily: "I have the spiritual gift of wisdom ... Look at me!"
The New Testament is chockablock full of language about the gifts Christ gives to his church, in every generation and in every place. Ephesians 4 is my favorite example, where the apostle lists a sacred chain of invisible gifts that are given by the Spirit for building up the visible church. The logic of Paul's gift-talk seems to run like this: God gives good gifts to those God calls to faith, gifts for blessing the whole of the faithful, all so that the faithful can become the kind of persons whose lives and love bring glory back to God amid a watching and wanting world.
It is this logic that hedges against bragging. Our gifts come from God, not us. No one can claim original ownership. And when gifts bear fruit in the church and in the world, the taste of said fruit will develop an appetite in others for the divine, not for us. Glory (emphasis, reputation, legacy, credit) goes back to God, not to us. In short, spiritual gifts are gifts to be given away. There is no room in that chain of logic for self-referential bragging. But given the mandate to use them for blessing, there is also no need to keep the whole matter under wraps. Indeed, there is a real sense in which we need each other to help each other discern what our own gifts might be. That calls for conversation, and prayer, and encouragement.
There is freedom in the grace of gifts, freedom to ask of our lives and of a congregation's culture: What particular invisible gifts has God entrusted to me and to my visible community? All disciples and all communions share Jesus in common, as well as his faith, hope, and love. But beyond those sacred universals, what are the particular marks of God's gifting grace in our history? Asking these questions, sharing in this discovery, and celebrating our findings — this activity is not bragging; this is stewardship. To whom much is given (by God), much is expected (by God). Staying clear about what has been given TO us helps us stay alert to those moments when grace invites us to give AWAY the spiritual blessings Christ has deposited in our communion.
What gifts of a spiritual nature has the Holy Spirit invested in your life?
January 17, 2019
Lagniappe Lord
"We picked up one excellent word, a word worth traveling to New Orleans to get; a nice limber, expressive, handy word: 'lagniappe.' They pronounce it lanny-yap. It is Spanish, so they said. We discovered it at the head of a column of odds and ends in the Picayune, the first day; heard twenty people use it the second; inquired what it meant the third; adopted it and got facility in swinging it the fourth. It has a restricted meaning, but I think the people spread it out a little when they choose. It is the equivalent of the thirteenth roll in a "baker's dozen." It is something thrown in, gratis, for good measure."
Mark Twain wrote those words in 1883 in his travelogue Life on the Mississippi. In my lifetime, my late father, John Hawkins, used Twain's favorite new word frequently in his everyday banter. "Lagniappe." Makes you feel like you know some fun French, even if you don't. "Just a little something extra," my dad used to say, with a wink. "Just because." And the kids in line at the church picnic, waiting for his homemade ice cream, were ever so grateful for his generosity.
Sunday's gospel reading is a lagniappe moment in Jesus' ministry, a story with a wink built in. John arranges his rich gospel collection in such a way that Jesus' first remembered miracle is an entirely unnecessary one: transforming a large batch of everyday water into a vivifying wedding wine. John 2:1-11. No blindness is cured; no leprosy healed. No lame legs are given new traction; no dark demons dethroned. Just some wine. Just because. At a wedding party in a side-road town called Cana, our Lord simply does a heaven-shaped favor for an everyday family throwing a party, lubricating the evening with wine when the supplies run out. It is a lagniappe miracle, a sign pointing to heaven — gratis, for good measure. Furthermore, it turns out the Son of God likes a good party as much as most of us (secretly) do. Who knew?
What does it suggest about the nature of God the Father that Jesus the Son performs a lagniappe miracle as a sign of heaven's shape? How does a beverage give a fresh taste-test of God's true heart? What does it mean to be a wine-flavored church in this sour-water kind of public season? Where have you noticed the Holy Spirit turning ordinary moments into kingdom encounters in your life? What must we run out of, and then have transformed, before we will trust afresh that we serve a generous God, our lagniappe Lord?
December 1, 2018
Peaceful Intruders
Suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and singing, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!” (Luke 2)
Who knows the last time you brushed passed an attendant of the Almighty.
According to the long-winded preacher in Hebrews (13:2) in your New Testament, it could have happened on Tuesday, on the way out of the Post Office. Then again, that may have just been your local interloper. Whoever it was, Hebrews says: "Be nice. Could be an angel on the loose."
Tis the season for intruding divine agents, like when Christmastime Joe is awoken in the middle of the night to the news of a paternal custody hearing (Matthew 1). He gets a nocturnal visitor. No, not the Lunesta butterfly; middle-aged Joseph gets a dream. And an angel. And a word from the Lord. “Wake up, fella. Time to be a daddy.”
Adolescent Mary gets a visit, too (Luke 1). That encounter always makes me chuckle: “… sent by God, to a town called Nazareth.” Really? Backwater Nazareth? I can see evanescent Gabriel trying to type N-A-Z- into his loaner GPS. It blurts back, in a soothing British tongue, “Unknown destination.” Indeed. Who knew the Divine Word would be carried through gestation in a commoner’s womb? She’s a nobody, this girl -- at least by the world's expectations. The mandate from heaven: “Go surprise her, Gabe. I am doing a new thing.”
They’ve got a quite a list of clients on their website, these meddlesome messengers: Cast off Hagar, down by the water (Gen 16). Old man Abraham, with his PG-13 knife in the air (Gen 22). Used-car-dealer Jacob, in a fuzzy stupor (Gen 31). And of course, who can forget the canon’s best-known ass: ridden by Balaam, who is greeted by an angel from the side of the road (Numbers 22). They all add the same comment on Facebook’s official Angel page: “Watch out, people. You just never know what a day will bring. They come out of nowhere! OMG.”
They appear. They hover. They greet. They intrude. They show up by streams, in byways, or in the cursed middle of the night. They even have an auxiliary unit that sings and dances and puts on quite a Sunday show (Isaiah 6). (But who cares for that contemporary music, anyway? I prefer the standard old hymns, thank you.)
My favorite of all the angelic interruptions? This one: “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!” Even a third-shift trick of no-name shepherds gets an impromptu flash-mob in the sky, on the dodgy outskirts of Bethlehem. The choral anthem they sing turns out to be no less than the news that the glory that already floods God’s space (heaven) will now be spilling over into our space (earth) in the form of a lasting shalom, i.e. a goodness and grace that will not fade even after the holiday rush is over. And its (his) name is Jesus. So sings the Newsboys, a band from Austrailia:
Angels. Everywhere. Speaking. Surprising. Summoning. I like that God is into a great deal of subcontracting when it comes to handing out messages. That’s good for the economy, in these uncertain times. And it means some group of them might just show up on your back stoop.
So watch your step on the 24th night of this Advent month, when, home from the Candlelight Service, just after dark, bedecked in last year’s Christmas-gifted bathrobe, just before heading to bed, you wheel out the trash can from under the back porch, and strewn across the crisp night middle-Georgia-sky over your neighbor’s yard, high above his crumbling tool shed and the wife’s composting garden, there is in the lower atmosphere a merry band of supernal beings, warming up with pitch pipes for the big revelatory number, carolling a new song from heaven, complete with a personalized summons to send you packing in a whole new direction in what remains of your gifted life, and all in the name of Jesus.
When and if this happens, don’t say I didn’t warn you (Luke 2). And maybe you already have your own tale to tell of peaceful intruders.
Either way, be at peace. God still speaks.
O Christ, our Living Lord, made known to us in the humor of scripture’s stories and in the holiness of the incarnation, we welcome your word of peace and likewise pray for more of it around the world in our own day and time. We are honored to bear your name, and grateful once again to celebrate your remarkable advent among us as a lowly child. Send your angels to your church once again, that we might sing and sign your news. Amen.
Who knows the last time you brushed passed an attendant of the Almighty.
According to the long-winded preacher in Hebrews (13:2) in your New Testament, it could have happened on Tuesday, on the way out of the Post Office. Then again, that may have just been your local interloper. Whoever it was, Hebrews says: "Be nice. Could be an angel on the loose."
Tis the season for intruding divine agents, like when Christmastime Joe is awoken in the middle of the night to the news of a paternal custody hearing (Matthew 1). He gets a nocturnal visitor. No, not the Lunesta butterfly; middle-aged Joseph gets a dream. And an angel. And a word from the Lord. “Wake up, fella. Time to be a daddy.”
Adolescent Mary gets a visit, too (Luke 1). That encounter always makes me chuckle: “… sent by God, to a town called Nazareth.” Really? Backwater Nazareth? I can see evanescent Gabriel trying to type N-A-Z- into his loaner GPS. It blurts back, in a soothing British tongue, “Unknown destination.” Indeed. Who knew the Divine Word would be carried through gestation in a commoner’s womb? She’s a nobody, this girl -- at least by the world's expectations. The mandate from heaven: “Go surprise her, Gabe. I am doing a new thing.”
They’ve got a quite a list of clients on their website, these meddlesome messengers: Cast off Hagar, down by the water (Gen 16). Old man Abraham, with his PG-13 knife in the air (Gen 22). Used-car-dealer Jacob, in a fuzzy stupor (Gen 31). And of course, who can forget the canon’s best-known ass: ridden by Balaam, who is greeted by an angel from the side of the road (Numbers 22). They all add the same comment on Facebook’s official Angel page: “Watch out, people. You just never know what a day will bring. They come out of nowhere! OMG.”
They appear. They hover. They greet. They intrude. They show up by streams, in byways, or in the cursed middle of the night. They even have an auxiliary unit that sings and dances and puts on quite a Sunday show (Isaiah 6). (But who cares for that contemporary music, anyway? I prefer the standard old hymns, thank you.)
My favorite of all the angelic interruptions? This one: “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!” Even a third-shift trick of no-name shepherds gets an impromptu flash-mob in the sky, on the dodgy outskirts of Bethlehem. The choral anthem they sing turns out to be no less than the news that the glory that already floods God’s space (heaven) will now be spilling over into our space (earth) in the form of a lasting shalom, i.e. a goodness and grace that will not fade even after the holiday rush is over. And its (his) name is Jesus. So sings the Newsboys, a band from Austrailia:
Entertaining angels
By the light of my t.v. screen
24-7 you wait for me
Entertaining angels
While the night becomes history
Host of heaven, sing over me
Angels. Everywhere. Speaking. Surprising. Summoning. I like that God is into a great deal of subcontracting when it comes to handing out messages. That’s good for the economy, in these uncertain times. And it means some group of them might just show up on your back stoop.
So watch your step on the 24th night of this Advent month, when, home from the Candlelight Service, just after dark, bedecked in last year’s Christmas-gifted bathrobe, just before heading to bed, you wheel out the trash can from under the back porch, and strewn across the crisp night middle-Georgia-sky over your neighbor’s yard, high above his crumbling tool shed and the wife’s composting garden, there is in the lower atmosphere a merry band of supernal beings, warming up with pitch pipes for the big revelatory number, carolling a new song from heaven, complete with a personalized summons to send you packing in a whole new direction in what remains of your gifted life, and all in the name of Jesus.
When and if this happens, don’t say I didn’t warn you (Luke 2). And maybe you already have your own tale to tell of peaceful intruders.
Either way, be at peace. God still speaks.
O Christ, our Living Lord, made known to us in the humor of scripture’s stories and in the holiness of the incarnation, we welcome your word of peace and likewise pray for more of it around the world in our own day and time. We are honored to bear your name, and grateful once again to celebrate your remarkable advent among us as a lowly child. Send your angels to your church once again, that we might sing and sign your news. Amen.
November 16, 2018
Rear View
Like many of your vehicles, I'm sure, my newly procured (orange!) Jeep has one of those backup cameras that allows you to see immediately behind you when you are in reverse. Hindsight, literally.
Hindsight is an important spiritual vantage point. To look back over one's experience, to make note and to take stock, to pay attention to matters that were difficult to see (much less understand) in the moment of living: these are the disciplines and privileges of rearward viewing. I have a colleague who always reminds groups of pastors: It is not experience that teaches us; it is only by reflection on our experience that we learn. The subtext of his wisdom is the truth that it is quite possible — for many, quite normal — to live life without ever reflecting on our purpose, our meaning, our reason for being alive.
Some would say, often quite proudly: "Don't ever look back! Keep moving forward." There is some truth to that mantra. We can easily become ensnarled in our regrets, trapped by the power of unchangeable events, or held captive by our nostalgia. We ought not live in the past, true, but neither can the past be avoided if we are to welcome a better future. Looking back with open and honest eyes equips up to move forward. The great Presbyterian missionary Harold Kurtz used to say, "Don't be afraid to make mistakes in living your life for Jesus. Just make new ones."
For followers of Jesus, hindsight is the fertile soil of testimony. When we look back and reflect, paying attention to our lives, we are put in a position to imagine more clearly what the living God has been up to in our lives and in the life of the world. A wise person once said to me, "Providence is mostly a doctrine of hindsight." We are usually better able to discern what God is up to when we pay attention to the backup camera of our lives. Perhaps the best predictor of God's better future for us are the currents of blessing, healing, and illumination in our past. It is why we look back so often to Jesus' morning resurrection. The early church seems to be saying on most of the pages of our New Testaments: "God pulled off this amazing feat on that original Sunday morning. So pay attention. God is likely getting ready to do the same in your life."
What is your hindsight testimony these days? Where have seen God at work in your life? What story are you telling about where Providence has taken you thus far? Are you afriad to turn on the backup camera in your life? Or can you imagine where God might be leading you next, based on where God has led you in the past?
Hindsight is an important spiritual vantage point. To look back over one's experience, to make note and to take stock, to pay attention to matters that were difficult to see (much less understand) in the moment of living: these are the disciplines and privileges of rearward viewing. I have a colleague who always reminds groups of pastors: It is not experience that teaches us; it is only by reflection on our experience that we learn. The subtext of his wisdom is the truth that it is quite possible — for many, quite normal — to live life without ever reflecting on our purpose, our meaning, our reason for being alive.
Some would say, often quite proudly: "Don't ever look back! Keep moving forward." There is some truth to that mantra. We can easily become ensnarled in our regrets, trapped by the power of unchangeable events, or held captive by our nostalgia. We ought not live in the past, true, but neither can the past be avoided if we are to welcome a better future. Looking back with open and honest eyes equips up to move forward. The great Presbyterian missionary Harold Kurtz used to say, "Don't be afraid to make mistakes in living your life for Jesus. Just make new ones."
For followers of Jesus, hindsight is the fertile soil of testimony. When we look back and reflect, paying attention to our lives, we are put in a position to imagine more clearly what the living God has been up to in our lives and in the life of the world. A wise person once said to me, "Providence is mostly a doctrine of hindsight." We are usually better able to discern what God is up to when we pay attention to the backup camera of our lives. Perhaps the best predictor of God's better future for us are the currents of blessing, healing, and illumination in our past. It is why we look back so often to Jesus' morning resurrection. The early church seems to be saying on most of the pages of our New Testaments: "God pulled off this amazing feat on that original Sunday morning. So pay attention. God is likely getting ready to do the same in your life."
What is your hindsight testimony these days? Where have seen God at work in your life? What story are you telling about where Providence has taken you thus far? Are you afriad to turn on the backup camera in your life? Or can you imagine where God might be leading you next, based on where God has led you in the past?
November 8, 2018
Vital Veterans
Four years ago this month, during a two week ecclesiastical visit in Africa, I departed and locked my hotel room one evening, only to discover that my traveling companion's room next door was being secretly searched by what I could only assume was an official from the country's hardline Islamic national government.
We two pastors were there visiting Presbyterian schools that for years had been supported by congregations in our presbytery. Our visit was largely unscathed, and the room tossing was relatively innocuous in the scheme of pressures, but our visit proved to be another reminder to us of what remarkable religious liberties we followers of Jesus in America often take for granted. "Listen," I once said to a Presbyterian congregation at the start of our worship. "Hear that?" Silence. "No one is coming to stop us." Many of the planet's Christians cannot take the sound of that silence as a given.
Whatever the many shortcomings of our American-style democracy, a Christ-follower from the United States only needs a brief taste of another, more repressive political context in order to appreciate what it means to come and go in this gospel unhindered and unsuppressed. And to the extent those religious liberties have been preserved and protected by those who have served in our nation's military forces over the years, I believe as Chrsitian disciples we owe American veterans our deep gratitude. Freedom to be free in Christ, and freely to share his light and love — it is not free.
Given that this year Veterans Day officially falls on a Sunday, as an act of Christian discipleship — if not also as an act of American citizenship — let us give thanks to God in prayer for those who have served to keep religious freedoms free. At the top of my list is my own father, who served in the Army during the Korean conflict; along with him, countless other veterans I have known and loved in the congregations I have served. Heartfelt thanks to those in our Northminster ranks who have served.
Who's on your hallowed list? For what aspect of religious liberty are you most grateful? What will you do for the Good News this week with the freedom we enjoy?
We two pastors were there visiting Presbyterian schools that for years had been supported by congregations in our presbytery. Our visit was largely unscathed, and the room tossing was relatively innocuous in the scheme of pressures, but our visit proved to be another reminder to us of what remarkable religious liberties we followers of Jesus in America often take for granted. "Listen," I once said to a Presbyterian congregation at the start of our worship. "Hear that?" Silence. "No one is coming to stop us." Many of the planet's Christians cannot take the sound of that silence as a given.
Whatever the many shortcomings of our American-style democracy, a Christ-follower from the United States only needs a brief taste of another, more repressive political context in order to appreciate what it means to come and go in this gospel unhindered and unsuppressed. And to the extent those religious liberties have been preserved and protected by those who have served in our nation's military forces over the years, I believe as Chrsitian disciples we owe American veterans our deep gratitude. Freedom to be free in Christ, and freely to share his light and love — it is not free.
Given that this year Veterans Day officially falls on a Sunday, as an act of Christian discipleship — if not also as an act of American citizenship — let us give thanks to God in prayer for those who have served to keep religious freedoms free. At the top of my list is my own father, who served in the Army during the Korean conflict; along with him, countless other veterans I have known and loved in the congregations I have served. Heartfelt thanks to those in our Northminster ranks who have served.
Who's on your hallowed list? For what aspect of religious liberty are you most grateful? What will you do for the Good News this week with the freedom we enjoy?
November 2, 2018
Dedicated Saints
In conversations leading up to Flippy Denton's recent funeral, someone was sharing with me some sweet and funny stories from Flippy's life. When the gentle laughter trailed off, and there was a holy moment, this person looked at me with tender eyes and said, "Flippy was a fine Christian woman." I could not imagine a better period that could placed at the end of a life's sentence. Thus followed more stories; these, tales of kindness, hospitality, and forgiveness — marks of a dedicated disciple of a dedicated Savior.
This Sunday we do double duty in worship.
First, we celebrate our Protestant version of All Saints Day. It is our time together to remember those who in the last year have left our earthy fellowship and now wait in the safe care of the risen Jesus until the resurrection; the "church triumphant," the ancient Christians called them. It is a day to give thanks for the witness of Flippy, Tom Goodwin, and all those many others who, despite their own shortcomings, have shown us what faithfulness looks like.
Second, it is Dedication Sunday: the culmination of three weeks of Stewardship emphasis. We will gather our Time and Talent cards, together with our financial pledges, and we will dedicate ourselves afresh to the ministry of Jesus in and around us. We've deliberately kept this season simple this year, looking ahead as we are to a fresh new season of being church.
In truth, the two duties go naturally together. How do we best learn the art and grace of the stewardship of God's gifts in our lives? Mostly by watching others do it well. From whom have you learned the shape of giving? Who has taught you the generous way of Jesus Christ? For that matter, who is watching you, learning the moves of discipleship from the gait of your walk?
Let us gather this Sunday, to remember God's saints and to dedicate ourselves to the same.
This Sunday we do double duty in worship.
First, we celebrate our Protestant version of All Saints Day. It is our time together to remember those who in the last year have left our earthy fellowship and now wait in the safe care of the risen Jesus until the resurrection; the "church triumphant," the ancient Christians called them. It is a day to give thanks for the witness of Flippy, Tom Goodwin, and all those many others who, despite their own shortcomings, have shown us what faithfulness looks like.
Second, it is Dedication Sunday: the culmination of three weeks of Stewardship emphasis. We will gather our Time and Talent cards, together with our financial pledges, and we will dedicate ourselves afresh to the ministry of Jesus in and around us. We've deliberately kept this season simple this year, looking ahead as we are to a fresh new season of being church.
In truth, the two duties go naturally together. How do we best learn the art and grace of the stewardship of God's gifts in our lives? Mostly by watching others do it well. From whom have you learned the shape of giving? Who has taught you the generous way of Jesus Christ? For that matter, who is watching you, learning the moves of discipleship from the gait of your walk?
Let us gather this Sunday, to remember God's saints and to dedicate ourselves to the same.
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