Scriptures for this coming Sunday, January 31, 2016:
Psalm 71:1-7
Jeremiah 1:1-10
1 Corinthians 13
Luke 4:21-30

Most winters, we get one or a few of these— Sundays when we have to cancel services.  As long as it doesn’t happen too many times, you can look on the bright side of it:
† It can lead you to appreciate the times when we do get out to worship together
† It can be an opportunity to improvise a worship experience at home with whomever we’re “stuck with”
† It can remind us that we are Christ’s church when we meet together and also when we don’t get to meet together
† It can make us mindful of our neighbors, who either don’t usually get out to church anyway, or, like us, are missing the one they usually attend

Let us pray that the devil won’t get too much of a foothold with us, on account of our snowbound conditions. 
Please pray for your church leaders, that this winter we will make decisions that strike the right balance between safety and our need to worship and study together.
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Before all of this white stuff fell on us, I took in some “continuing education” at Eastern Mennonite Seminary last Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.  It was their annual School for Leadership Training (“SLT”).  This year’s program was called, “Oasis.” 
The brochure, which I had looked up when I signed up for SLT back in November, explained the theme this way:
“What will it take for YOU and your congregation to survive and thrive?
“Peace, reconciliation and genuine joy – where do you find them? In the desert of church and cultural divisions and contentious discussions we envision an oasis for pastors and other church leaders – a place of rest, renewal and hope.”
So I went into Monday evening’s keynote address with some vague notion that the leaders would give us “ministers” a few pointers on how to handle the stress and turmoil that often goes along with our calling.
But that evening,  and the two days that followed, turned out to be more about how all of us humans  need to look up from whatever desert or “in-between place” we’re in, and look for the next place of rest and refreshment that God has provided along the way.
With the title being “Oasis,” naturally we examined some of the Bible stories in which someone is in the desert:  Hagar and little Ishmael, in Genesis 21:9-21;  Moses and the Hebrews when they had left Egypt, in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy; and, of course, Jesus’ time in the desert, hungry and thirsty and tempted by the devil.  We noticed that God always provides— but that humans can be awfully stiff-necked about noticing and appreciating God’s provision, and we often fail to accept the good gifts that God offers.
Our leaders in the SLT had a lot of “oasis” blessings to share with us:  ways we can remind ourselves and our congregations of God’s abundant care for us.  Stay tuned— I’ll share soon.
The main presenters for this year’s SLT were Rev. Liz Myer Boulton and her husband Rev. Matt Myer Boulton.  They are members of a Christian Church – Disciples of Christ (a close sister denomination of the United Church of Christ) in Indiana.  Matt is president of a Christian Church seminary; Liz creates Christian media for TV and online.
Here you can check out some of Liz’s work, where she provides some “oasis” for everybody: 
http://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christianity-blog/
 
http://www.saltproject.org/christian-video-resources-for-small-groups/
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Looking out the window this morning, I pictured the yard as a snow-desert, and the feeder as an oasis for birdies: 



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​Read any Good Book lately ?
I bet your copy (or copies) of the Good Book don’t look like the one pictured here.  This one is a Hebrew-language scroll of the Torah— the Books of Moses, which we call Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy— hand-written for a Jewish community in Lithuania.
                                [  http://scrolls4all.org/scrolls/tanakh/   ]​
Our modern copies of the Bible are the type that scholars call a “codex”: a stack of flat pages with a binding on one side: our idea of a normal “book.”

In our gospel reading for this Sunday, Jesus is in the Nazareth synagogue, the building where Jews met for study, for fellowship, and, after the Jerusalem Temple was destroyed in A.D. 70, for worship.  Jesus stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him.  He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.”  And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down.          (Luke 4:16-20)

For the Jews gathered in that Nazareth synagogue, this was a familiar ceremony, but that day it had a surprise ending. 
When the attendant handed Jesus the scroll, Jesus demonstrated a couple of good Jewish reading skills. 
First, it takes training and practice to be able to roll a scroll to a particular spot and find precisely the passage you want to read:  they don’t come with chapters and verses marked !!  How many of us could look up something in a Bible without the chapters and verses being labeled ? 
Second, Jesus was able to read.  Nowadays, in the 21st Century, we hope that nearly everybody will be able  to read (although we haven’t fully achieved this).  But in ancient times, the ability to read and write was a rare skill— mostly something that professional “scribes” were trained to do.  The fact that Jesus and other Jews of that time might be more likely to be able to read than other peoples of the world, had a lot to do with the fact that the Jews were “people of the book”: their faith was handed down, in writing, from up to a thousand or more years earlier.  The Jews, more than almost any group before them, wanted their community members to “write God’s words on their hearts,” so they carefully hand-copied and shared Scripture scrolls and codex-type books for teaching purposes.

If you haven’t already, I hope you someday get to experience the way that a Jewish synagogue gathering performs the presentation of the Torah scroll.  Our local synagogue, Congregation Beth-El in Harrisonburg, has at least one community open-house Sabbath each year, when they invite everyone in the community to come and witness the way they worship.  When the time comes in the service to read from the Scriptures, some members of the congregation open up a special cabinet in the front of the meeting room and very reverently take out the scrolls, which are beautifully “dressed” in cloth wrappings.  There they go through a ritual of “undressing” the scrolls.  Then, one or more members carry the scrolls around the room, coming near every person in the congregation, to give them an opportunity to reach out and touch their Holy Scriptures.  It is considered a blessing….

But now for the part of Luke’s story that shocked the Jews in the Nazareth synagogue that day.  Ordinarily, a reader in the synagogue might preach a bit, or say something about the ancient words of a Scripture lesson.  But when Jesus read the words of the prophet Isaiah that day, he made the outrageous claim that Isaiah wrote the prophecy about him, Jesus. 
As the rest of the story in Luke’s gospel unfolds, those who heard Jesus that day could not believe that God’s Spirit was right there with them, “in the flesh.”  In fact, Jesus’ words enraged them.
Today, do you experience Jesus’ presence in the Good Book ?  Do you experience him in the Spirit ?  How about in the flesh, close enough to touch ?

… you shall be called by a new name
         that the mouth of the LORD will give.
                                         - Isaiah 62:2
My mom used to tell the following dirty joke:
An old Jewish man went to the judge and said, “I want to change my name.”
The judge looked at him and said, ‘You know, changing your name is a serious matter, not to be taken lightly.  You had better have a good reason, if you want to change your name.  What is your name, now ?”
“Isaac S _ _ _ .”
“Oy!” said the judge.  “Now I see why you want to change your name.  What do you want your new name to be ?”
“Abraham S _ _ _ .”
(Thanks, Mom !)
 
Our names are important to us, for better or for worse.  Have you ever changed your name ? 
Many of you ladies who at some point got married, followed the old custom and took your husband’s name.  In our society, we consider that normal.
 
When I was a little boy, my sister and brothers and some of the church ladies called me “Danny” – I hated that: I wanted to be known as “Dan.”  My Mother often called me Daniel (or by all three of my names, if she was mad at me !).  My Dad would look at me and fumble through all four of his boys’ names— “Jimmy-Everett-David-Danny” – before giving up and just saying whatever he had to say.
 
When we first moved to Frederick County, Virginia, I thought I would have a fresh start, and nobody would call me “Danny” – but no: it seemed as if none of our neighbors could bring themselves to call a youngster “Dan” – it had to be “Danny.”  Some of those folks still call me that, and I have learned to just grin and bear it.
At least at school, the teachers and the other kids called me what I wanted them to call me… except behind my back: I knew that I had various nicknames that I never chose for myself !
Each of us wants to be addressed with respect and kindness: it is a sign of respect for the humanity of each person we meet, to try our best to call them what they want to be called.
 
The prophet Isaiah was an old hand at the name game.  You might think of a prophet as someone who says words on God’s behalf… but the Lord ordered Isaiah to give at least two of his children weird names, so that their very names would be prophecies (Isaiah 7:3, 8:1-4).  The Lord also gave Isaiah the message about a child who would be born with a wonderful, hopeful name: Immanu-El (or Emmanuel), “God with us.”
In Isaiah 62, the prophet is telling his nation that God is going to end their period of suffering and exile, bring them back into their homeland, and take away the negative names which applied to them during their bad times.  Instead of “Forsaken,” God would call them, “My Delight Is in Her.” 
In the New Testament, Jesus displayed his divine power by changing “water” into “wine.”  He got a name for himself by performing that and many other “signs” which pointed out his true identity as the Son of God.  His neighbors tried to insult him by referring to him as “the carpenter’s son” or “the son of Mary”— these were not originally intended as compliments, although we now see the charm and ironic sweetness in him being regarded as “blue-collar” or a bastard.
If we decide to attach ourselves to Jesus as his followers, we may gain for ourselves a new name.  We may go from “lost-in-the-dark” to become a “child of the Light.”  We may change from being a “damned wretch” to a beloved “child of God.”  Perhaps best of all, we may give up being “amputated limbs” to join the Body of Christ.
It took me awhile to grasp the meaning, when I heard Marian Anderson sing the haunting African-American spiritual, “If He Change My Name.” 
I hope you will rejoice in the name he gives you.
 
I told Jesus it would be all right
          if he changed my name.
Jesus told me I would have to live holy
          if he changed my name.
Jesus told me I would have to live humble
          if he changed my name.
Jesus told me that the world would hate me
          if he changed my name.
But I told Jesus it would be all right
          if he changed my name.