SCRIPTURES FOR SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 4
Isaiah 40:21-31
Psalm 147:1-11 + Hallelujah!
1 Corinthians 9:6-23
Mark 1:29-39

In the morning,
   while it was still very dark,
      [Jesus] got up
         and went out to a deserted place,
            and there he prayed. 
                                                        - Mark 1:35
Can you imagine going outdoors with Jesus in the wee hours of the morning, sensing the sky and the earth and the plants and the animals ?
Maybe you don’t need much imagination for this: maybe you’ve experienced it for yourself !?
Christ the Word of God was in the beginning with the Father and knows all of creation intimately as God.  And Christ the Word of God inspired the poets to set down psalms and prophecies from earliest human writing, testifying to the Creator’s relationship with creation.  Try to imagine the thoughts of the Son of God, under the pre-dawn sky.  What did he notice ?  What did he find remarkable ?   What made him smile, or frown, out there ?
So I envy Jesus’ disciples their access to him, out there in the darkness on the hills of the Galilee.  If I could wander out there with him (in person), first I would check with my scientist friends, to hone the questions I would ask him.  He understands all mysteries ! 
What would you— what do you ask him in the wee, small hours of the morning ?
 
Have you not known?
Have you not heard?
Has it not been told you from the beginning?
It is He who sits above the circle of the earth,
     and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers;
  Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain,
     and spreads them like a tent to live in....
 
“To whom then will you compare me,
          or who is My equal?” says the Holy One. 
Lift up your eyes on high and see:
     Who created these?”                    [the lights in the sky]
  He who brings out their host
           and numbers them,
                  calling them all by name;
     because He is great in strength,
                 mighty in power,
                           not one is missing.
                                 - Isaiah 40: 21 – 22, 25 – 26
 
Praise the LORD!
    How good it is to sing praises to our God;
          for He is gracious,
and a song of praise is fitting.
The LORD builds up Jerusalem;
          He gathers the outcasts of Israel.
He heals the brokenhearted,
          and binds up their wounds.
He determines the number of the stars;
          He gives to all of them their names.
Great is our LORD, and abundant in power;
          His understanding is beyond measure.
The LORD lifts up the downtrodden;
          He casts the wicked to the ground.
Sing to the LORD with thanksgiving;
          make melody to our God on the lyre.
He covers the heavens with clouds,
          prepares rain for the earth,
          makes grass grow on the hills.
He gives to the animals their food,
          and to the young ravens when they cry. 

​Barry Moser 
The Holy Bible: Viking Studio Edition, 1999

His delight is not in the strength of the horse,
          nor His pleasure in the legs of a man,
     but the LORD takes pleasure
in those who fear Him,
          in those who hope in His steadfast love.
                                               -Psalm 147: 1 – 11

Scriptures for Sunday, January 21, 2018
Jonah 3
Psalm 62:5-12
1 Corinthians 7:17-40
Mark 1:14-20

Now after John was arrested,
   Jesus came to Galilee,
      proclaiming the good news of God,
         and saying,                                                
“The time is fulfilled,
     and the kingdom of God has arrived;
         repent, and believe in the good news.”
                                -Mark 1:15
I am writing this on the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday. 
In addition to being a Christian preacher, Dr. King focused his energies on organizing people in the struggle for justice and righteousness.  Of course, he is most known for his quest for civil rights for Black and Brown people in the USA.  You may not be aware that he also worked hard for economic justice for poor people (of any color).  When he died, he was visiting Memphis to support the people who handled the city’s garbage, whose wages were too low to live on, and whose health care would not be covered even when they were injured while doing their dirty, dangerous jobs.  Dr. King went there to call that city to repent.
Whatever you may think of the state of relations between people of color and Whites in the USA today, you may be sure that Dr. King would find plenty of issues to work on, if he were in town now.  He would have turned 89 years old today.
Far more importantly, I hope you realize that Jesus finds plenty of issues to work on today, as he comes to us where we are.  Each of us as individuals has sin and neglect to repent from.  And our society and our nation and our world also have sin and neglect to repent from.  You understand that individuals sin and fail.  Consider the fact that groups of people also sin together by what we do and by what we refuse to do.
I did not go to Charlottesville to stand in solidarity with my Christian colleagues last Summer, when the White supremacists came to town.  I felt bad about not going, but I felt good that one of our churches of the Shenandoah Association, Sojourners United Church of Christ was on the scene to represent the kingdom of God in the face of sin and denial.
One Sojourners UCC member in particular has stepped up to lead Charlottesville’s faithful people in the struggle against hatred.  She is Brittany Caine-Conley, a 2014 graduate of Eastern Mennonite  Seminary   (of  which  I  am  also  an alumnus) and she’s about to be ordained as an authorized minister of the UCC, this coming Sunday, January 21st ! 

photo by Stephen Melkisethian

​Brittany has been called upon by faith leaders of many different churches and groups around Charlottesville, to organize their efforts in a new coalition called Congregate Charlottesville.  She has been among the leading spokespeople whom the media contact about the faith community’s response to these recent provocations and violence from hate groups.  She can be seen at the far right of the photo above, on the right in a white robe, and is the sixth from the left in the photo below. 
I am proud of Brittany and her mission.  Please pray for her and her colleagues and the faithful people of Charlottesville.

You might be curious- Why is a White pastor (me) of an almost entirely White congregation (Bethel) so interested in race relations ? 
I would simply point you to Jesus.  Jesus told us to love God first and then to love our neighbors as ourselves- specifically, to love our neighbors who seem “different” from us (see Luke 10 and Matthew 5 and 25, and we can discuss this further).

SCRIPTURES FOR SUNDAY, JANUARY 14
PSALM 139:1-18
1 SAMUEL 3
ACTS 19:1-7
1 CORINTHIANS 6:12-20
MARK 1:4-11
JOHN 1:43-51
​
As Christmastime passes, we enter the holy season known as Epiphany. ‘Epiphany’ means ‘showing forth’ or ‘manifesting’ or “demonstrating.”  The visit of the magi (wise men) to the child Jesus is first thing most people think of when the word “epiphany” is mentioned: the fact that wise men came from foreign lands to honor the infant Jesus was an outward sign that he was somebody very special.
Epiphany continues as we remember how God’s word came from heaven when Jesus was baptized:
Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee
and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 
And just as he was coming up out of the water,
he saw the heavens torn apart
and the Spirit descending like a dove on him.  
And a voice came from heaven,
“You are my Son, the Beloved;
with you I am well pleased.”                 
                                                 - Mark 1:9-11
This is further demonstration of who Jesus really is:  this is an epiphany.
 
But the word “epiphany” has a deeper meaning which runs through our entire lives: how does our way of being around other people “show forth” or “manifest” or “demonstrate” what is inside us?  Are we full of life and love, or something else? 
God has told you and me that we are His beloved children and heirs to His kingdom.  God wants to say to each of us, “Well done.  I am well pleased with you.” 
As many of you have expressed to me, it is clear that our church faces life-and-death choices these days.  We are the church today, and what Bethel will be in the future depends, in part, on how well we obey God’s will here. The younger generation, and our un-churched neighbors, may sense the warmth of God’s love here and be drawn to participate in it… or they may not sense it, and remain outside the circle.
 
Ronald Rolheiser, in his book, The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality, addresses the point where we either choose to express God’s love or to express something else.  Jesus came into the world as God-made-flesh, and by leaving his Holy Spirit with us, the church, he gave us the choice: to embody God’s love in our whole lives, or not. 
“The God who is love and family, who was born in a barn, is a God who is found, first of all, in our homes, in our families, at our tables, in sunrises, in our joys, and in our arguments.  To  be involved in the normal flow of life, giving and receiving, as flawed and painful as this might be at times within any relationship, is to have the life of God flow through us...
“Some years ago a Christian journal carried the lament of a woman who, with some bitterness, explained why she did not believe in God.  Never in her explanation did she mention dogma, morals, or church authority.  For her, the credibility of God and of Christ depended more on something else, the faces of Christians.  Her complaint went something like this:
Don’t come talk to me of God, come to my door with religious pamphlets, or ask me whether I’m saved.  Hell holds no threat more agonizing than the harsh reality of my own life.  I swear to you that the fires of hell seem more inviting than the bone-deep cold of my own life.  And don’t talk to me of church.  What does the church know of my despair— barricaded behind its stained-glass windows against the likes of me?  I once sought repentance and community within your walls, but I saw your God reflected in your faces as you turned away from the likes of me.  Forgiveness was never given me.  The healing love that I sought was carefully hoarded, reserved for your own kind.  So be gone from me and speak no more of God.  I’ve seen your God made manifest in you and he is a God without compassion.  So long as your God withholds the warmth of human touch from me, I shall remain an unbeliever.”
[emphasis added by me; adapted by Rolheiser (pages 100-101) from Marie Livingston Roy, in Alive Now, 1975]
 
Love has been part of our Bethel tradition.
And embodying God’s love is our only hope.
Can you imagine that, somehow, God can make Himself known through us to our hurting world?
Through us, His church?
Do you not know
   that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you,
      which you have from God,
         and that you are not your own ? 
For you were bought with a price;
   therefore glorify God in your body.  
                                 -1 Corinthians 6:19-20

SCRIPTURES for SUNDAY, JANUARY 7
EPIPHANY OBSERVED
Psalm 72:1-14
Isaiah 60:1-6
Ephesians 3:1-12
Matthew 2:1-12

Carols were originally used in northern Europe, including England, to tell news throughout the community.  In an age when few could read, carols also served to set Bible stories in a form that ordinary folks could memorize.  This Sunday we will wrap up the Christmas season in a classic carol:  ‘the First Noël’— also spelled, ‘Nowell’ :
The first Nowell the angel did say
Was to certain poor shepherds in fields as they lay;
In fields where they lay a-keeping their sheep
On a cold winter’s night that was so deep.
Nowell, Nowell, Nowell, Nowell !
Born is the King of Israel !
This first verse emphasizes that the angel of the Lord announced the birth of the Savior first to homeless agricultural workers rather than to fancy people living in comfort— a story told in Luke 2.  
But from this point onward, the carol turns to the story of the star and the magi (or ‘wise men’) who came to visit the baby Jesus— 

- the story we will hear in our gospel lesson this Sunday, Matthew 2:1-12. 

The old carols usually had many, many verses, but our songbooks rarely print more than five or six— even in cases where the poets and troubadours of old sang a dozen or more.  Our Worship and Service Hymnal prints a verse to ‘the First Noël’ which I had never encountered in other hymnbooks over the years:
Then let us all with one accord
Sing praises to our heav’nly Lord,
That hath made heav’n and earth of naught,
And with His blood mankind hath bought.
 
As a response to the Christmas story, this verse neatly ties together three themes which the secular world prefers to avoid in its observance of Christmastime:
 
1. Christians’ response to the Christmas miracle must be to praise God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit— because the baby Jesus is not just some cute baby, but our “heav’nly Lord” born in human flesh.

2. As John’s gospel (1:3) points out about Jesus
     Christ, who is the Word of God made flesh,
          “All things came into being through him,
                and without him not one thing came into being.”
When Christians reflect on the birth of Jesus, we recognize it as the moment when The Creator of the Universe came down to share our humanity.

3. The baby Jesus in the manger is the same person who went on to live— getting baptized, teaching, healing, serving, suffering— and then to die on the cross.  It is a sad fact, that many people who consider themselves Christians neglect to worship regularly with the Body of Christ,  neglect to study the Scriptures in the company of sisters and brothers in the faith,  and fail to do their part in the daily work of being Jesus Christ’s Body for the world.  Their Christianity is once or twice a year like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny,  not day in, day out, week in, week out like a disciple.  While we cannot earn resurrection from death, it is nevertheless true that we must die with Christ before we can be raised like Christ.

You might wonder why, around Christmastime, I sometimes ask the congregation to sing songs in Worship other than the ones we normally think of as “Christmas-y” ?   
This question challenges me to pose two questions in reply:
† Have you been listening to the words of the “Christmas-y” songs ?  Often, they raise all kinds of issues which go ‘way beyond the Christmas story.  Open up your hymnal to that section and pray! “Be near me, Lord Jesus, I ask thee to stay…”
† Have you noticed that just about any Christian song deals with the true message of Christmas:  that God entered into our humanity by being born to Mary long ago ?  Open up your hymnal to any song and look for Christmas in it !
A voice came from heaven,
             “You are my Son, the Beloved;
(Mark 1:11)               with you I am well pleased.”