SCRIPTURE READINGS FOR
 
ASCENSION DAY, May 25
Psalm 93
Ephesians 1:15-23
Luke 24:44-52
 
Sunday, May 28
Psalm 68:1-10, 32-35
Acts 1:1-11
1 Peter 4:12 – chapter 5
John 17:1-11

I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ,
the Father of glory,
may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation
as you come to know Him....      
           –Ephesians 1:17
 
On those days when we feel dumb, slow-witted, unable to think our way out of a wet paper bag....  Like  one of my friends  from the AA group  said,
“I tried to think, but then I realized that my head ain’t nothin’ but a hat-rack.”
In the Letter to the Ephesians we have this prayer.
Instead of big brains and book-learning, because we have a personal relationship with God the All-Wise, God freely gives us a spirit of wisdom and revelation.  That sounds supernatural, doesn’t it ?  Maybe what we need is way beyond the worldly usefulness of an inside tip on how to lose ten pounds quickly and easily, or how to pass a math test, or which car to buy.
Instead, this prayer invites us to step outside of our usual material world-view and receive from God some spiritual gifts.
... so that,                           
with the eyes of your heart enlightened,
you may know what is the hope
to which He has called you,
what are the riches
of His glorious inheritance among the saints,
and what is the immeasurable greatness
of His power for us who believe....
          -  Ephesians 1:18-19
 
“Open the eyes of my heart, Lord...” goes the song.  “I want to see You.”  This prayer for us in the Letter to the Ephesians asks God to grant us vision to grasp what God holds for us: we will see how
1) we belong, alongside all of God’s people, past,
present, and future— “the saints.”
2) God’s power is for us, not against us
or irrelevant to us, but for us.
 
... according to the working of His great power.   God put this power to work in Christ
when He raised him from the dead....
          - Ephesians 1:19-20
Remember Easter ?  We said that “Christ is risen from the dead.”  Although we live in a time when there is a ton of fiction— books, comics, games, movies— about life beyond death, it is still the case that only God truly gives life.  God’s power is far beyond what mortal beings can do.  This prayer in the Letter to the Ephesians asks God to use the power by which He raised Jesus from the dead to give hope to you and me.
 
... and seated him at His right hand
in the heavenly places,
far above all rule
and authority and power and dominion,
and above every name that is named,
not only in this age
but also in the age to come.
And He has put all things under his feet....
          - Ephesians 1: 20 – 22
The Father raised Christ from the dead and also made him Lord over the whole universe. 

  



The Ascension of Christ
an ivory “relief” carving,
​made about A.D. 400
 

... and has made him the head over all things
for the church, which is his body,
the fullness of Him Who fills all in all.
          - Ephesians 1: 22 – 23
If we were not the body of the risen Christ, we would be a pitiful social club.  If we were not the living body of Christ, our ignorant darkness and weakness would be pure hell.  Instead, God sees potential in us to be overflowing with the power and light which lived in Jesus Christ. 
         Be the church !
​

Scriptures for Sunday, May 21, 2017:
Psalm 66:8 – 20
Acts 17:22 – 31
1 Peter 3: 13 – 22
John 14: 15 – 21

You are My witnesses, says the LORD,
     and My servant whom I have chosen,
     so that you may know and believe Me
     and understand that I AM He.
Before Me no god was formed,
     nor shall there be any after Me.
I, I AM the LORD,
     and besides Me there is no savior.
I declared and saved and proclaimed,
     when there was no strange god among you;
     and you are My witnesses, says the LORD.
                      - Isaiah 43: 10 – 12
Last evening in our Isaiah Bible study, we worked for awhile on these verses. 
Before I continue with the main point of my article, some of you might possibly be interested in some technical points about copying the Bible in English. 
First, you may notice that usually, when I re-print Bible verses, I capitalize all of the pronouns for God, as in this example:
                               “You are My witnesses....” 
I do this to remind the reader that we are dealing with the Most High God and not any other being.  I feel that this is especially important with gendered pronouns like “He” and “His,” because God is not a man.  God is God.  God is also not a woman.  However, I shy away from using “She” a lot when referring to God, for this reason:  there is a very long tradition of choosing masculine pronouns for God when one must choose, and choosing the feminine pronouns is more likely to send the reader down unhelpful bunny-trails of controversy about feminism in a moment when we ought to simply focus on what God is saying or doing.  So if you see “He” in the middle of a sentence, you might be reminded that it is God we are talking about and not some mortal man.  And if you see “god” in the middle of a sentence instead of “God,” it means that we are talking about some being that people worship which is NOT the God of Abraham and Moses and Jesus.  Not all versions of the Bible follow this practice, but I try to do it when I copy Scripture, to keep God’s singular identity in the front of my attention.

Second, you may notice how these three words are different from each other: “lord,” “Lord,” and “LORD.”  
When it is not capitalized at all, “lord” refers to someone’s master or ruler, such as a slave’s owner (from the slave’s point of view) or a nobleman (from a “commoner’s” perspective). 
If you see “Lord” in the middle of a sentence with only the first letter capitalized, and it doesn’t have a human being’s name right there with it, such as “Lord Mountbatten,” it refers to Jesus or God the Father.  In the Old Testament, this is how we translate the title for God as the Master or Ruler of all, the Hebrew word Adonai.  In the New Testament, this is how we translate the Greek word Kyrios.  In both Hebrew and Greek, translators have to study carefully to figure out whether the ancient writers were referring to God or to some other being— then they decide whether to capitalize “Lord.”  
Finally, “LORD” is how English language Bibles show the sacred Hebrew Name that Almighty God revealed to Moses from the burning bush (Exodus 3).  Moses asked, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is His name?’ what shall I say to them?”  God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM."  He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”  In Hebrew this sacred Name, which in this one very special text is given as “I AM WHO I AM,” is spelled  using  four Hebrew letters  similar to our Y-H-W-H.  Jews understand that this is the sacred Name which nobody should use except with deep reverence and worship.  And in our English Bibles we show this special, sacred name for God as “LORD.”  You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain.

Oh, yeah— there was a point that I was trying to get around to !  Here it is:                                              Only God is God. 
Many things may distract us, including the English language, or gender, or geeky people like me who get all excited about weird little details, but God calls us back to Godself, to become better witnesses to the world for God’s sake.
Always be ready to make your defense
     to anyone who demands from you
          an accounting for the hope that is in you;
               yet do it with gentleness and reverence.     
​                                              - 1 Peter 3:15-16

SCRIPTURE READINGS FOR SUNDAY
May 14, 2017
Acts 7:55-60
Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16
1 Peter 2:2-10
John 1:1-14
Our Scripture lessons this week all speak of martyrdom and death and what lies ahead for the believer who dies for Christ’s sake.
So let me write to you about church meetings and committee work.  (!)

Maybe you have attended a few church meetings in your time, and have found them to be tedious or full of meanness or completely pointless.  And maybe they were !  All of the above !
Stephen was one of the first “deacons” in the history of the Christian faith.  The “deacon” thing started when two groups of Christians began to be suspicious and quarrelsome against each other over the way the church’s food and money were being divided up for sharing:  one group said that their relatives were being neglected, while the other group said No, they’re not.  So “The Twelve,” the original group of Jesus’ disciples (minus Judas Iscariot, plus Matthias) issued a committee decision: they established another committee called “deacons,” whose job it would be to make sure that the food and money were divided up fairly among everybody who needed help.  Gee, doesn’t that sound like an inspiring task !  And soooo spiritual, too !  (Acts of the Apostles 6:1-6)
In our Bethel church, we have a Constitution and a set of By-laws which were developed here a few decades ago to try to help the church’s work proceed fairly and smoothly, to make it possible for the membership to accomplish what they believe to be the right tasks for Christ’s sake.  Every time we hold an official meeting, we try to follow the guidelines we find in our Constitution and By-laws.  Sometimes we forget or overlook some of those guidelines; other times we stay on course and do it by the book.  And Yes, sometimes tedium and meanness and pointlessness rear their ugly heads in meetings even while we are trying to do things by the book.  It could kill your spirit if you let it.
 
Stephen was one of those first Christians who was appointed to be a deacon.  If you try, you can imagine him sitting with a group of deacons counting money, sorting figs and loaves of bread, or interviewing needy people to figure out who should get what…  really inspiring, spiritual stuff.
Before you snicker too much, though, remember that Stephen was the first Christian to follow Jesus... to die for his faith.

You see, the devil had a different committee working in Jerusalem two thousand years ago.  Their project was to criticize and tear down and ruin anything that was done for Christ’s sake.  They told lies about the Christians in general and about Stephen in particular.  When they had a scheme all figured out, to get Stephen in trouble, they met as a mob and accused Stephen of trying to change their religious traditions.
Deacon Stephen was not helpless.  In addition to having the presence and support of numerous fellow Christians, Stephen also had his spiritual life united with Jesus Christ, and he was armed with plenty of biblical background to be able to understand where he stood in God’s great story of salvation.
Stephen was appointed by a committee to do committee work, but when the devil was ready to throw rocks at him, all who sat in the council looked intently at him, and they saw that his face was like the face of an angel.                                         (Acts 6:15)
Stephen was fully prepared to give an account of the hope he had in Jesus Christ:  Acts chapter 7 is the speech Stephen gave on that day, in which he explained to his accusers how God used the Hebrews’ difficult history of rebelling against God to lead up to the death and resurrection of Jesus.
And then Stephen, who had disciplined himself against the tedious, mean, and pointless realities of working for Christ in this wicked world, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.  “Look,” he said, “I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God !” (Acts 7:55-56)
​– while they were killing him.
 
May we all find such glory as we do Christ’s work.

Scriptures for Sunday, May 7, 2017
Psalm 23
Acts 2:42-47
1 Peter 2:19-25
John 10:1-10

​It is a credit to you if, being aware of God,
          you endure pain while suffering unjustly.
If you endure
     when you are beaten for doing wrong,
          what credit is that ?
But if you endure
       when you do right and suffer for it,
               you have God's approval.
For to this you have been called,
       because Christ also suffered for you,
              leaving you an example,
                     so that you should follow in his steps.
“He committed no sin,
       and no deceit was found in his mouth.”
                        [ a quote from Isaiah 53:9 ]
When he was abused, he did not return abuse;
       when he suffered, he did not threaten;
              but he entrusted himself
                     to the One who judges justly. 
He himself bore our sins
       in his body    on the cross,
                so that,
                       free from sins,
                             we might live for righteousness;
      by his wounds you have been healed.

The letter in the New Testament called 1 Peter is written to people who are suffering.  When I was meditating on the verses printed here (2:19-25), I felt that I should simply arrange them on the page to assist you to meditate on them, too.  Of course, many among us are suffering today in various ways... perhaps not the “fiery ordeal” of being “reviled” for being a follower of Christ described in 1 Peter 4:12-13, but suffering nonetheless. 
 
On Palm Sunday this year, news came that two churches of Coptic Christians in Egypt were bombed.  Copts are a very ancient denomination who make up about 10% of Egypt’s total population.  In recent years, the Copts have been targeted by the terrorist group that calls itself Islamic State.  This causes horrible suffering.
When I receive news like this, I try to take a step back and pray that the “Christians” are behaving in a Christ-like fashion and that they will continue to do so.  The history of the past 1600 years is all too full of incidents where so-called “Christians” were guilty of making war on innocents, treating their neighbors badly, and generally dragging the name of Christ Jesus through the mud. 
In Egypt, Coptic Christians and Muslims have been living relatively peacefully side-by-side since the time of Muhammad, back in the 600s.  It was the chaotic invasion of the Crusaders from Europe in the 1100s and afterward that created a terrible and long-lasting enmity between Muslims and Christians, largely because the European ‘Christians’ behaved with extreme savagery and greed toward the people whose land, homes, and daughters they were seizing.
There has to be a better way to live among tough surroundings.  In fact, there is a better way.
Mark Gornik is a White pastor who spent years helping to organize a Christian community in a very run-down, tough, mostly Black neighborhood in Baltimore.  In his book, To Live in Peace: Biblical Faith and the Changing Inner City, he offers us a model for Christian life much like the one described in 1 Peter: he says we should aim to be “a grassroots Christian congregation that, by its very distinctive kingdom focus, social practices, and witness, is a source of gospel joy, hope, and strength to its neighborhood..... a church that is good news incarnated on the streets, not limited to what goes on in the sanctuary.”
Or, as Pope Francis told Muslims and Christians when he visited Egypt last week, “I would like this visit to be a witness of my affection, comfort and encouragement for all the Christians of the Middle East, a message of friendship and respect for all the inhabitants of Egypt and the region, and a message of brotherhood and reconciliation with all the children of Abraham, particularly the Muslim world.”     
​What is our witness amid suffering ?