Scripture Readings for Trinity Sunday, May 27
Psalm 29
Isaiah 6:1 – 8
Romans 8:12-17
John 3: 1 – 17

“Here am I; send me!”             
                                                   -Isaiah 6:8
Once upon a time, “Memorial Day” was Decoration Day, a national holiday when children and their elders would visit and decorate the graves of those who had died in (or because of) the wars.  The War Between the States gave rise to the nation-wide desire to do this.  Although hundreds of thousands of war dead were buried on or near the battlefields where they died, the newly-built railroad network made it possible to ship soldiers’ bodies to their hometowns as never before.  Many towns and cities established National Cemeteries at that time.
Horror at the enormity and gruesome power of “modern” warfare’s toll prompted communities and their churches, schools, and other organizations to strive to keep the memory alive, both of the dead and of the causes for which they fought.  Veterans remembering their fallen comrades were always prominent on Decoration Day, to share first-hand accounts of the sacrifices made by those killed and by the living.
We are living in a different kind of war-time, now.  Although the United States is currently engaged in fighting in at least two countries (Afghanistan and Syria), most Americans pay no attention to the news of the combat, and hardly any attention to the men and women who are doing the fighting and dying.  Unlike most previous wars of the United States, we now have an all-volunteer military— no draft— and military personnel make up a much smaller proportion of our population now.  Nonetheless, our nation is responsible for sending many hundreds of soldiers, sailors, and flyers to kill and die on our behalf.  In my opinion, when they come home dead or injured, we as a nation ought to take full responsibility for healing the living, burying the dead, and honoring both.
This Memorial Day weekend, once again, our Bethel will meet to worship in Elk Run Cemetery in Elkton.  The place is full of military folks— quite a few of them well known among us.  
The following set of prayers comes from A Book of Worship for Free Churches, which was prepared under the direction of The General Council of Congregational Christians Churches in the United
States, published in 1948.  In those days, our Bethel was among the Congregational Christian Churches.  These prayers are part of “An Order of Worship for Memorial Day, or the preceding Sunday.”  
You will be invited to add your “Amen” to these prayers.

CALL TO RECOLLECTION
In the hands of God our Father rest the souls of all who have lived and died for the cause of liberty and righteousness.  Grateful for their sacrifice and confident of their eternal life in Him, let us bow in silence to remember the fullness of their devotion.

[silent remembrance]

Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, in Whose hands are the living and the dead; we give Thee thanks for all who have laid down their lives in the service of our country.  Grant to them Thy mercy and the light of Thy presence, that the good work which Thou hast begun in them may be perfected; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.
Grateful in heart Thy people turn to Thee, O God of all mankind.  By Thy strength our fathers made us free.  For Thy law and the love of country they gave their lives.  Through martyrdom we are come unto peace, and the high histories of the brave are our inheritance.  O God, give us wisdom and strength to save our land from greed and corruption; from pride and presumption; from tyrants and misrule.  Deliver us from war and the menace of war.  Give to our leaders wisdom and to our people patience, that together we may achieve a better life, a purer life, a more abundant opportunity for all.  Grant unto our land to be numbered among the peacemakers and become a hope to the oppressed.  Give her the desire to promote honor and brotherhood throughout the earth, that in liberty and self-restraint, in charity and gentleness, she may ever be worthy of her origin and of Thy favor.  Amen.
O Thou in Whose hand are the hearts of Thy creatures; shed abroad Thy peace upon the world.  By the might of Thy Holy Spirit quench the pride, quell the anger, and cast out the greed which cause man to strive against man, and people against people.  Lead all nations in the ways of mutual help and good will, and hasten the time when the earth shall confess Thee indeed for its Savior and King, and no evil deeds of man shall defile Thy glorious creation, through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Scripture Readings for Pentecost Sunday,
                                               May 20, 2018
Psalm 104:24-34, 35b
Acts 2:1-21
Romans 8:22-27
John 15:26 – 16:15

“O my people.  I will put my Spirit within you,
        and you shall live,
        and I will place you on your own soil;
        then you shall know that I, the LORD, have spoken and will act,
        says the LORD.”        
                                              - Ezekiel 37:13-14
 
I feel it’s part of my calling as a Christian pastor, to respond to today’s events in Jerusalem and along the border of the Gaza territory.  As most of you are aware, today, May 14, 2018, the United States government opened its official Embassy to the State of Israel within the city of Jerusalem.  This opens a new and morally very dangerous chapter in relations between the US and the diverse people who live in that long-troubled part of the world.

Some of you may remember the day in 1948 when the Jewish State of Israel was declared.  In the aftermath of the horrible European Holocaust, when Nazis and other fascists had murdered and enslaved many millions of Jews and other minorities they despised, the nations of the world gradually came to recognize the modern State of Israel as a safe homeland for the world’s Jews. 
It would be wrong for us today to forget that the modern State of Israel was achieved by terrorism.  Jews pursuing the dream of “Zion” attacked the British forces who were charged by the United Nations with maintaining peace in the Holy Land on behalf of all its inhabitants.  Those “Zionists” bombed and otherwise murdered British and other international civilians for the sake of their cause.  Also, the “Zionists” began evicting hundreds of thousands of native residents from their homes, many of whom had inherited those homes from generations going back 1,800 or more years.

Then, in 1967, as the power of the Israeli military grew, military forces of the neighboring nation of Jordan launched attacks to try to stop the Israeli conquest of Arab lands.  The Israelis defeated those Arabs and captured the entire city of Jerusalem.  Jerusalem has long been held holy not only by Jews, but by Christians for more than 1,900 years and by Muslims for more than 1400 years.  Since 1967, the Israelis have tightened their hold on Jerusalem, unjustly forcing out native residents,  denying  the heritage  of its  many non- Jewish natives.  Sadly, the State of Israel stooped from being a refuge for oppressed people to instead oppressing its neighbors.

As we Christians read our Bibles, we try to somehow hold together the Old Testament stories and theology of conquering the Promised Land for God’s sake, on the one hand, with gentle Jesus telling his followers to leave lands and homes for the sake of our heavenly calling, on the other hand.  I would lean heavily toward Jesus’ way.
You are probably aware of TV preachers and prominent Christians who call for defeating and driving out or exterminating anyone standing in the way of the State of Israel.  I cannot square that with following the teachings of Jesus. 
Also, you have probably heard about “holy sites” in Jerusalem, which some Christians feel we must protect at all costs.  The truth of almost all of these “holy sites,” churches and the like, is two-fold: first, they have been protected, for well over a thousand years, mostly under Muslim rule; and second, these sites have little or nothing to do with the actual earthly life of Jesus— they were built hundreds of years after his time there.  They have absolutely nothing to do with the spiritual teachings of Jesus Christ, who said about Jerusalem,
“Do you see these great buildings?  
Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”
                                                  - Mark 13:2

Wajahat Ali, an attorney and writer, a Pakistani-American Muslim from California, says about Jerusalem, “you go to the most contested real estate on Earth, the most holy real estate for three Abrahamic religions, and you expect to find God in Jerusalem.  Of course, God is there, but the reason why I said that is I don't feel the presence of God.  I see people like at a Halloween party, wearing the costume and the masks.  But instead of seeing the spirituality and the lessons of Abraham, I see people who have completely missed the mark.  And I feel that land and bricks and mortar are not worth the blood of a single person, whether they be Jewish, Christian or Muslim.  And so I feel like God has a dark joke that He played upon His believers.  He goes, ‘You guys are going to be invested in this region, but this is really a lemon. There are more important things at play.’”
https://www.npr.org/2018/05/12/610632123/being-a-muslim-among-jewish-settlers

       Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.
                                                -Psalm 122:6

Scripture Readings for
the ASCENSION OF OUR LORD
THURSDAY, MAY 10
Acts 1
Psalms 47 & 93
Ephesians 1:15-23
Luke 24:44-53
 
SUNDAY MAY 13
Psalm 1
Acts 1
1 John 5:9-13
John 17:6-19

[Jesus prayed, ]
“Holy Father,
     protect them in Your name
          that You have given me,
              so that they may be one,
                      as We are One.”        
                                                  -John 17:11
In my mind, this week is the path through the woods to the teddy-bears’ picnic.  If you haven’t been paying attention, the teddy-bears’ picnic is planned for this coming Saturday at Bethel, from Noon until 3 PM. 
I know— you’re probably thinking something like, “Ho-hum... another silly little activity to while away somebody else’s Saturday...”
Not so, friends!  While I don’t want to saddle this one event with the weight of the hopes and dreams of generations... this may be one of those serious forks in the path, either toward decline and decay or toward renewed vitality and long-term rebuilding for our little Bethel congregation.
When Jesus prayed “that they may all be one,” I believe he had the foresight to know what we are facing today, with individuals and groups each going their own way.  I believe that Jesus fully understood our all-too-human tendency to splinter and fragment and separate, which we see here in our postmodern society.  And I believe our situation is why he prayed as he did for our unity.
Back to the path toward the teddy-bears’ picnic:  if you ever wondered, “Where are the young folks, and why don’t they come to church like we used to do?,” then here is a moment in the life of our church when you and I can do something about it.  We can get our antique teddy-bears out of the closet, invite our relatives and neighbors, and make it a priority to get together at church. 
It could have been a smash-up derby or a fishing event at the river or skiing on the mountain... but this time, it’s a teddy-bears’ picnic— at our church.  Please, let’s drop our solitary activities and our worldly priorities and come together for a good time in one another’s company, for God’s sake.  Sure, teddy-bears are lovable, but the real point is to reach across generations and other differences and dwell together in the love of God. 
Of all the types of churches where people ought to value choosing to come together, here we are part of the UNITED Church of Christ.  You need to know that our church came from people who chose each other, who made great efforts to remove barriers so we could be ONE church.  The United Church of Christ motto states our goal, for all of Jesus’ followers and ourselves: THAT THEY MAY ALL BE ONE.           And if not now, when ??

Speaking of the United Church of Christ, our Interim Conference Minister, Rev. Roddy Dunkerson, sent out this message to the churches of our Conference this past Friday, May 4, 2018.
 
Dear Friends,
Today is a Board Meeting Day for the Central Atlantic Conference UCC.
At the heart of our Protestant tradition is the notion that the members of a congregation control the life of the congregation.  Once upon a time, this was a very new structure.  Ownership was once seen as individual and never collective.  So, a bishop owned all the churches in a diocese.  The whole corporate structure that now describes how the world does business is based on our forebears developing the concept of parishioners owning the church.
I suspect my history may be oversimplified, but, it is a truth that when we solve one problem we free imaginations to create things that were once unimaginable.  ...
Change can be threatening and intimidating.  It can also be liberating and empowering.
Keep the Board in your prayers today and tomorrow.  We will need to review the past and consider missteps we have taken.  That is important work.  But its importance is in helping us let go of the past, learn from it, but not be owned by it.  We have the audacity to declare the vision we received from Paul, that in Christ we are a new creation.
While we always give thanks for the gifts we receive from our past, let us dare to let go of the guilt and anger and disappointment.  Let us instead reach for the wonder of the new to which God constantly calls us.  One of the joys of having been in ministry for a long time is to experience young believers imagining a future that I could not dream of seeing.  We are building an unimagined church.  Let us count on you taking your place in making dreams reality.                      Roddy

Scripture Readings for Sunday May 6 
Psalm 98
Acts 10:44-48
1 John 5:1-6
John 15:9-17

For the love of God is this,
      that we obey His commandments.
                                                   -1 John 5:3
We probably think first of the Ten Commandments.  (Do you have them memorized?)  Many of you will remember the gospel stories in which someone brings up the question, What is the greatest Commandment, and the answer was a summary of the Old Testament commandments.  If your memory is a bit fuzzy about how the story goes, you are in good company: the story is told differently in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
If you read the story in Mark 12 or Matthew 22, a religious lawyer asks Jesus a question, and Jesus immediately replies with his answer, quoting from the Jewish Law books of Deuteronomy and Leviticus: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’  This is the greatest and first commandment.  And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” 
If instead you read the story as it is told in Luke 10, there Jesus turns the question back to the man who asked it, demanding, “What is written in the Law?  How do you read [it]?” (Luke 10:26).  According to Luke, the religious lawyer answers Jesus with the same Scriptures Jesus quoted in Matthew and Mark’s accounts, and Jesus simply tells him, “You have answered right: do this and you will live.”
The commandment mentions one’s “neighbor.” According to Luke, when that religious lawyer felt embarrassed by Jesus’ way of putting the question back on him, he turned around and tried again to put Jesus on the spot.  He wanted to test Jesus, not to be tested, himself!  That’s when he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
So Jesus told him the story we call “the Good Samaritan.”
You remember that in Jesus’ famous parable of the Good Samaritan, the good guy turns out to be a foreigner, of a different religion!  In fact, for Jews in those days who believed in worshiping God at Jerusalem, a “Samaritan” was exactly the type of person one would avoid at all costs. 
If Jesus were telling the story in our day, instead of a Samaritan,  he might say...   an Afghan Taliban fighter — ? ... a Black Lives Matter activist from California – ?  Anyhow, the point is, the person we are commanded to “love as we love ourselves” turns out to be somebody we might prefer not to think about at all, much less “love.” 
In the end, the lawyer who kept trying to challenge Jesus about God’s commandments had to go away in shame, hard-headed and hard-hearted.
​
Here, today, in this community around Bethel, there are people who are kind-hearted and others who are hard-hearted toward our neighbors.  Ask any handicapped or shut-in or poor person about their daily life— how they’re really doing— and you will learn how folks dish out to them both great love and great neglect; both extraordinary kindness and remarkable cruelty.  When we read Jesus’ words for those he will judge (in Matthew 25:31-46), I suggest that we think carefully:  Where IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD are the people Jesus was calling “the least of these brothers and sisters of mine” ?  Because they are here.

    [ original drawing by Miss Annie Vallotton, from the Good News Bible ]

More unselfish, godly love— the King James Bible uses the word, ‘charity’— is always needed within the church as well.  We sometimes find that folks who are very familiar to each other can also be very unkind to each other.
Our gospel lesson this week deals with both love and commandments: Jesus commands his followers to “love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12). This is the ultimate neighborhood improvement project: for us to live as a model, or a ‘foretaste,’ of the blessed love which we hope to enjoy in God’s kingdom.
​
Isn’t it an awesome conflict of interest, that God should be the Judge of the human race who are so close to His heart ?  But God is the ultimate Authority, and the Law itself is “Love.”

...let the mountains together
                                           sing gladly before the LORD,
     for He comes to judge the earth.
He  judges the world in justice,
     and peoples righteously.
                       - Psalm 98:8-10, Robert Alter’s translation, 2007