SCRIPTURE READINGS FOR Sunday, July 31
Psalm 49:1-12
Ecclesiastes 1 & 2
Colossians 3:1-11
Luke 12:13-21

​What a delightful day, yesterday, when we worshiped and fellowshipped and rejoiced under Haley Life’s message of “Get tough with it.”
Haley started by saying, “You all have made me feel so loved, over the years, and so I hope I can make you feel the same way, today.”  “Recently, I’ve been having a stressful time in school.  When I told Paw-Paw that school was getting tough, he said,
​“Well, you’ll just have to get tough with it !”
She then shared with us lots of wisdom she has gleaned, how to “get tough with it,” dealing with balance, openness, and time. 
Haley illustrated balance and time using a bowl, symbolizing our limited time, into which she wanted to fit a collection of small and large rocks and some sand.  These represented the ordinary, daily activities of life and the big, important things we want to accomplish during the time we have. 
She illustrated openness with accounts of the diverse people with whom she has been living and working and learning.
Haley repeatedly emphasized how important her family and church and friends mean to her.  “My wish is to always have hope and to maintain the relationships that are important to me, but this requires balance, openness, and time….”
She concluded with a verse from Psalm 35 that means so much to her when things get tough: 
Weeping may endure for a night,
       but joy comes with the morning.
If you missed hearing Haley’s message, or if you would like to hear it again, CDs or tapes of the service should be available soon.  Tell me if you want one.
God blesses the church with generations of humans who do their God-given work and leave a legacy to those who come after.  Haley is an outstanding example of God’s blessing to Bethel.  Many of us have had the privilege of seeing her grow in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and with people.  Then, what an added blessing to seize the opportunity to have her share her journey with us through a Sunday-morning message ! 

We all know the feeling that is making the rounds, not only person-to-person but also by way of much of our contemporary media, that the world is in an awful mess and getting worse every day. 
This message, this feeling of decline and doom and destruction has been going around for thousands of years.  Hundreds of years before the time of Jesus, someone calling himself “the Preacher” wrote this in the Bible book we call Ecclesiastes: 
I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun;
     and see, all is vanity
         and a chasing after wind.
What is crooked cannot be made straight,
      and what is lacking cannot be counted.
                     -Ecclesiastes 1:14-15
What a downer !!  The Preacher considers himself to be so wise, yet he only sees uselessness, meaninglessness, and death.
Thank God, this does not have to come true. 
Yes, each of us will eventually die and leave behind our mortal bodies and possessions, but God is victorious, and we are victorious in Jesus Christ.  As the Old Testament character Job said so well,
“I know that my Redeemer lives,
     and that at the last He shall stand upon the earth…."
                        Job 19:25
Jesus walked the earth in a time which was, in many ways, a lot worse than our time, today.  Human life was held awfully cheap: there was not even any concept of human rights for ordinary people.  It looks worse, the more we learn about it.
Nowadays, we disrespect Jesus if we refuse to see all the good that has been done in his name, down through the past two thousand years.  While it is also true, that an awful lot of bad things have been done in Christ’s name, we his followers are part of his victorious legacy.
As worrisome and perplexing and negative-seeming as our times can be, we have plenty of genuine hope in what God does in our midst.  Our happy Sunday with Haley is but one shining instance of this.  Don’t sell it short !!
Jesus knew full well that many humans are wasting their lives trying to build themselves “bigger barns.”  (Luke 12:16-21)  Jesus experienced the frustration of trying to teach disciples whose hearts were often tied up in earthly pursuits and thoughts.  But Jesus offers us the truth: 
“Do not be afraid, little flock,
       for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”                             (Luke 12:32)

Scriptures for Sunday, July 24th, 2016
Genesis 18: 20-32
Psalm 138
Colossians 2:6-19
Luke 11:1-13

“Behold, I have undertaken to speak to the LORD,
        I who am but dust and ashes.”        Genesis 18:27

From what I’ve observed and heard in families and homes around the Bethel Church community, people’s notions about praying are all over the map.  And that’s OK...
... As long as your prayer life is daily drawing you nearer to your Savior God.  It is by prayer, you know, that we communicate with our Maker.  Unless you have responded to God’s offer of salvation in your own private prayer of confession and repentance, you have not claimed the gift God is trying to give you.  And unless we are living daily in pursuit of God’s way--through prayer— we are not able to live a life directed by Jesus Christ as our boss (Lord).
So all of us, in whatever way works for each of us, need to be in prayer.  In prayer we receive the clues and cues that enable us to live “rooted and built up in him, established in the faith” (Colossians 2:7).  We open up and listen while God speaks, and we pour our hearts out to God.
When I say I find Bethel people’s prayer practices are all over the map, I am picturing various friends who are faithful in giving and serving and attending.  They simply have differing comfort levels and styles when it comes to praying.
Some seem to be afraid to pray in front of other people, like it’s a form of public speaking.
OK, so praying in front of other people is a lot like public speaking: it helps if the others can hear the words; it usually goes better for the group if they can all follow the train of thought expressed by the one who is speaking; and it is tough if someone disagrees with the one speaking, and interrupts-- like a heckler fussing at a politician! (I haven’t known this to happen here, yet...).
Jesus said that “If two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven” (Matthew 18:19).  This seems to me to be a powerful reason to get with like-minded Christians quite often and pray together about the things that are important to us.
Of course, Jesus also said we should not pray in front of others to try to impress them, but rather address our prayers to God, Who hears us in private.  It is OK to be shy about praying in front of a crowd: if God wants you to pray in front of crowds, God will make you bold to do it (and you and I will be held to a stricter standard of integrity, too!).  However, it is vital for each and every one of us to practice praying privately with fellow believers.

Another thing I’ve noticed since beginning to serve as a pastor is that some people will share with me— even if I’m virtually a stranger to them— what they are praying about in private.  I feel honored to be included. 
​By contrast, others seem to wait for Sunday mornings or certain meal-times to ‘hear’ prayers ‘said’ by a specialist                            {;-)}

As Mark Twain pointed out, over a hundred years ago, God hears the prayers of professing Christians, but the prayers of ‘professional Christians’ … God bundles them up together and uses them as headwinds to retard the ships of improper people.  Don’t leave it to the pastor to pray for you and yours: you’d better practice praying, yourself!  
My goal as pastor of this congregation is to assist each of you members and friends in living your Christian life with the best supports available. 
​A milestone on the way toward that grand goal will be when we have small groups of people meeting to pray together about each other’s joys and concerns. 
Abraham, saint that he was, prayed to God for the people of Sodom and Gomorrah.  But because they themselves would not accept God’s reign and pray to God, they were destroyed (Genesis chapter 19).
 
“For though the LORD is high,
    He regards the lowly....”                       Psalm 138: 6

SCRIPTURE READINGS FOR Sunday, July 17
Genesis 18:1-10
Psalm 15
Colossians 1:15-28
Luke 10:38-42

​I appreciate you hospitable people.
You really know how to
        welcome a guest,
        make a guest comfortable,
        feed a guest, and
        persuade a guest to come back again.
I know you.  You’re going to say, “That’s nothing.  That’s just what we do.”
Precisely.
Hospitality, in its essential form, is a habit that you have been cultivating, possibly since before you can remember, and it just comes as second nature to you.  It’s just your way, now.
Of course, I watch you, and I notice that you get tired, being hospitable.  You sometimes stay up late and get up early, to be sure that things are ready and that there’s plenty to go around.  It isn’t actually easy— but you shrug it off and say, “You’re welcome.”
I hope that the same folks who raised you to be hospitable also showed you how to kick back and rest well.  In the biblical tradition, we call it “sabbath-keeping.”  If you do too much of the hospitality and not enough of the resting, you run the risk of becoming burned-out, bitter, and cynical.  “Everybody’s mooching off me.  When is it my turn to be the guest ?”  (Maybe you are suppressing that question that is arising within you: maybe it’s building up pressure inside of you until you blow your top – ?)

[Thanks to the Misioneros del Sagrado Corazón en el Perú for the drawing of Mary and Martha with Jesus!
http://www.mscperu.org/grafic/graficoslit/cTO/16_to_c.htm    ]

Both hospitality and sabbath rest are godly virtues.  Jesus Christ taught both how to serve and how to be served.  Recently, we heard him tell his disciples to go to various villages and accept hospitality from whoever offered it, but at the same time to give away gifts of peace, healing, and good news wherever they went.  He was putting them through an exercise of giving and also receiving.
We worship Jesus Christ as the Ruler of the Universe, and rightly so, for that is Who he is. 
He is the image of the invisible God,
   the firstborn of all creation;
   for in him all things in heaven and on earth
          were created,
   things visible and invisible….
All things have been created through him
and for him.
He himself is before all things,
   and in him all things hold together.
He is the head of the body, the church;
   he is the beginning,
   the firstborn from the dead,
   so that he might come to have first place
in everything.
For in him
   all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell,
   and through him God was pleased
      to reconcile to Himself all things,
         whether on earth or in heaven,
            by making peace
     through the blood of his cross.
                                           Colossians 1:15-20
Worshiping Christ is sometimes restful, a sabbath activity.  It may include spiritual reading (or listening) and writing, singing spiritual songs, and fellowshipping with the family of God.   But Jesus calls us to also worship him by serving “the least of these”: to treat poor and vulnerable and disadvantaged and oppressed people as if we were giving our hospitality directly to Jesus himself.
“When you did it for them, you did it for me.”
(Matthew 25)
Or, as Abraham and Sarah discovered (Genesis 18), you never know when you may be entertaining angels unaware.                           
It is [Christ] whom we proclaim,
   warning everyone and
   teaching everyone in all wisdom,
   so that we may present everyone mature in Christ.
                                               Colossians 1:28

SCRIPTURE READINGS FOR Sunday, July 10
Deuteronomy 30:9-14
Psalm 25:1-10
Colossians 1:1-14
Luke 10:25-37


“Surely, this commandment that I am commanding you today
is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away….
No, the word is very near to you;
it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.”        
                        Moses, in Deuteronomy 30:11, 14
 
This week, we have before us Jesus’ parable of the “good Samaritan.”  That phrase has become such a commonplace, people say it who have no earthly idea what a “Samaritan” might be.  In point of fact, Jesus told the story to people who hated Samaritans, and Samaritans (as a rule) hated them back. 
In Jesus’ day, there were descendants of old Father Abraham who worshiped God at Jerusalem, and then there were other descendants of old Father Abraham who worshiped God at the ancient Israelite city of Samaria.  Each group cursed the other and swore that the other group was evil and totally wrong about religious matters.  In the gospels, we find many instances where friction between “Jews” and “Samaritans” was a focal problem in Jesus’ ministry:  perhaps the best example is Jesus’ deep and lengthy conversation with the “Samaritan woman” in John 4.
As Luke sets up this week’s story, an expert on the Law of Moses— a good, anti-Samaritan Jew— tested Jesus by asking him, “What must I do to inherit eternal life ?”
Jesus turned the question back on the lawyer, asking him how the Law of Moses answers that question.
The lawyer replied by quoting from the Books of Moses: Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18.  The verse from Leviticus is the source of our beloved Golden Rule, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
But the lawyer still wanted to win an argument with Jesus, so he asked a follow-up question.
Recently, I have been listening back to some interviews given by Ivan Illich (1926-2002), a Christian teacher.  Here is Illich’s understanding of Jesus’ reply to that lawyer:
Some thirty years ago, I went into sermons from the early third century into the nineteenth century dealing with this story of the Samaritan, and I found out that most preachers, when they comment on that passage, comment on it in order to show how we ought to behave towards our neighbor, when in fact this is the opposite of what Jesus, who tells that story of the Samaritan, wanted to point out. …
They asked him, point blank, the question: “Who is the guy whom you call ‘neighbor’ ?” 
And he, as a story, told them, “A man was going down to Jericho, fell among robbers, was beaten up and left wounded.  A teacher goes by, a priest goes by, sees him and walks on.  And then an outsider comes along, the traditional enemy, and turns to the wounded man, as an internal turning, and picks him up, takes him into his arms and brings him to the inn. 
So he answers them, “My neighbor is whom I decide, not whom I have to choose.”  There is no way of categorizing who my neighbor ought to be.  This doctrine about the neighbor which this guy, Jesus, brings into conversation, is utterly destructive of ordinary decency, of ethical behavior, and to say this today is as surprising as it was at the beginning. …
The Master told them, who your neighbor is is not determined by your birth, by your condition, by the language which you speak, by the “ethnos,” which means really the mode of walking which has become proper to you, but by you.  You can recognize the other man who is out of bounds culturally, who is foreign linguistically, who – you can say by providence or by pure chance – is the one who lies somewhere along your road in the grass, and create the supreme form of relatedness which is not given by creation but created by you.
 http://www.davidcayley.com/podcasts?category=Ivan+Illich
 
God in mysterious wisdom has given to us followers of Jesus the freedom to identify the “neighbor” whom we choose to bless.  This opens up boundless opportunities for creativity and expressions of grace. 
​Also, it is overwhelming. 
May you be made strong
    with all the strength that comes from His glorious power,
  and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience,
     while joyfully giving thanks to the Father,
        Who has enabled you to share
​            in the inheritance of the saints in the light.
                                             Colossians 1:11-12