Scriptures for Sunday, November 4, 2018:
All Saints Day, observed
Psalm 119:1-8
Deuteronomy 6:1-9
Hebrews 9:11-14
Mark 12: 28-34

I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.                                                                 - Romans 1:16
There will be anguish and distress for everyone who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek.  For God shows no partiality.                - Romans 2: 9 – 11

I don’t know if any among our current crop of violent American thugs thinks he’s behaving as a good Christian, but if they do, here I am to disagree.  Lovingly.  With the Spirit Who was in Jesus Christ as my helper. 
People, please get a few things straight, in case anybody tries to lead you astray.
First, even if you become convinced that somebody is purely evil and holds all the wrong opinions, THOU SHALT NOT KILL is still in effect.  
 
Second, if you obey Jesus and the Apostles, far from trying to harm anyone who you believe to be wrong or evil or an enemy, you will Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you....
 
Third, remember that Jesus of Nazareth and all of his disciples and the Apostle Paul (who wrote more of the New Testament than any other author) ALL LIVED THEIR ENTIRE LIVES AS JEWS.  

Above, I quoted from Paul’s Letter to the Romans.  If you read the entire letter, it is a very strong and careful argument, explaining why and how God wants gentiles and Jews to live together in peace and harmony.  The argument of the letter comes to its climax in chapter 11, where Paul tells (us) gentiles, the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.  Just as you were once disobedient to God but have now received mercy because of their disobedience, so they have now been disobedient in order that, by the mercy shown to you, they too may now receive mercy.  For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that He may be merciful to all.                – Romans 11:29 – 31
In other words, “Gentiles!  The Jews are still God’s beloved people!  As you wish to be!”
I don’t think that any of you, dear readers, are especially likely to start shooting people or sending them pipe bombs, but I do feel that I must offer a pastoral word, in case you find yourself wondering how to handle any difficult people:  
​If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all people.                                                - Romans 12:18

Also, allow me to repeat here what I told the congregation on Sunday morning:  our local Jewish synagogue is Congregation Beth El in Harrisonburg (did you notice the name?  It means exactly the same as our church name: it’s Hebrew— the Jewish language used in the Bible— for “House of God”).  The Jews of Beth El are good neighbors to us gentiles, offering us hospitality, walking shoulder-to-shoulder with local Christians and Muslims in doing the work of righteousness.  Any time you get a chance to show them some love, for God’s sake, show it.
                                     †                 †                 †
In our worship, in the coming three weeks, we will conclude this church-year’s journey with the Gospel according to Mark.  You may have noticed: we read almost everything in Mark chapters 5 – 10.  In Mark chapter 11, Jesus arrives at Jerusalem, so there we find the story of his triumphal entry, humbly riding on a little donkey; then comes the episode where Jesus chases the money-changers and animal-sellers out of the Temple— Scriptures that we have already heard, this year.  Our remaining lessons from Mark’s gospel will consist of Jesus’ teachings that are found in chapters 12 and 13: things he said while teaching in Jerusalem during the last week of his earthly life. 
And then all too soon, we will begin our preparations for Christmas.
But for now, we hear Jesus say to one of his fellow-Jews who opposed him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”
What did this Jew say, that Jesus so praised and encouraged ?                               
“‘He is one, and besides Him there is no other’;  
     and
   ‘to love Him with all the heart, and with all the understanding,
          and with all the strength,’
     and
   ‘to love one's neighbor as oneself,’
          — this is much more important
                    than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.”
                                                 - Mark 12:32-33
​

SCRIPTURES FOR SUNDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2018
Psalm 126
Jeremiah 31:7-9
Hebrews 7:23-28
Mark 10:44-52

[T]he former priests were many in number, because they were prevented by death from continuing in office; but he holds his priesthood permanently, because he continues forever.                                                                       Hebrews 7: 23 – 24
When somebody gets fired or laid off or disabled or quits or dies, transitions are hard. 
In the passage above, the author tells his fellow Jews that Jesus Christ has taken the place of their ancient, historic succession of priests.  The New Testament book called Hebrews was written after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple by a Jew who chose to follow Jesus.  They were going through a terrible transition in their religion, trying to make sense of God’s plan when their beautiful Temple lay in ruins and its priests were no longer conducting their ancient sacrifices. 
In our lives today, we go through difficult transitions.  Here’s one, hot from the news:
A manager at a Kmart in Pennsylvania went the extra mile when announcing to shoppers his store was closing for the last time.
Video footage shows Joshua Englert, 34, a Kmart employee of 18 years, holding back tears as he thanks loyal customers and his colleagues for ‘working together to get through the stressful times.’  Mr. Englert's Kmart in McMurray, south of Pittsburgh, is one of dozens forced to close after its parent company Sears filed for bankruptcy on Monday with several billions of dollars in debts.  Mr. Englert posted the video of his final goodbye to his store on his Facebook, where it has since been seen by more than 47,000 people.
“Attention Kmart shoppers, your McMurray Kmart will be closing for the last time in just five minutes.  I wanted to take this opportunity not to sell you 40 cent plaid skirts or five cent panties, but instead thank you for supporting a lifetime of memories.  
“Sincere thank you to the people who have made this store their second homes.  I have worked for Kmart for 18 years, more than half my life.  I am the man I am today because of the people that I have met here at Kmart.
“The retail environment - it's pretty stressful - but we've always worked together to get through those stressful times: the inventories, the Black Fridays, the long lines for Tickle Me Elmos and PlayStation 4s, when we only had three of them.
“Thank you deeply to the Kmart McMurray team, you guys have made it all worthwhile.  Once again, the time is 4:25; your McMurray Kmart will be closing at 4:30, thank you.”
                                            [ www.dailymail.co.uk ]
 
In your own life, you may recall tough days like that— days of change and uncertainty.
 
In our UCC Conference, we have been going through a challenging transition of leadership since the sudden death of our longtime Conference Minister, Rev. John Deckenback, in the Summer of 2016.  First we had an “Acting Conference Minister” for a few months.  Next, we had an “Intentional Interim Conference Minister” who was confronted with a Fitness Review and chose to resign.  Now we have another Acting Conference Minister, Rev. Dr. Roddy Dunkerson, who is clearly looking forward to returning to Nebraska and retirement.  So we can sense the longing for relief when Rev. Chuck Rush, the President of our Conference Board of Directors, writes to us saying, “Dear Friends,  It is with great joy that I write to you today.  The Conference Minister Search Committee has completed their work and have recommended to the Board of Directors that the Reverend Freeman L. Palmer be called as our new Conference Minister.  The Board of Directors has affirmed this recommendation at our Board meeting today.”
Many of you Bethel people remember going through the discomforts of the minister Search and Call process in the past and can understand how 
Rev. Rush feels.
Our Conference leaders are asking us to take the time to meet Rev. Palmer on November 16th at St. Stephen’s UCC in Harrisonburg, and then to return there the following day to vote on whether our Conference should hire him to be our next Conference Minister.  Unless a “quorum” of churches send voting delegates, there will be no election and our leaders will have to back up and do things over again.  If you would like to learn more about the candidate, Rev. Palmer, I will gladly share information with you.
                       “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me !”
                                               - Mark 10:47

SCRIPTURES FOR SUNDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2018
Psalm 91: 9 – 16
Isaiah 53: 4-12
Hebrews 5: 1-10
Mark 10: 32-45

[Jesus said to his disciples, ]
“You know that among the Gentiles
          those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them,
          and their great ones are tyrants over them. 
But it is not so among you;
          but whoever wishes to become great among you
               must be your servant,
          and whoever wishes to be first among you
               must be slave of all. 
For the Son of Man came not to be served
          but to serve,
                and to give his life a ransom for many.”
                                            -Mark 10: 42 – 45
On Saturday, October 13, I enjoyed participating in the Fall Meeting of our Shenandoah Association of the United Church of Christ.  Delegates came from Winchester, Charlottesville, Blacksburg and points nearer.  We were led by Association Council President Rev. Steve Wood, who serves Trinity UCC at Basye (west of Mt. Jackson, by Bryce Resort).  Our Associate Conference Minister, Rev. Dr. Audrey Price and our Acting Conference Minister, Rev. Dr. Roddy Dunkerson brought us news of the Conference and wise counsel. 
Since the death of Rev. Dr. John Deckenback in July of 2016, our Conference has not had a long-term Conference Minister.  This year, a search committee worked and found a candidate for the position, possibly to begin service with the new year 2019.  The candidate is Rev. Dr. Palmer Freeman, who has served as an Associate Conference Minister in the New York Conference.  He plans to be in Harrisonburg on November 16th so we can meet him and get to know him a bit.

Our Acting Conference Minister sends us this plea:
Dear Friends,
I am opening my piece by putting in a very blatant commercial:  Please make every effort to attend the Special Conference Meeting on November 17th at any of the three churches where we will meet to elect the Reverend Freeman Palmer as our new Conference Minister!
So, I hope I can be forgiven, but, if we don’t get a quorum, I am in deep trouble at home.  All are welcome to attend, but, voting lay delegates are selected by local churches.  (All clergy serving churches who have standing in an Association are voting delegates.)
This business of how we do business is a deep part of our history.
Once upon a time, the world believed that certain people were called by God to make decisions for us.  
We come from people who said that we needed to listen to each other.  God works through us collectively.  Having been a Conference Minister for a while, I have occasionally made decisions for the Conference.  But, it goes against the grain of my being.  I really do believe that God wants me to be in dialogue with others.  I really do believe that we best discern God’s will in community.
When I have worked with Search Committees, I have always talked about the competing duties of the individual members.  On the one hand, if their gut is screaming “NO”, they need to say it out loud to the group.  On the other hand, they must listen to why others have a different perspective.  In those committees, I believe in consensus.  That means everyone has to say ‘yes’ even if they say it quietly.  Even one definite “NO” means moving past a candidate.
When the Conference gathers, the rules change.  We don’t need to be in complete agreement, we need to be in substantial agreement.
In all cases, we need to understand that we are discerning the will of God.  To discern the “will of God” is an awesome task.  It means that God is Still Speaking and we are witnesses to God’s speech.
We do not mean that we must wait for letters to write themselves on a wall.  We are listening for more subtle speech.  We are listening to our history of interaction with the scriptures and with our communities of faith.  We are paying attention to our community of believers and to our conscience.  The “still small voice” is important.  The commitments to justice that have formed us are important.  The “calling” of the future for which we are created is important.
Your voice is important.
Together, God gives us the strength and imagination to build the future. 
Let us listen for God’s call and let us be the church.               Roddy

 Scriptures for Sunday, October 14, 2018
Psalm 90: 12 – 17
Amos 5:6 – 15
Hebrews 4: 12 -- 16
Mark 10: 17 – 31

For thus says the LORD to the house of Israel: ...
Therefore because you trample on the poor
      and take from them levies of grain,
   you have built houses of hewn stone,
       you shall not live in them;
   you have planted pleasant vineyards,
      but you shall not drink their wine. 
For I know how many are your transgressions,
   and how great are your sins—
   you who afflict the righteous,
   who take a bribe,
   and push aside the needy in the gate. ...
Hate evil and love good,
      and establish justice in the gate;
   it may be that the LORD, the God of hosts,
      will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph.
                                                 - Amos 5: 4, 11-12, 15
Amos left his home in the Kingdom of Judah, which was the southern part of ancient Israel, and went to prophesy against the lifestyles of the upper classes in the northern kingdom, which went by the name Israel, or more poetically, “Joseph” or “Ephraim.”  He prophesied during a time of relative peace and prosperity there.  But the upper classes did many things that denied prosperity to their working poor neighbors.  Amos warned them that the armies of the Assyrian Empire were on their way to end their lives of ease coupled with injustice. 
A couple of notes on the passages reprinted above:
   levies of grain – the poor had to pay significant taxes out of their meager living, which took a far bigger bite out of their well-being than did the taxes on the well-off.
   the needy in the gate – In ancient Israel, the gateway of the city was where the city elders sat in judgment of everyone’s legal matters.  Amos noted that the comfortable classes prevented the poor from obtaining justice.  In modern language, “the color of justice was green.”  (“Money talks.”) 
Many US citizens describe themselves as “middle class.”  But that phrase is almost meaningless today.  On the upper end, people whose income in is the millions claim “middle class” status as they struggle to avoid taxes and beggars.  On the lower end, people trying to hang onto a little dignity in the midst of social and financial chaos claim “middle class” status, despite barely being able to keep a roof overhead and food on the table.

In 1968, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. joined the Poor People’s Campaign and went to Memphis, Tennessee in support of sanitation workers struggling for decent pay and working conditions.  He was assassinated there, then.
 
I am happy to report that this week, the Rev. Dr. William Barber II has been named a recipient of the MacArthur “genius” Grant.  Rev. Barber is pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro, North Carolina.  Along with many others, he has launched a revival of the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign that was originally led by Dr. King.
 
Here are the first five of the Fundamental Principles of the current Poor People’s Campaign:
1. We are rooted in a moral analysis based on our deepest religious and constitutional values that demand justice for all.  Moral revival is necessary to save the heart and soul of our democracy.
2. We are committed to lifting up and deepening the leadership of those most affected by systemic racism, poverty, the war economy, and ecological devastation and to building unity across lines of division.
3. We believe in the dismantling of unjust criminalization systems that exploit poor communities and communities of color and the transformation of the “War Economy” into a “Peace Economy” that values all humanity.
4. We believe that equal protection under the law is non-negotiable.
5. We believe that people should not live in or die from poverty in the richest nation ever to exist. Blaming the poor and claiming that the United States does not have an abundance of resources to overcome poverty are false narratives used to perpetuate economic exploitation, exclusion, and deep inequality.
 
[I hope you will give some attention to the entire program of the Poor People’s Campaign.  There are seven other items in this list, but the final principle is this: ]
12. The Campaign and all its Participants and Endorsers embrace nonviolence.  Violent tactics or actions will not be tolerated.

https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org/fundamental-principles/

Scriptures for World Communion Sunday, October 7, 2018
Psalm 8
Genesis 2:18-24
Hebrews 1: 1-4, 2:5-12
Mark 10:2-16

O LORD, our Sovereign,
how majestic is Your name in all the earth!
                                                 - Psalm 8: 1
This Sunday, the first Sunday of October, is World Communion Sunday.  We will join with diverse followers of Jesus around the world to experience his presence in the broken bread and the cup. 
Our “Communion” always includes thanksgiving to God for coming to us “in the flesh” of Jesus.  We say that the Father sent the Son into the world to be God-with-us, “Emmanuel.”  If you “got” this message, have grasped it, taken it to heart, it is a wonderful miracle.  For many people, though, the notion that little pieces of bread and a little cup of juice can somehow connect a person to God-in-the-flesh is just weird.  If you “get” this connection, it is a gift from God which is humanly impossible to make another person understand.  Each person must “get it” in their own personal encounter with the risen Jesus Christ.
In a similar way, we religious people may think or say that it’s obvious that God’s creation is completely wonderful.  We may say and believe that we see God’s Creative touch in puppies and kittens and rainbows and sunsets: that all of nature invites us to praise the Creator.  But we know that many humans are angry with God for allowing “natural” things like cancer, infections, earthquakes, typhoons, and mosquitoes.  You may list a lot more “natural” things that you don’t like and aren’t thankful for.  And then there’s the human part of nature!  The book of Genesis says, “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.” (Genesis 2:24)  Well, we all know various ways that this creation story has played out in our life-stories, in our own families.  More often than not, we don’t halfway understand why couples come together.  Often, we see couples fail to keep it together.  And that’s not even addressing the human nature that many of us only recently discovered among same-gender loving couples.  In the midst of all of this “nature,” we come together in Communion to thank the Creator for life and love and salvation through Jesus Christ. 

We are mysterious bearers of the image of the majestic God Who created the heavens and earth.
 
Our Service of Holy Communion for this Sunday includes parts of one written by the Rev. Dr. Laurel Koepf Taylor, Assistant Professor of Old Testament at Eden Theological Seminary, Saint Louis, Missouri.  She also wrote the following, to help us see the connection between God’s creation of humans and our service of Holy Communion.
“The creation stories in Genesis 1-3 have become the source of much contention over the years.  For many, such political and theological conflicts are the first thing that comes to mind when these narratives are mentioned.  For others, the use of gender, particularly in Genesis 2-3, has been hurtful and oppressive.  Yet much of the rhetoric that so many have found to be harmful is more in the interpretation of the text than in the text itself and contemporary interpreters have uncovered other potential layers of meaning that can be life-giving and empowering.  In her 1986 book, God and The Rhetoric of Sexuality, Phyllis Trible argued that Genesis 2:7 describes God's creation of a human being and that therefore this week's lectionary reading is less about the creation of woman from man, and more about the creation of gender in the splitting of that first human into two beings.  Whether or not one agrees with Trible's reading of Genesis 2, the creation of two people from one creates something new in addition to a second person; it creates mutual relationship.  This first relationship is unique specifically in its mutuality, as made clear by the text's insistence that it is necessary in spite of the already existing divine-human relationship, and its vivid description of all of the animals God creates in verses 19 and 20, none of whom are found to be fitting partners.  When the two humans finally meet in verse 23, it is a meeting of equals.  Their relationship is unlike that humans have with God or animals,  ‘This at last is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.’ 
In this way, Genesis 2 describes the divine creation of relationship, of community, of intimate communication, of sharing.  Each of these are also meanings of the word we use to describe the sacred meal we celebrate this week: communion.  It is the moment in which we look at one another and at our world community and say that we together are the body of Christ, ‘This at last is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh!’”

( You can find this entire service of Holy Communion and the author's notes at http://www.uccfiles.com/rtf/ww100718.rtf )