SCRIPTURE READINGS FOR
Sunday, December 4 
Psalm 72
Isaiah 11:1-10
Romans 15:4-13
Matthew 3:1-12

It’s beard-growing time again !  No, not so I can play Santa.  It’s for that mysterious wild-man John the Baptizer.  He’s back for another round.

                 { drawing by the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart in Peru }
 
From the descriptions of John’s appearance and habits found in the gospels, we can tell that John was a nazirite.  The rules for being a nazirite are laid out in the Old Testament Book of Numbers, chapter 6: 1-21.  The reason someone might choose to become a nazirite is to fulfill a sacred promise, a vow, to God.  All their days as nazirites they are holy to the LORD. (Numbers 6:8)  So, being a nazirite meant being seriously holy.
The most famous nazirite in the Bible (other than John the Baptizer) is Samson (Judges, chapters 13-16).  You would probably remember Samson most for the way Delilah seduced him and cut off his long hair, making him weak.  Samson was not a faithful example.
But John the Baptizer did not falter in his faithfulness, as Samson did.  Rather, John lived and died in his integrity before God.  He preached that people must repent of their sins, and he offered to dip, or baptize, them in water as a sign of their repentance and of God’s forgiveness.
Matthew reports John’s preaching thus:
“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near. 
  Prepare the way of the Lord, make His paths straight.”
To members of religious groups who came from Jerusalem to hear him, John delivered a very tough message:
“You children of snakes !  Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?  Bear fruit worthy of repentance.  Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’ ; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.  Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” 
                                          (Matthew 3:7 – 10) 
In other words, “Your ethnic heritage is worthless in God’s sight: your only hope of avoiding destruction is to be fruitful for God’s sake.”
John’s next act of faithfulness was to point away from himself, toward Jesus, who was on his way to be baptized and begin his ministry.  John selflessly declared, “one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals.  He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”      (Matthew 3:11)
Maybe your vow will not include growing a beard. 
But will you do anything, this Advent season, as a sign of your commitment to God ?
Every year, we hear moaning from religious people about how commercial Christmastime has become.  Every year, we hear grousing from religious people about remembering “the reason for the season.” 
What if we were to take a serious vow to “make God’s paths straight” in our lives, this Advent ? 
Here are two small suggestions:
†  Make your preparations for Christmas... Christ-like.  The world is rushing madly to impress people and to revel in pleasure… but Christ gave himself.  Let us give ourselves for others.  “There’s No Present Like the Time”

†  Carefully examine your way of life, and correct whatever the Lord would find to be ‘crooked.’
 
By the way, if you want it, our church offers baptism.  We don’t necessarily have to go down to Boone Run, but we can baptize you.  

SCRIPTURE READINGS
 
for Thanksgiving Day, November 24
Deuteronomy 26:1-11
Psalm 100
Philippians 4:4-9
John 6:25-35
 
for Sunday, November 27
Psalm 122
Isaiah 2:1-5
Romans 13:11-14
Matthew 24:36-44
Luke 21:5-19

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem:
             ‘May they prosper who love you.’
                                                - Psalm 122:6
These words come from a Song of Ascents.  This kind of psalm was probably developed for singing while walking uphill toward the city of Jerusalem and, once within its walls, further up hill and into the courtyard of the Temple itself.  There are quite a few of these songs in the Bible: Psalms 120 through 134 are specifically given this title, and there are others sprinkled through that book.
I have not been to Jerusalem.  Perhaps someday I will get to make the trip, and walk uphill into the modern Old City.  Yes, if you caught that, it is a lot like “Antique Tables Made Daily” (a Sperryville business).  The Old City has been built, destroyed, and rebuilt many times since the time of Jesus.... and it was built, destroyed, and rebuilt many times before Jesus walked there, too.
What is there now, scholars tell us, is a mixture of ancient ruins and buildings put up by Romans, Muslims (Palestinian Arabs and others), Crusaders, other Christians, and Zionists in the one thousand nine hundred and forty-six years since the Romans tore it all down, beginning in the year we call A.D. 70.
Jesus warned his followers that their generation was headed for a terrible time of destruction.  Try reading from Matthew 23:29 through all of chapter 24, keeping in mind what the Romans actually did to Jerusalem.  In the lifetime of some of Jesus’ disciples, the Romans desecrated the Jewish Temple by setting up within it a statue of Caesar as a god: Jews called it “the abomination of desolation.” (Matthew 24:15) (Around 200 years before Jesus’ prophecy, the Syrian-Greeks had committed similar outrages in Jerusalem: see Daniel 9:27, 11:31, and 12:11; also 1 Maccabees 1:54). Later, the Romans completely destroyed the Jerusalem where Jesus had walked. 
Later still, the Romans built a new city on top of the ruins to which they had reduced Jerusalem. They named it Aelia Capitolina.  Once they had crushed rebellion after stubborn rebellion in that land of religious zeal, they wanted to erase all trace of Jewishness from the place.  “This is a Roman city— period!” they strove to prove. 
How chilling, to realize the horror the Jews felt as their Jerusalem-centered civilization was trampled and burned by the pagan might of Rome.  
Yet pagan Rome did not have the last word.  Christians and Jews came back and added buildings.  Helena, mother of the Roman Emperor Constantine, ordered churches to be built on spots where, according to local legends, great events of Jewish and Christian history were said to have taken place.  The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is one of these.
In the 600s, the new faith called Islam put down roots in the Jerusalem landscape, eventually erecting a great plaza and two houses of prayer on the highest hill— where, many believe, the Jewish Temples had stood, six hundred years before.  It was from the heights of Jerusalem that the Prophet Muhammad dreamed he was carried up to experience a vision of heaven.  For this reason, the high platform, called the “Noble Sanctuary” is holy to Muslims all over the world today.
Nowadays in Jerusalem, the city is fiercely divided among competing groups of Christians, as well as Jews and Muslims.  Many of their claims date back centuries— although much of what the Jews now claim is what they conquered in the 1967 war against the Arabs.  It is hard to believe that that was only forty nine years ago. 
Some friends of mine who frequently visit Jerusalem tell me that peace exists there: you just have to learn where to look, to see people coexisting side-by-side.  Those who make peace there are living in the vision of Isaiah 2 and Micah 4, of a Jerusalem where the LORD shall judge or arbitrate between peoples of many nations.
Since the founding of the modern state called Israel in 1948, the U.S. government has taken many different positions toward it.  Until now, we have agreed with most other nations, that for the sake of peace we should not recognize Jerusalem as the national capital of the modern State of Israel, but rather keep our U.S. Embassy in the long-time capital city, Tel Aviv.  Now, President-elect Trump says he will move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem.  That would be an outrageous provocation against the people who have lived there for many generations.         Once again,
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem:
           ‘May they prosper who love you.’

Scriptures for Sunday, November 20, 2016
Psalm 46
Jeremiah 23:1-6
Colossians 1:1-11
Luke 23:33-43
​
Printing in color is expensive... but I wish all of the folks who receive this newsletter in the U.S. Mail could see this picture’s colors !  They are so gorgeous. 
You may have heard Stephen Colbert joke (or heard me quote him): “Whenever God closes a door, He opens a window: His heating bills are outrageous !!”
Well, judging by this week’s outrageous displays of colors among the leafy trees and azure skies, God’s ink and paint bills are out of this world, too !!

                                                  Christ, Ruler of All
Mosaic from the church of Apollonaire at Ravenna, Italy, from around AD 521-547
​
Our United States heritage trains us to think of “rulers” in a particular way:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
(United States Declaration of Independence, accessed at https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript )
 
The train of thought that Thomas Jefferson and the Continental Congress followed two hundred and forty years ago is still chugging along down the tracks of history.  The rights which they named have morphed and grown in ways which the Continental Congressmen could scarcely have imagined:  “All men are created equal,” most of us now take to include women and people of color, not only White men.  I, for one, am very thankful for progress, and for the spread of human rights.
Yet most people, around our world and through the ages, have lived and died without benefit of “human rights.”  What they’ve had were rulers, some better and some worse.  Some rulers treat their subjects well; others treat them like slaves.
Even though we inherit the American dream of freedom, our United States system leaves room for worse or better leaders.  In each generation, under each set of elected officials, some folks enjoy their version of liberty while others feel oppressed. 
Hear what God says about this, through the Prophet Jeremiah:                     (23:1-3)
“Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of My pasture!” says the LORD.
Therefore thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, “Concerning the shepherds who shepherd My people: it is you who have scattered My flock, and have driven them away, and you have not attended to them.  So I will attend to you for your evil doings, says the LORD.
Then I Myself will gather the remnant of My flock out of all the lands where I have driven them, and I will bring them back to their fold, and they shall be fruitful and multiply.”
For the past two thousand years, under governments good and bad, we humans have one right which is truly unalienable— nobody can take it away:  the right to Jesus Christ as our One True Ruler.  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: 19-20

SCRIPTURE READINGS
FOR
ALL SAINTS DAY
Tuesday, November 1
Daniel 7:1-3, 15-18
Psalm 149
Ephesians 1:11-23
Luke 6:20-31
 
Sunday, November 6
Psalm 17:1-9
Job 19
2 Thessalonians 2
Luke 20:27-38

November 1st is All Saints Day.  At Bethel, we will celebrate it this coming Sunday, November 6th.
Thinking of All Saints’ Day, I want to share with you the Daily Devotional message which Rev. Lillian Daniel wrote for this past Sunday, under the title, “A Victory Speech from Someone Who Never Wins Anything.”  Rev. Daniel is pastor of First Congregational Church of Dubuque, Iowa.
 
“Be completely humble and gentle;
be patient, bearing with one another in love.”
- Ephesians 4:2
 
When it comes to little contests and games of chance, I never win anything.  But guess who guessed the number of chocolate coffee beans in the jar last Sunday?  It was me, it was me, it was me!  The humble pastor! 
Ethical concerns prevented me from keeping the gift.  Church leaders even suggested it might be appropriate to choose another winner instead of the minister, but I persuaded them to let me have my moment, since, after all, I never win anything.  I promised to share my chocolate coffee beans with others.  My win was about the honor of the thing, not material gain.  
Sadly, nobody wanted to hear the full three-hour victory speech I prepared about what led me to make the winning guess on the coffee beans.  So let me reflect on my success here in this devotional in the hope that you'll be inspired by my example. 
As I look back on a lifetime of never winning anything, I now see that I was being trained for that one competitive moment, when a decisive instinct would put me out in front of the pack.  I can't explain it, I just did what I had to do.  I went out there and executed at a high level.  I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the little people, as well as the coach.  It wasn't about my skills, it was about the whole ball club.  It takes a village to raise a child.  Measure twice and cut once.  It was 90% mental and the other half was physical.  As a player, I left it all out there on the field.  And lastly, God bless America.
 
Prayer:  Dear God, help us to remember that our "accomplishments" are not our own, and that every "win" is just a chance to give you thanks for what we did not achieve all by ourselves.  Amen.
 
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When we consider God’s holy ones, the so-called “saints,” the most important thing to notice is not that they did great good things, but that they obeyed God and gave God any and all glory that was offered to them.  If we “want to be in that number / when the saints go marching in,” we must also give God all our boasting and pride. 
In Paul’s letter called 2nd Thessalonians, he tells them that he brags about them to other churches.  However, what he actually brags about is the way that they are growing in faithfulness toward God and demonstrating love for one another... which causes people to thank God and glorify God. (2 Thess. 1: 2-4, 11-12).  Paul goes on to warn them about an individual whom they know, who “opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, declaring himself to be God.” (2 Thess. 2:4)  Such a person would be the opposite of a “saint”— wanting all the glory for himself.
I always think of my late friend, Sam, who frequently said, “There is a God, and I ain’t Him.”  This awareness helps to save us from sin.  As C.S. Lewis put it, “The corruption of the first sinner consists not in choosing some evil thing ... but in preferring a lesser good (himself) before a greater (God).  The Fall is, in fact, Pride.”  But, thanks be to God, we don’t have to be that way.
The Good News keeps reminding us that God’s holy ones are always alive in God’s presence:  “those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead....  cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection.... [To God,] all of them are alive.”  (Luke 20:35-36, 38)
This coming Sunday, we will take a little time to remember some of God’s holy ones, saints who have gone on before us.  Think of the ones you have known, or perhaps still know.  Charles Wesley described them this way: “Part of His host have crossed the flood, / And part are crossing now.”           Who do you know, who lives, or lived,
for the praise of God’s glory  ?                (Ephesians 1:12)