Can you believe that tomorrow begins a new church year?  As we observe the beginning of Advent, we too observe the beginning of our church calendar, which begins with Hanging of the Greens.  Won't you join us tomorrow morning for Hanging of the Greens?

Please check out all the things happening during Advent and Christmas, by visiting that worship page here, as well as check out the "Social Media Advent Challenge" below in which you are invited to participate all the way through the Christmas season.

Regardless of how you participate this Advent season, we hope to see you soon, to worship and serve together, in God's great name!

Since Easter we’ve spent the last few weeks using the books of Acts and Galatians to remind us of the very foundations of our faith, and how the early community of believers came to be known as the church.  Next week, June 4th is Pentecost, in which we celebrate the birthday of the church, when God's people were given the Holy Spirit.  
Two weeks ago we were reminded that there is tension inherent in living out a faithful life.  We should not be afraid of tension or disagreement that might happen in a community of faith, because it is natural and innate in the life of a faith community.  It is the very life of faith that is both spiritual and human, a tension that we all experience; so to have tension within a faith community is not something of which we should be afraid. (I also want to be clear that I’m not insinuating there is tension or disagreement in our church, rather, this is a lesson we can learn from the early church about what it means to be the church together.)
Last week we talked about grace.  We reminded ourselves that there's nothing you can do to earn God's grace, it is a gift. There is absolutely no rule or law, or path in which you can follow in order to earn God's grace, so we need to avoid being bogged down with a legalistic way of approaching God's grace, because it causes us to miss the point.  
This week we continue to talk about God's grace and it's presence in the creation of the early church.  Galatians 3 reminds us that God's grace is not just for a certain few.  God's grace was present in the very beginning, when God promised Abraham and Sarah, and God continues to share that grace without respect of gender, ethnicity, status in society or the like.
As we remember that Jesus sent us out into the world to share God's love and make disciples of all nations, we have much to learn from the early days of the early church.  We can learn from their mistakes, from their growing pains, and from their successes.  Above all, we come together to learn how we can more faithfully love and serve the God of love who's presence and grace is with us through it all.
Won't you join us on Sunday morning at 10:30am for worship?  We look forward to welcoming ALL as God has welcomed ALL to this table of grace and love - you are welcome here!

​He forgives them and frees them, welcomes them and changes them. He has been anointed to bring freedom from sin and freedom from sinful structures. He has been anointed to create a new community that breaks down the barriers between insider and outsider, Jew and Gentile, rich and poor. In him, all flesh shall see God’s salvation. – Judith Jones

Luke 4:14-30 (The Voice)
Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Holy Spirit, and soon people across the region had heard news of Him.  He would regularly go into their synagogues and teach. His teaching earned Him the respect and admiration of everyone who heard Him.
 
He eventually came to His hometown, Nazareth, and did there what He had done elsewhere in Galilee—entered the synagogue and stood up to read from the Hebrew Scriptures.
 
The synagogue attendant gave Him the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, and Jesus unrolled it to the place where Isaiah had written these words:
 
The Spirit of the Lord the Eternal One is on Me.
Why? Because the Eternal designated Me
    to be His representative to the poor, to preach good news to them.
He sent Me to tell those who are held captive that they can now be set free,
    and to tell the blind that they can now see.
He sent Me to liberate those held down by oppression.
In short, the Spirit is upon Me to proclaim that now is the time;
    this is the jubilee season of the Eternal One’s grace.
 
Jesus rolled up the scroll and returned it to the synagogue attendant. Then He sat down, as a teacher would do, and all in the synagogue focused their attention on Jesus, waiting for Him to speak. 
​
He told them that these words from the Hebrew Scriptures were being fulfilled then and there, in their hearing.
 
They were all saying: “Wait. This only the son of Joseph, right?”
 
He said to them: “You’re about to quote the old proverb to Me, “Doctor, heal yourself!” Then you’re going to ask Me to prove Myself to you by doing the same miracles I did in Capernaum.  But face the truth: hometowns always reject their homegrown prophets.
 
Think back to the prophet Elijah. There were many needy Jewish widows in his homeland, Israel, when a terrible famine persisted there for three and a half years. Yet the only widow God sent Elijah to help was an outsider from Zarephath in Sidon.
 
It was the same with the prophet Elisha. There were many Jewish lepers in his homeland, but the only one he healed—Naaman--was an outsider from Syria.
 
The people in the synagogue became furious when He said these things.  They seized Jesus, took Him to the edge of town, and pushed Him right to the edge of the cliff on which the city was built. They would have pushed Him off and killed Him, but He passed through the crowd and went on His way.”

"The single most important theological message of this text is that Jesus the Christ is not only for "insiders" but for "outsiders" as well. On one level, we can easily affirm that truth. And yet, practicing it may not come as easily as believing it." – Dennis Bratcher

Scripture: The apostles and the brothers and sisters throughout Judea heard that even the Gentiles had welcomed God’s word. When Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him.  They accused him, “You went into the home of the uncircumcised and ate with them!”
Step-by-step, Peter explained what had happened. “I was in the city of Joppa praying when I had a visionary experience. In my vision, I saw something like a large linen sheet being lowered from heaven by its four corners. It came all the way down to me. As I stared at it, wondering what it was, I saw four-legged animals—including wild beasts—as well as reptiles and wild birds. I heard a voice say, ‘Get up, Peter! Kill and eat!’ I responded, ‘Absolutely not, Lord! Nothing impure or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’ The voice from heaven spoke a second time, ‘Never consider unclean what God has made pure.’ This happened three times, then everything was pulled back into heaven. At that moment three men who had been sent to me from Caesarea arrived at the house where we were staying. The Spirit told me to go with them even though they were Gentiles. These six brothers also went with me, and we entered that man’s house. He reported to us how he had seen an angel standing in his house and saying, ‘Send to Joppa and summon Simon, who is known as Peter. He will tell you how you and your entire household can be saved.’ When I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on them, just as the Spirit fell on us in the beginning. I remembered the Lord’s words: ‘John will baptize with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ If God gave them the same gift he gave us who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, then who am I? Could I stand in God’s way?”
Once the apostles and other believers heard this, they calmed down. They praised God and concluded, “So then God has enabled Gentiles to change their hearts and lives so that they might have new life.”
 - Acts 11:1-18 (Common English Bible)

Meditation: As we continue our Lenten series, The Compassionate Table, we continue to focus on the ways that we can see even more clearly the ministry of Jesus Christ specifically at the table.  

In this particular passage, we are actually receiving a summary of chapter 10, of what happened in Caesarea with a man name Cornelius, and his family and friends.  (I highly recommend that you read chapter 10 in addition to what you will hear on Sunday!)  More specifically Peter is summarizing what happened, because the believers in Jerusalem were quite skeptical and critical of Peter's actions.  You see Peter traveled down to Caesarea and (gasp!) ate with people who were not Jewish!

Now I added that little note (gasp!) because it does sound crazy to us now - why couldn't Peter eat with other believers, regardless of how they came to know Christ?  Well, there were very strict laws against this, and Peter's dining with Gentiles prompted quite a few questions to the church in Jerusalem.  Who should be included within the circle of the people of God?  Are the traditional boundary markers will to be observed?  If traditional prevents Jews and Gentiles from associating with each other, what happens when the old social distinctions no longer exist?  How are they to relate to each other within a newly configured people of God?

What about us?  What social distinctions keep us separated from one another?  What social distinctions, if they were to change would dramatically change the way we associate with one another?  What social distinctions might change in order to foster the in-breaking of God's kingdom here on earth?  I have a few ideas, but I'd love to hear yours and continue this conversation.  Won't you join us on Sunday?

The theme that will guide our reflection during this Lenten season is simple; “Faith Is Living… On The Way.” It’s only simple, however, if you assume that faith and the way are two different things. Faith is belief in God, and the way is the path we will follow to reach our goal. During Lent, this goal is Easter; overall this goal is heaven. Voila! Done and done.

But what if faith and the way are identical? What if faith is defined by its journey? “Now you’re just being silly,” you say? “That would put our theme somewhere between obscure and paradoxical… no help at all!” Nevertheless, there is precedent for the identification of faith and the way. Consider that the early Christian community did not refer to itself as Christian, but rather as The Way. They referred to themselves as followers of Jesus on the way. And you don’t get off the hook just by saying that faith as the way is obscure or even paradoxical. There is much in our faith that is obscure, and some that is over-the-top paradoxical. For example, consider God as “One in three and three in one,” or Jesus as “Truly God and truly human,” or “To save your life you only have to lose it,” or… well, the list could go on and on.

Humor me for a moment and consider what faith would look like if it was defined by its journey; if faith and the way were identical. Firstly, it would mean that faith is a verb; something we do, not something about which we hold an opinion. And it would mean that we would choose those with whom we fellowship less on what they believe to be true, and more on what their lives show to be true. And it throws the focus back onto our lives today. That is to say, the goal of faith is not to get to heaven; it’s not to bide our time through this warm-up act, waiting for the truly real to come along. No; faith as journey means that this life matters. God has the eternal covered, we need not fret about that. Rather, we are called to follow the way of Jesus. And that friends, is quite a journey. A journey to God in God’s presence, as one scholar has put it.

On Sunday we will begin an inquiry into what faith as a journey means for our personal and spiritual lives, and the way we look at our day-by-day living. I hope you will join us at 8:30 (classic worship) or 10:30 (creative worship).