Long Nights

       This Sunday marks the winter solstice, the shortest day and longest night, caused by the earth’s tilt during its transit around the sun.  While it is technically an astronomical phenomenon, it also seems to be psychologically and emotionally the longest, darkest time of winter, as well!

      Simply on the psychological and emotional side, the long darkness gets a large proportion of people kind of down and tired, and a significant proportion of people suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder linked to light deprivation.  Add cold, grey skies, fatigue, and all the last minute things to do and pressures to deal with, and many people find this time of year tough to cope with.

      Add in the emphasis on family and celebration between Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year which can be hard for lots of people because their circumstances don’t match the forced cheeriness of the advertising and seasonal images, and quite a few souls struggle this time of year.  In any year, a certain number of families have suffered significant losses and hardships.  Families who have lost members in the early winter find the Christmas season emotionally draining, but anyone who has lost family members or friends in the whole year feels an extra stab of grief in the midst of happiness as we miss someone during the first Christmas after the person’s death.  Likewise it is hard for those whose lives have been disrupted by a long-distance move, change in circumstance, family dissolution, or economic hardship.  The feelings just don’t match expectations of the season.

      I remind you to treat yourself carefully if you find yourself overwhelmed by the season, and to be mindful of others around you who may be experiencing sadness or depression or whatever, and to offer a kindly hand and companionship instead of trying to “make them feel better.”  Winters happen.  Winters of the soul happen.  Sometimes they take a while to pass, but it doesn’t help to tell anyone they need to “get over it.”  Keeping someone company in their long night is a powerful help.

      A great many churches, especially in recent years, have special worship services, usually on the fourth Sunday of Advent (close to the solstice) to address spiritually the darkness felt by many as sort of a counterpoint— a very necessary counterpoint— to the excessively “jolly” observance of the secular, shopping “Christmas” season.

      Blue Christmas services or Longest Night services take seriously not the just the psychological effects of the darkness but also the spiritual sorrow and grief felt by many.  Most such worship services dwell gently in that emotional eventide as well, allowing us to settle into it and work through it as the natural progressing of life and seasons and sadness.  So many times society in general is uncomfortable with those wintery dark feelings and experiences and tries to dismiss them or chase them away with all the lights and noise.  But just like having a floodlight blast you in the eyes in a dark room hurts your eyes, all the seasonal cheer hurts someone’s soul, giving them the same sort of squinting reaction.  Many such worship services use dim lights, quiet, and a chance for our souls as well as our eyes to get used to the darkness.  And, when we get used to darkness, we see and experience much more in the shadows: more grace, more calmness.  There is more helpful stuff there when there is less contrast from megawatts of decorations.  Darkness is not always bad.  A long night can provide spiritual relief and reflection.

      Oddly, the rising familiarity with Longest Night or Blue worship service provides a much deeper context for the Biblical Christmas story and the spiritual light dawning in human darkness.  We have become more aware of how many of us dwell in lands of deep darkness, into which the Light has shined, and the stunning hope and health which God offers us in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ makes much more sense, and becomes the best sort of Good News.  If there is such a worship service you can attend, I encourage you to go, and perhaps accompany someone who would value the experience.

      “The people who have dwelled in darkness, on them has light shined.”  On us has light shined.

                                                                                         In Christ,

                                                                                               
                                                                                         David


The Weekly Word is available on blog! Read the post and click here to leave a comment!

Texts For Sunday Worship:

      From the Hebrew Bible      2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16
      From the Epistles              Romans 16:25-27
      From the Gospels             Luke 1:26-38

Moral Morass

      This has been another infuriating week for those of us versed in moral theology!
The release of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Detention and Interrogation Program detailing not only the circumstances of the detention of prisoners by the CIA but also the euphemistically called “enhanced interrogation techniques” by CIA officers and contractors is a stunning confirmation of concerns raised over time about the treatment of detained persons in the “war on terrorism.”  The careful bureaucratic language (based on careful bureaucratic recordkeeping, ironically enough) details what most people would call torture, rape, deprivation, abuse, and violence under the color of authority.
The summary report reveals a systemic abuse of human rights which happened because not just the legal and intelligence systems but also thousands of people lost their moral compass.  It confirms the worst expectations of many and has ignited yet another storm of opposing perspectives.  And a lot of ugly words.

      The study reveals stunning lapses— violations, really— when it comes to the moral and humane treatment of persons no longer combatants according to international law and according to just war theory.

      Clearly, the basic rationale for the mistreatment of persons was that the urgency of obtaining actionable intelligence to prevent or apprehend those responsible for terroristic activities, especially right after the 9/11 attacks, was extraordinary and that it justified unusual tactics.  The takeaway lesson of the study is that even by a brutal pragmatic analysis, the techniques did not advance their stated purpose.  So even the exponents of [philosophical] pragmatism (the disciples of William James, John Dewey, W.V.O. Quine, Wilfred Sellars, and others) would have concluded that the abuses were not justified.  That is, the results were not justifiable even on a brutal cost-benefit analysis.  For those of us with theologies and philosophies having absolute values, the approach cannot be morally justified (unless your central values are fear, retribution, violence, greed, and subjugation of others).

      Violence begets violence, even by “nice” U.S. personnel, and it appears to me that rage and retribution fueled far more of the interrogations than we thought.  Oddly, those who object to the release of the document because it will inflame anti-U.S. sentiment are supporting that era’s U.S. anti-arab sentiment, that, so inflamed, led to abuses being so easily justified.  A less emotional calculation would have suggested to the CIA that the fallout of the abuses would have been far greater than the gains, leading to a pragmatic decision not to use torture.  To say nothing of avoiding charges of human rights violations in international tribunals and public opinion.  To say nothing of a moral decision not to use torture.

      Moral theologians and philosophers have long warned of the slippery slope of looking to future harm not caused as a basis for decisions, because the human ability to predict circumstance that have not yet happened is limited at best, and it cannot be used as a primary term.  In this case, there should have been calculations of how likely future terrorism might be, and whether that likelihood greatly exceeded the real harm caused in preventing it.  In retrospect, in both pragmatic and just war theories, the program did not meet that threshold.

      The report also raised concerns that official legal opinions and permissions somehow make something legal or moral.  In short, does declaring that certain enhanced techniques are legal and not torture, in fact, mean they are not, or is there another standard against which techniques must be evaluated, such as violating U.S. or international law or as meeting the accepted definition of torture.  Or, more broadly, does “legal” actually mean moral and permissible.  I expect there will be lots of discussion on this both in courts and public opinion.

      It has taken me many paragraphs simply to get to a religious or moral evaluation of these abuses of human rights.  As citizens of the U.S., we have certain shared values of how we as a nation act and how we wish to be regarded around the world.  Our history has many examples of our shared desire to be “moral” and “good.”  We have typically declared our support of the victims of oppression or invasion, and have long called to task regimes past and present for their abuses of human rights.  Our schools and faith communities teach those broad truths and values, and this includes our military training.  So it appears to me that we have certain moral standards we believe in, and for which many have fought and died to preserve.  Those implicit values are violated by the activities of the CIA and others.  So by historical U.S. standards, the behaviors in the report are immoral.

      For those of us adhering to traditional Christian moral theologies, the report is even more horrifying, for we root the humane treatment of others in the revealed will of God, variously defined.  I am astonished that persons reared within Christian contexts would have been comfortable participating or justifying such abuses.  (I expect there was a lot of psychological compartmentalization or distress among the perpetrators, and I worry about them.)  The constant Biblical reminder that only God knows the future calls into question all calculations about preventing further enemy actions; we just cannot know that for sure, much less cause great harm to forestall undefined potential harm.  Even the somewhat coarse histories of the Hebrew testament fence violence and imply that it must be morally justifiable for the safety of the nation.  There are several notable occasions where abuse of others by those in power have led to their removal, execution, or destruction by God.  No one is apart from God’s judgment.

      The revelation of God’s love in Christ Jesus places the abuse of persons in even starker light.  I have seen dozens of references to how wrong it is for followers of a person tortured to death by authorities to support the torture by authorities of anyone, in this context and in the context of police violence.  Jesus himself reminds the powers-that-be many times that they are not above God’s laws and justice.  The New Testament has many reminders that it is our duty to protect and support the weak and powerless, the hungry and cold, the least of our neighbors.  And, explicitly, the Bible speaks of protecting and helping the prisoner.  So there is a well-defined and long-held moral imperative in Christian thought against human rights abuses and torture, particularly since World War I and II and persisting even through the moral ambiguity of Viet Nam.  If anything, Christians would seek to be on the side of the victim instead of the torturer.
     
      So pragmatically, philosophically, theologically, morally, and religiously, the human rights abuses of persons who are not still active combatants is wrong.  As in immoral.  Calling something an “enhanced interrogation technique” does not whitewash torture.  I believe it is our duty as citizens and our calling as followers of Christ to repudiate the actions detailed in the study and seek justice and righteousness and forgiveness instead.

                                                                                         In Christ,

                                                                                               
                                                                                         David


Texts For Sunday Worship:

      From the Hebrew Bible     Isaiah 61:1-4
      From the Epistles             1 Thessalonians 5:16-24
      From the Gospels             John 1:6-8, 19-28

Woeful Days

      The non-indictment in the Eric Garner case honestly stunned me.  And knocked the smugness out of me about the non-indictment in the Michael Brown case.  I had hoped for better, although I don’t know why; I am way to aware of systemic racism and the self-protective nature of the criminal justice system.  No way to escape it: it’s not just in the South, nor in the border states like Missouri, but in New York and New York City and Ithaca and Elmira.  We’ve known it all along, but this makes it too obvious to continue ignoring.  White privilege and systemic injustice cannot be ignored, and it is time for people of conscience, faith, and morality to confront it personally and societally.

      We have a racism problem, and, I believe, we have a prophetic problem.  Our contemporary mainline church (and certainly most societies in the world now) are mostly on the receiving end of the words of the Biblical prophets.  We would like to imagine ourselves being prophetic, but in fact, we may need to reform ourselves to the words of the prophets.  Maybe we are the “them” the prophets preached against.

      For example, the prophet Amos was an outsider, a freelancer in an age when there were lots of hereditary established professional prophets, who mostly reinforced the establishment’s line.  Amos rather unpopularly reminded Israel that God was watching their behavior when it came to the poor and vulnerable and outcast and outsider.  The rich were getting richer at the expense of the poorer by setting things up so the poor had to pay and pay, until they were so in debt that the rich could simply take over their property.  The ethnic outsiders and resident aliens (the non-Israelites) were marginalized and penalized.  Amos said woe to Israel for violating the laws of God protecting the vulnerable.  Isaiah and Jeremiah also scorched Israel of their days for consolidating wealth and privilege and power at the expense of the small.  Jesus refrains their words with great regularity, directing his words to the religious and economic establishment.  The lovely Magnificat is Mary’s exultation that the mighty are toppled and the poor elevated by God’s new creation.

      For most of our existence, the Christian Church has given lip service to the words of justice and right social behavior and fair distribution of wealth, presuming we are on God’s side.  I fear that seems pretty hollow these days, and it is time to read those “Woe untos” as directed at us.  The good news is that enough times the powerful and privileged in the Bible listened and repented and redirected themselves and reformed.  Sometimes not, but I’m hopeful we can read and learn and apply the prophets to our day.

      I have a systems approach.  Vocationally, it is a good perspective for diagnosing and improving how congregations live.  Theologically, it also gives me a perspective on social systems in general, and racism and police violence in this particular instance.  Paul’s use of “principalities and powers” might well be useful again.  Where the ancient Greeks used those words cosmologically about tiers of heavenly and infernal and earthly hierarchies, I would apply them to the big, impersonal, corporate and societal systems that have their own internal logic and way of perpetuating their existence by subtly inculcating their values and processes and structures into those participating in them.  After a while, the structures are so strong and so invisible that no one even realizes that they are shaped by the structures, or, even, pushed into acting certain ways because “that’s the way it’s always been.”  It’s even hard to step outside the systems you are within to see them, much less to change them.

      That’s why we can have nice people perpetuating bad things unintentionally.  We can have structural racism without being individually racist.  And it is why things are so resistant to a solution.  The powers and principalities are tough.

      We have to read our Bibles from a different direction than we used to.  We may need to read from the other side even.  We have to dig into the prophetic polemic against injustice and harming the poor or unnoticed… the vulnerable.  God has a powerful and persistent preferential bias for the least of God’s human children, a theme constantly throughout the Bible and Biblical prophets and throughout church history and succeeding generations of prophets, through Martin Luther King Jr. and those in the streets of the U.S. this week.  WE may need to listen more willingly than ever before, but we are not unequipped.  The liberation theologians and feminist theologians and urban theologians of the 20th and 21st centuries give us the tools to re-think and reframe our actions.  Like Amos, they have warned us to get with God’s program of justice and righteousness, even in the face of privilege.

      Mind you, we cannot romanticize this and pretend it will be easy or non-costly to us.  Jesus constantly warns his followers how ancient Israel “killed the prophets before them” when they raised God’s preference for protecting the vulnerable.  The deaths throughout the civil rights era are close at hand, as are the recent deaths.  A difference in which I find glimmer of optimism is that the prophets and modern martyrs were one person at a time protesting unrighteousness; now we have the chance for many, many, too many to kill prophets to raise their voices and change their presumptions and reform the way we interact in society.  Many can take the side of the vulnerable.

      We are at another of those watershed moments in our common life.  Do we choose to stand with the disenfranchised and demeaned and dying? Do we stand with Jesus who loves the least of our sisters and brothers?  Or will the prophets’ woes fall on our deaf ears.  Israel listened.  In our best moments, the church of the past listened.  Today, will we? Protests can be prophetic.

                                                                                                          In Christ,

                                                                                                                

                                                                                                          David
                                                                                                          

Texts For Sunday Worship:

      From the Hebrew Bible     Isaiah 40:1-11
      From the Gospels             Mark 1:1-8

“A voice was heard in Ramah,
  wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
  she refused to be consoled,
  because they are no more.”

      Matthew quotes that passage from Jeremiah 31 right after the tale of the magi going back home another way to avoid Herod’s troops, whom he then dispatches to kill the infants in Bethlehem.

      It was hard not to think of it Monday evening after the announcement that officer Darren Wilson would not be indicted for the death of Matthew Brown in Ferguson MO.

      At the end of October, the Synod of the Northeast (Presbyterian Church U.S.A.) had a presentation by Dr. Margaret Aymer, Associate Professor for New Testament at the Interdenominational Theological Center and a Teaching Elder in the PCUSA on the systemic issues leading to the protests for justice in Ferguson.  Aymer outlined several structural factors: redlining which directs people of color into neighborhoods starved of resources; the “broken window” theory underlying aggressive policing in those neighborhoods; a modern-day “debtors’ prison” system in which fines levied disproportionately on the poor (often African-American) who cannot pay small original fines (largely for nonviolent or vehicle infractions) have additional fines and fees laid on them until they are jailed for non-payment; the militarization of police departments through the Department of Defense Excess Property Program; and the history of lynching never far from people of African-American background which is manifest in “the Talk” parents tell their children how to be submissive when approached by law enforcement so they are not injured, arrested, or killed.  All of those factors collided on that morning in Ferguson in the fatal shooting of an unarmed youth and the community reaction and the police reaction.  Those factors also appeared to me at play in Monday’s non-indictment and cascading reactions to it.

      I sat with an elder from Newark who told me of a recent time when that person was stopped at an intersection, looked across to see a police car, and carefully pulled out.  The police officer u-turned, turned on the lights and stopped the elder.  When the elder asked what was going on, the police officer said, “you were staring at me.”  The elder said, “I didn’t mean to.”  “Well, get out of town.”  Mind you, she is a retired school teacher and educational consultant, with greying hair, hardly noteworthy except that she is African-American.  When a deputy turns lights on behind me, I expect that it is yet another burned-out headlight.  Not that I might be confronted, berated, possibly pulled from the car, or arrested.  I cannot imagine how, if a grandmother feels such racism going about her daily activities, how a young black male must feel every minute being outside of his home in some communities.  Recent confrontations in Ithaca point out that even here people are not immune.

      There will be some serious conversations in the next weeks, and I pray they will get beyond conversation and into healing and justice and enhancing well-being for everyone in all communities.  But our history of actually dealing with racism and majority privilege is bad.

      Lots of people will be taking sides, of course, and many will suggest that their perspective is God’s, but the harsh reality of Matthew’s account of the “slaughter of the innocents” by the powers-that-be is that God was not actually coopted by the Herodian security apparatus but was with the mothers crying over the bodies of their babies.  Christ is not likely to be wearing armor or protecting the status quo, but in midst of the community suffering.  White, privileged, well-off people like me might want to think really deeply about that as we begin the Advent season preparing for the birth again of the Prince of Peace.

                                                                                                     In Christ,                                                                                                                                                                               
                                                                                                      David


Texts For Sunday Worship: 
      From the Hebrew Bible       Isaiah 64:1-9
      From the Epistles               1 Corinthians 1:3-9
      From the Gospels               Mark 12:24-37

Thanks

     I have no proof the author of this tweet lives in Buffalo, but….
             Church Curmudgeon ‏@ChrchCurmudgeon 
      I can’t believe they're putting out the Christmas weather before Thanksgiving.

      Somewhere between the ads for turkeys and department store sales, the handy-dandy tips for cooking the perfect Thanksgiving repast, the promos for the football games, the giant inflatable lawn decoration pilgrims and turkeys, and the barrage of ads, we seem to have lost Thanksgiving as a day of reflection and, well, thanksgiving!  Not even the elementary school reenactments of the first thanksgiving with pilgrims and native Americans sitting and eating together have prevented this Thursday’s holiday from being buried by Christmas decorations and catalogs.  Singing the doxology as a table grace has been overwhelmed by the din blaring from store PA speakers.  I don’t know whether it has to do with our society losing touch with the whole concept of thankfulness and expressing gratitude and trusting the God whose providence sustains us every bit as much as it did the first European settlers to the new colonies or whether it has to do with Thanksgiving being resistant to being manipulated into a marketing opportunity.  You can’t sell Thanksgiving day like Halloween or Christmas, so it gets reduced to a fancy feast followed by football, the day before heading off for the official first day of Christmas shopping.  And I think something important gets lost.

      Thanksgiving.

      Giving thanks gets lost.  It’s a real problem, given that the church believes all that other stuff comes from the God who preserves, protects, and provides for us.  You see, the big problem for mass marketing Thanksgiving is that it’s a holy day not based on us!  Thanksgiving focuses on God, not humanity, and that’s kinda out of fashion right now.  Mercifully, there are enough souls out there who do grasp the deep and significant nature of providence and thankfulness that in most homes it is still a day of gathering with family and friends and a celebration of togetherness and even a pause to recognize that we have been brought this far by a God who loves us and takes care of us.  And in a way, I guess I’m glad that the advertising and retail industries have been unable fully to co-opt Thanksgiving.  In fact, even those folks seem to have a residual recognition of the significance of Thanksgiving Day and thanksgiving.  Even they realize it’s not all about us!

      The distinctive thing about “thanksgiving,” to my mind, that goes beyond a mere “thank you,” is that it is a transaction between humans and God.  There are psalms of thanksgiving, prayers of thanksgiving, and so forth.  The point of the first settlers’ feast was thanksgiving to God that they had actually made it through the winter alive.  Without getting into the debates about the historicity of it all, the Plymouth colonists were plenty thankful to the existing population for helping them survive in their new home.  The real thanksgiving was to God for the providence and protection God had afforded them.  Their piety was to rejoice in the good rather than question the bad.  They saw a deep and strong connection to God in everything they did.  They were aware of how dangerous their circumstances were and how unlikely to survive they were, so they counted it a blessing that they survived and were ready to continue.  That is an amazing sense of providence.  They knew they were dependent on God to make it, so they were also very, very grateful.  Living much closer to God’s care and providence than our society, they were correspondingly more willing to express and celebrate that.  Gratitude for God’s care and support and grace is what we call thanksgiving, transcending mere human thankfulness.

      If you switch gears back to thanksgiving, the seasonal arrival of Thanksgiving Day and Harvest Home remind us that all we have, all we have received as gifts, all that we have harvested in our lives and received to our good are ultimately from God.  Above all, it is a chance to refocus on God’s providence and providing and how we share the blessing.  We recapture a sense of thankfulness and thanksgiving, and we thank God.  Even very secular souls use that pilgrim language about blessing and thanksgiving. We recapture that pilgrim thankfulness, as we return to God a portion of what God has given us.  And so, with genuine gratitude, with some thanks expressed to the people who have been blessings to us, and with a large portion of genuine, extravagant thanksgiving to our God who loves and saves us, let us all go to our Thanksgiving observances this week, filled with gratefulness and joy as we gather together... to share in God’s blessing!

                                                                    In Christ,

                                                                            
                                                                      David


The Weekly Word is available on blog! Read the post and click here to leave a comment!


Texts For Sunday Worship:

      From the Hebrew Bible    Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24
      From the Epistles             Ephesians 1:15-23
      From the Gospels             Matthew 25:31-46

Living and Dying… at the same time

      So there was a link on CNN.com for an opinion piece called “How Brittany Maynard forced us to look at death.” Daniel Burke actually does a very nice job writing about our societal discomfort with death and dying even yet.  He makes a good point about how times previous to ours and other cultures beyond American mass culture have in fact confronted the reality of death and learned how to deal with it.  So I guess my immediate, snarling reaction was directed at the headline writer: “Hey, we’ve been looking at death all along!  And it’s not a big scary news story!”

      I’ve occasional said, that for pastors, like EMTs and police officers and ER staff and undertakers and Hospicare, “Death is a presenting issue.”  A lot of other helping disciplines deal with death, but for counselors it’s often more like unresolved grief or trauma about a death that are the presenting issues.  For a small number of jobs, death is itself the matter at hand.

      The piles of unformed and not-very-informed words heaped up about Maynard’s decision to die more on her terms threw me back a couple of decades to Kubler-Ross’ work, which was an early model of how people react to the process of dying.  Certainly it is one of the most common models.  It had the advantage of being concise and from a psychological perspective.  Looking back, it may have been simplified, but it got the topic into conversation.

      Given that, by and large, most people die “just the one time,*” that in the sixties someone felt the need to describe the stages of dying or having someone close die is an interesting societal development.  My personal read is that in the mid-20th century, and especially in urban and suburban areas, dying became “hospitalized.”  Just as childbirth went from homes and midwives in mainstream U.S. culture to hospitals, so did the natural processes of dying.  In just a couple of generations, most people died in hospitals, even of natural causes.  And by not dying in the presence of family, a surprising lot was lost, psychologically, societally, and religiously speaking.  So it’s not surprise that Kubler-Ross came up with a clinical description of what was by then a too-clinical situation.

      The medial industrial complex had turned dying into a medical problem instead of a natural part of human life.  And it has taken quite some time to refind a healthier understanding.  Bodies die.  It’s just a fact.  But people inhabit those bodies, people with hopes and fears and all the rest, and we have different reactions to those last days.  And, of course, other people love people who are dying, and they, too, have hopes and fears and different reactions.

      Before death became a clinical problem, most people through history hoped for a “good death.”  It was more than a calm or peaceful slipping away or bravery in battle or at the end of a good stewardship of one’s allotted days, it was a desire to show faith and style as one died, hopefully leaving a sense of peace to one’s survivors and a good lesson about faith and wisdom about living and dying.  The Greeks felt is was a civilized, wise person’s last duty to demonstrate a good way of dying.  Epicurus said, “The art of living well and the art of dying well are one.”  Think of the stories of last words on the deathbeds of famous personages in the 18th and 19th centuries.  People passed from this world surrounded by loved ones and neighbors and friends, not beeping machinery.

      I’m glad that we have rehumanized dying, although I’m not sure that “death with dignity” is the best catchphrase, either.  Even since I began ministry I’ve seen the medical profession changing away from fighting death to understanding and listening to the patients as people, people with feelings and hopes and fears.  I have seen the steady rise of hospice movement seeking a more dignified and holistic context for what none of us can escape, particularly in some of the slower ways human bodies cease to work.  I rejoice in their work and witness.  I marvel at how much grace they share with the people they accompany.

      From the perspective of  communities of faith, we believe that there is far more to our human being than just the bodies we inhabit, and that there is something beyond us— call it spirit, energy, being, whatever, consider it personal or impersonal, call it religious or scientific, whatever— that intersects with our dying.  Being part of the larger whole is, by and large, comforting, and the stories and understandings of faith help us make the transition and help us when others we love are making the transition.  Death is not the end.  That does, as Paul puts it, take away the sting of death, for we know that death is not the last word.  Believers have been looking at death in a healthier context for a long, long time.  No matter how one conceives of that cosmic pool of being, of life, placing ourselves in that context makes a huge difference.  It eases our fears and awakens hope.

      Deciding to do the best you can with your allotted days is always a good thing, and it’s something the church has always believed in.  Deciding to do the best you can with the end of your allotted days is something the church has always provided help with, giving a wider, longer, better perspective on our lives, reassuring us that those we lose and those we leave behind will be OK.

      One of my favorite people has a pretty pessimistic prognosis, but she and the man who cares about her have been on a tour of the sights out west (the Grand Canyon of course) and the people around the country she loves, deciding to live her days on her terms.  She may be dying physically, but at the same time, she’s choosing life the whole way.  As a retired pastor, she knows what’s coming next, although she hates to be forced to leave by her illness too soon.  I’d say she’s choosing life with dignity, right through the end.

      We all know people who face the last chapters of this existence with more hope than fear, and our congregation has lovely examples present and past of good and gracious souls and the people who minister to them.  And people like that teach us far, far more about dying with grace than any CNN story.  Thank God there are so many who show us how to live and die with hope.

                                                                                  In Christ,

                                                                                          
                                                                                  David

 * bonus points for being able to tell me in what television show that line was used.


The Weekly Word is available on blog! Read the post and click here to leave a comment!


Texts For Sunday Worship:

      From the Hebrew Bible       Judges 4:1-7
      From the Epistle                 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11
      From the Gospels               Matthew 25:14-30

Entrance Polls

      The surveys tell us that the fastest growing religious group is “The Nones.”  Those who identify themselves as having no religious affiliation.  No religious affiliation.  No religious affiliation.  None.
    
      What is significant is that they do not identify with any religious tradition.  Not that they don’t belong to any particular institutional religious expression, but that they do not identify with any tradition or strand of any world religion.  Nones are nothing.  They are not Christian.  They are not Muslim.  They are not Buddhist.  They are not Jewish.  They are not Hindu, nor Baha’i, or folk religionist, or Confucian, Taoist, Sikh, Shinto, or even Wiccan.  They are not religious.  They consider themselves “None of the above.”  They are satisfied having no perspective on the world that includes a sacred dimension.

      It is kind of hard for someone like me who grew up in a faith-filled family to get comfortable with the idea of going through life with no religious component.  Most of the kids I grew up with had some sort of religion, whether Christian (although I grew up in a place and time when “Catholic” and “Protestant” might as well count as two different religions, not just Christian branches), Jewish, Muslim, Seventh Day Adventist, or Mormon.  There were a few free-thinkers who decided they weren’t anything, but even they grew up something.

      The thing about the modern demographic cohort of Nones is that they are, by and large, a generation reared by a generation of non-believers themselves, so they have essentially no context for religious experience.  Some of the inner stirrings they feel they label as “spiritual, but not religious.”  They have heard and read about spiritual things, but have absolutely no interest in some sort of organized expression of things on that plane.  This makes them religiously rootless.  And, from my perspective, it makes them interestingly spiritually rootless!  How the church (or any world religion) can helpfully interact with them becomes a wonderful, creative challenge.

      And, interestingly, Sunday’s Hebrew Bible story (following last week’s crossing of the Jordan into the Promised Land) concerns Joshua, son of Nun, the new leader of Israel in Canaan.  I simply cannot help myself enjoying the ironic pun, Joshua son of Nun and the Nones.

      In Joshua 24, Joshua Nun lays out before the people the chance to reaffirm their covenant with Yahweh, God Abraham and Sarah, God of Moses, to follow only God and to be God’s people, with all that entails— obedience, worship, humility, hope.  And as he places the challenge, he speaks those famous words, “As for me and my house, we will follow the Lord.”  He cannot force anyone to follow God, but he can declare his own allegiance and worship.  Gladly, the people affirm that as their choice, too.

      We cannot compel Nones even to consider a life of spirituality, but we can invite them to join us.  In fact, I believe it will be the sense of being bound into a community of faith that will enfold them far, far more than any appeal to their minds.  Feeling the love and support of a family of faith may very well make a difference.  Our best appeal will be that Nones see we cope with the troubles that befall us with a tiny bit more grace and a bit more success than those without the support of faith.  And it will be a soft, gentler sort of evangelism that catches their attention; we just handle life a bit better.  As for me and my family, I will follow God.  And I can help you meet the loving God, too!

                                                                                                   In Christ,                                                                                                                                                            
                                                                                                    David



Texts For Sunday Worship:
       From the Hebrew Bible      Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25
       From the Epistle                 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
      From the Gospels                Matthew 25:1-13

Thin Places, Thin Time

      As a Diana Butler Bass tweet reminded me, “Tomorrow begins a great cycle of thin space between this world and those worlds unseen: All Hallows Eve, All Saints Day, All Souls. It is a time to remember, to experience the power of liminality, to be grateful for our connection to the earth and to those who have gone before.”

      “Thin Places” are an ancient notion of places (and, I believe, times and experiences) where the barriers between this seen, tangible, touchable, understandable world and the unseen, spirit-filled, intangible, ineffable world seem weaker than elsewhere.  In Celtic spirituality, certain locations felt like gateways to the other worlds; certain groves seemed to be where the other realities were just on the other side of the trees, like if you went through you would find yourself in another dimension.  C.S. Lewis’ wardrobe is a thin place between England and Narnia.  Butler Bass grew up in Arizona, where the expanse of desert and expanse of sky touched, earth and heaven kissing lightly, a place where the barrier between expected and normal and the unexpected was razor thin.

      Certain times have the threshold between realities get really thin, too.  Traditionally, All Saints Day is one of them.  I have no idea whether there is something about this time midway between seasons where things are thinner and closer or whether we just notice the closeness that is always here because we’ve grown accustomed to allowing ourselves to feel it on the first of November.  It probably doesn’t matter.

      Non-scientific cultures don’t have as much problem with realities of matter and spirit intruding on each other or interconnecting or overlapping or interacting than we of European Enlightment descent.  I wonder if the current over-doing of Halloween is an unformed effort to reaquaint ourselves with those suppressed aspects of mystery and non-rational energy out there.  Of course, it gets overlaid with silliness and too much sugar and too much mock-gore and too much commercialism, but those are also ways of exerting control over the very uncontrollable features of death and life interwoven!

      The important part of All Saints Sunday is the recognition of the generations of Christian souls who have made us who we are, individually and congregationally, and to mark the passing of people precious to us.  Our foundations as Christians are deep in the past with the work and witness of imaginative and famous spirits and the work witness of “just plain” Christian folks, and it is all sorts whom we celebrate.  Some have passed over that threshold in the last year, and we remember them specifically in worship.  Yet we also can use this observance as a reminder of individuals dear to us and thank God for their presence in our lives.

      November also brings us Veterans Day or Remembrance Day or Armistice Day, depending on your country, marking the end of the Great War (World War I) on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918.  If you go to a national cemetery or a battlefield park, you can also sense the thinness of those places, places where death and life touch, places of memory and loss and gratitude, places where the best and the worst, the past and the future coexist.  We will have the traditional poppy flowers next week on the communion table to commemorate Remembrance Day just as we commemorate All Saints this week with reading names.

      Even in our Protestant tradition, we understand that there are times and places that feel liminal, feel like the boundaries are more permeable there and then, whether we consider those experiences spooky or deeply spiritual. Faith gives us a way to hold realities together, to let the secular and sacred touch, to kiss.  Communion is one moment, a sanctuary is one place.  May we place our hands and hearts on the thin places of God’s universe, and learn from them.

                                                                                                       In Christ,       
                                                                                                   
                                                                                                          David

Speaking of time: remember to set your clocks back for the end of Daylight Saving Time at 2 am Sunday!


Texts For Sunday Worship:
      From the Hebrew Bible      Joshua 3:7-17
      From the Epistle                 1 Thessalonians 2:9-13
      From the Gospels               Matthew 23:1-12

Bumpy

      Driving to the church through the strange obstacle courses that are Kline and Renwick jostled some of the wires in my brain enough to spark a thought about fixing and constructing things.  As you will tell by the end of my weekly wanderings, sometimes it is less about divine inspiration and more about weird mental short circuits!

      In this part of the country, there are plenty of jokes about road construction. Partly it is a consequence of the compressed working season.  Partly it is fatalism we will be stuck in long lines of closures, detours, single lane detours, and thousands of festive orange signs, barrels, and traffic cones.  Road work is both a fact of life and fertile source of sermon illustrations to commuting ministers parked in construction zones.

      There are a couple of very different approaches to fixing a rough patch of road.  There is dumping a few shovels of asphalt patch in a pothole, tamping it down, and letting us drive over it to the cheerful rattle of gravel in our fenderwells.  But sometimes it’s a lot more than a few holes, and a stretch of rough and ragged road needs to be repaired.  There is paving over damaged pavement with a couple of inches of asphalt which covers the problems and smooths things out…. for a while.  But the unevenness and damage and water seepage appears again after a few years.  And, although we kinda hate it, sometimes it required more drastic work like grinding the roadway down half a foot or more and repaving it with a new base and a new finish layer.  After all the damage suffered by Kline Road, that’s what they’ve done, gnawed it down to resurface.

      And, when things are really, really major, you get massive rebuilding.  While I worked for the Presbyterian Church in Watkins Glen, New York State undertook a half-year project to redo Franklin Street.  Over the years, the 19th century infrastructure began to collapse due to heavy modern truck traffic, requiring they excavate down below the drainpipes and sewer lines, the water and gas lines above them, and the electrical and phone lines near the surface.  In places, where the grade had changed markedly, they were stripping back six to eight feet deep.  They then redid the utilities, laid down layers of coarse to regular crushed stone, gravel, and then an eight-inch base layer of asphalt and a double-thick surface layer withstand the truck traffic.  It was a village-long project going all the way down like the Commons or parts of Hanshaw Road or the old section of Elmira Road.

      Twenty years later the rebuilt Franklin Street is still rock solid even as Watkins’ traffic has risen even more.

      You see my point?  First Congregational of Ithaca has been doing some major spirit work in the last months, and yes, it seems like it’s taking forever and why can’t we just pave over things and get on with it?  But doing too little is far worse than doing it right.  Although some churches during transitional times have to dig down to fix the utilities, FCCI hasn’t needed to.  The fundamentals are strong and in good shape (honestly!).  But it has needed to do more than quickly pave over the bumps and spongy parts.  We’ve had to grind off some of the patches and problems and fix some gullies and drainage and curbing and get back to solid footing before we repave and get on with our communal travel.  Sorta like Hanshaw Road, huh?  (If there was a part two to this blog I would riff on redoing the intersections on the main road and fixing the driveways by which families join traffic as being like how churches provide on-ramps for new participants to join the church family…)

      It is resource-intensive and time-consuming to do the deep work aright.  And, like road work that seems to last forever, properly doing the “infrastructure” part of the pastoral search takes time and effort.  And, like road work, we know that doing it right is worth it (although, honestly, we do like to complain about it while we are waiting for the machinery to rumble along or while jouncing along the torn up surface; just keep your muttering under your breath and be truly supportive of the Search Committee as they scrape away to the solid stuff and do the job properly, ok?).

      Notice that this image is about a road, not a parking lot.  We don’t do all of this to park and stay still.  Either roadways or congregations.  Roadwork and search work presuppose going someplace, not staying put.  We do it to get people moving in and out of our community of faith and family.  I believe doing the fundamentals correctly will be very, very interesting to people not currently part of FCCI.  And I believe there are folks out there waiting to drive on new lanes to the grace of God lived out from this place.  Folks are ready to move.  So let’s be ready for lots of new traffic!

                                                                    In Christ,                                                                                                                                             
                                                                      David

A quick reminder: our own Elizabeth Thonney will be leading worship this Sunday while I am off moderating the Presbyterian Synod of the Northeast.  My great appreciation to her!

Watering Faith

       I will admit that I really like baptisms.

      The are a lovely celebration of the church, a delightful day when (usually) an adorable baby or cute child is enfolded into the embrace of the church community, when the family of origin and the family of faith merge.  And did I mention that the guests of honor are adorable?

      So this Sunday we celebrate a baptism of a child of a child of the church, which reminds us (if I may crib from my Presbyterian liturgy) that the promises of the gospel belong also to our children.  In both UCC and Presbyterian tradition, the congregation functions collectively as what some traditions call “godparents.”  In answering the question of the congregation, we are all, all of us together, assenting to take care of and watch over and encourage and love the baptized child in a special relationship.  Often enough parents will ask some family friends or relatives to stand up with them in that familiar “god parent” role, and I like that supportive presence and encourage it.  But I never want parents to feel they are all by themselves in rearing their little ones if they don’t have someone standing there.  That’s because we are all standing there with parents and child as a really huge crowd of godparents; we are all in it with them!  I even like to have the other children in the congregation right up close and have some of them help pour the water in the font; they are the child’s sisters and brothers, too!

      And those promises to love and help the child grow in faith are why most congregations have children’s spiritual education programs to provide practical support for our children as they grow up.  We have Sunday School classes and then youth activities and a confirmation time as they mature.  All because we take being the god parents (and aunts and uncles and sisters and brothers and grandparents and….) seriously.  But that’s also why we encourage and enjoy them running around during fellowship time and why we vacuum up cookie crumbs after them.  This is the house of the family of faith.  We want them to feel loved and to grow to help others (that’s why we have mission trips!) in ways appropriate to them.  And in due time we hope the promises their parents make at baptism will become theirs, too, and they will confirm them in worship years hence to become part of the church themselves.  And to become “god family” for other children of the church!

      We say each Sunday at the beginning of our time together that “No matter who you are or where you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here.”  For Heidi McGowan, daughter of Ross McGowan and Carrie Richards, Sunday is the “official” beginning of her life journey in faith.  I’d love it if you could be there to get her off to a good, godly start!

                                                                    In Christ,                                                               
                                                           
                                                                    David


Texts For Sunday Worship:
      From the Hebrew Bible      Exodus 33:12-23
      From the Epistle                 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10
      From the Gospels               Matthew 22:15-22

If you read this Sunday’s Gospel lesson, you will probably go, “Huh? What is that all about?”  You probably will think the king in the parable is rather unreasonable. But this is one of Jesus’ parables that is not really about what we think it is about, but is about the interactions between the early church and mainstream Judaism.

      On the surface, it seems a moral teaching only.  And the idea that one should respond joyfully to the invitation of God (the king) and be prepared to celebrate the wedding feast is clear.  But looking at the context adds an interesting layer (this is, of course, why we value the historical/literary critical method of Biblical interpretation).  Last week we had the equally weird and brutal parable of the landowner who leased out a vineyard to ungrateful tenants who ignored and beat up and killed the servants sent to collect the harvest rent.  The landowner then sent his son, who was also killed by the tenants.  On the surface, it’s a warning not to mess with God and to return the first fruits to God.  But the addition of the “son” to that tale shifts it to a whole ’nother place.  Remember that this gospel was written in the historical context of the Roman crackdown on Israel including the sack of the temple and the siege of Masada.  So Matthew is suggesting obliquely that the destruction visited upon the nation was the result of not listening to the prophets (the servants sent ahead of time) and then killing “the son,” whom readers would recognize as “Jesus the Son of God.”  Matthew is pretty harsh about this, because the early church was experiencing quite a bit of hostility from the mainstream religious authorities at the time of his writing after the fall of Jerusalem.  Bluntly put, failure to recognize Jesus as the Messiah is why Jerusalem was flattened.  That diatribe is faintly echoed by other New Testament books, but no where as vindictively as Matthew, whose community appears to have suffered from a crackdown.

       So this Sunday’s passage continues the polemic, only going eschatological as well.  The king is rejoicing in the son’s wedding, a common gospel image of the realm to come.  The servants are again, allegorically, the prophets, some of whom Israel mistreated over the centuries and some of whom were killed, and the people blew off the invitation.  Allegorically again, the king sends troops (read: Romans).  Then the invitation goes out to the riff-raff and unaffiliated, in other words, non-Jews.  Here is Matthew’s allegorical explanation of how Gentiles and “not nice” people (like the tax collectors, prostitutes, un-religious, Greeks and Romans and whoever) get in to the heavenly banquet instead of the first round of invited guests.  If Israel blows off the invitation to the joyful feast of the realm of God, then anyone and everyone else gets to attend.  And that is how the rest of the world is invited after Israel ignores God.

      But what about that guest who got caught not wearing a wedding garment?  You’d think that if you suddenly got swept up in the bonus invitation you would be ok “dressed as you are.”  No, even then, you are expected to meet God’s minimum standards of deportment and behavior and holiness.  If you do not prepare yourself to be a follower of the Son, you won’t get in.  Following the commandments and doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with your God, and loving neighbors are all still required on the individual basis.  You still have to live up to the extra grace shown you.  You, too, have to understand and celebrate that Jesus is your Messiah once you respond to the extra-wide invitation.  The invitation is wide open, but you’ve got to respond in faith for yourself!

      I hope you can dress your soul up and attend God’s wide-open invitation this Sunday.  Remember?  No matter who you are or where you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here!

                                                                                               In Christ,                                                                                                                                                                
                                                                                                David


Texts For Sunday Worship:
        From the Hebrew Bible      Exodus 32:1-14
       From the Epistle                  Philippians 4:1-9
      From the Gospels                Matthew 22:1-14

There’s a Wideness

      As you know, I’m from the Presbyterian, Reformed, tradition, and we just adore the whole ecumenical cooperation thing and, especially, World Communion Sunday, the first Sunday in October when many congregations around the world all witness to our unity around the Holy Table.

      But the United Church of Christ simply blows me away with its commitment to witnessing to the unity of all Christ’s people.  Time and again I find references in UCC documents, liturgy, and writings a deep, abiding commitment to Jesus’ prayers in the Gospels that all his disciples be one.  That desire actually to demonstrate to the world Christ’s desire that we be one church is all the way through its life and structure.  In fact, it was the gathering of four very diverse traditions— the Congregational (mostly in New England) and Christian Churches (largely in the upper Midwest) which united in 1926, and the Evangelical and Reformed (primarily German Reformed) Churches which united in 1934.  Each pair was driven by the conviction that the many splintered denominations around the globe were an affront to God and that humans should try to bring ourselves back together, although they realized that even bringing near-neighbors like the E&Rs together was plenty difficult.  Still they persisted, and, having united in those partnerships, responded to the post-World War II ecumenical impulse by entering negotiations to unite yet further. On June 25, 1954 in Cleveland, the Congregational Christian Church and the Evangelical and Reformed Churches became the United Church of Christ.  The simple name reflects the witness, a united church worshiping and serving Christ.  It has been a passionate, progressive voice for social justice, spiritual renewal, openness, grace, hope, and the proclamation of God’s love in the world.  We can be proud to stand in that heritage.

      Which makes the celebration of World Communion Sunday right down our alley!  If there is any opportunity to demonstrate that all Christ’s followers are joined together, a world-wide exhibition of our unity is a great way to not only talk about it but act it out.  Even if it is one congregation at a time and a bit imperfect (in that we still can’t quite manage to get even all the congregations in a single town to set up a couple of block-long table down the main street and sit down together), it’s a way of at least pushing our boundaries and trying to symbolize that “we are one in the Spirit, one in the Lord.”

      A little history: In 1936 the first Sunday in October was celebrated in Presbyterian churches in the United States and overseas as “World Wide Communion Sunday.”  From the beginning, it was planned so that other denominations could make use of it and, after a few years, the idea had spread.  The Department of Evangelism of the Federal Council of Churches (a predecessor body of the National Council of Churches) was first associated with World Wide Communion Sunday in 1940 when the department’s executive secretary, Jesse Bader, led in its extension to a number of churches.  It is celebrated in quite a few traditions, although most commonly among mainline protestant denominations.  Still it’s one of the best ways we have of visibly showing we believe in a deep spiritual unity as Christ’s disciples.

      A key part of our UCC celebration on any communion Sunday is the open invitation to the table.  Unlike some other denominations, we don’t have “requirements” or restrictions on who may or may not commune.  We take Jesus’ own invitation to those who believe in him seriously and welcome all to the table Jesus has prepared.  Who are we to stand between someone and our Savior?  That’s a truly “wide” invitation!  It’s one of the ways we live out the UCC national slogan, “No matter where you are on life’s journey, you’re welcome here.”  Everyone is welcome around the big white and gold draped wooden table in front of the large wooden cross at the front of our quilt-rich sanctuary at 309 Highland Road.

      Last Sunday I proposed a little challenge:  invite someone to World Communion Sunday on October 5th.  Seriously!  Ask some family, friends, coworkers, neighbors who haven’t been to a church in a while, or maybe even ever, or maybe who had a bad experience with church or who has felt left out or excluded, and offer to pick them up or meet them and walk in with them and show them the way.  (Studies show that people who have not been in a particular worship service are very afraid of making a mistake or of not knowing anyone there, so accompanying them and helping them find their way around the service and the building is a huge help.)  If that first person isn’t interested, ask someone else.  Seriously!  Try up to three invitations, even if they don’t accept, but at least try, OK?!?   Seriously!

      To round out worship this week, we will have the Cornell a cappela group, The Hangovers, and handbells, in addition to recognizing those of our congregation going to the Heifer Farm next week on a mission trip.  It will be a wonderful service to attend!
Jesus invites everyone to share in the meal which he has prepared… everyone. No matter where one is on life’s journey, all are welcome here.  All.

      Let’s make Jesus happy by displaying our unity around the world and our welcoming communion table.

                                                                                          In Christ,
                                                                                     
                                                                                         David


Texts For Sunday Worship:
      From the Hebrew Bible      Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20
      From the Gospels               Matthew 21:23-32

Climate Change

      My eye was caught at the fitness center by the TV tuned to that cable news channel I never turn on myself, describing over scenes of the NYC march against climate change, the guest referring to the people there as “wackadoodles.”  The people assembling for the UN climate conference were an incredible cross-section of global concern, and to dismiss them was insulting.  Since the week before I was at a meeting where one of my colleagues needed to leave early to moderate one of the panels of experts, I have first hand familiarity with some of the people involved.  She is the Presbyterian Disaster Assistance coordinator after Superstorm Sandy, helping the presbyteries of northern New Jersey, Long Island, and downstate New York.  PDA, like a lot of agencies, is shifting from recovery mode to “resilience” efforts.  That’s a shift to rebuilding to improved standards, using wetlands to absorb storm surges, providing barriers to flooding, providing evacuation and shelters.  It is also a shift to planning for “when” storms will cause havoc, not whether.  Interestingly to me, much of it is driven by insurance and economics.  At that level, the debate over climate change is irrelevant; those who look at the costs are assuming significant losses will occur based on rising sea levels.  There is no ideology in their calculations, just data.  I personally do not find the alliance of religious organizations, insurance companies, climate scientists, and persons who live in at-risk areas to be “wackadoodles.”

      It seems a prod in the ribs for the Exodus lesson this Sunday to be the tale of water from the rock at Massah and Meribah.  That was an age when people and societies were much closer to nature and felt a greater connection between nature and the divine.  We, in our time, are more insulated from the processes of nature… until something big happens.

      The root text is from Genesis 1:26, what has long been translated as humans having “dominion” over nature.  More recent translators prefer “stewardship” or “management” as being closer to the Hebrew than the haughty superiority suggested by “dominion.”  And, really, until the industrial revolution, it wasn’t that big a deal, predominately because humans really couldn’t do all that much to the planet.  Yes, poor agricultural practices caused problems, but with industrialization came large-scale landscape changes, lots more carbon emissions and pollution, and our hand upon the earth became heavier.

      Actually, from a faith perspective, we kind of are at fault.  By “we” I mean the northern European renaissance and the Reformation which are predominate theoretical drivers of the developed world.  Yep, the oldline mainlines like the Presbyterians and Congregationals.  Individualism, scientific process, the development of technologies, the shift from agrarian to industrial society, the glorification of profit, and the corporation, came along rapidly, literally changing the planet.  The Reformation added a sense of Godly approval to the domination of earth.  Extracting minerals and energy sources replaced the stewardship of the earth so crops could flourish.  Further, Protestantism encouraged “getting ahead” and personal wealth, especially in the circles inhabited by leaders of industry.  Being successful became a moral and theological good, unbridled by a sense of community welfare.  So the variant of Christianity among the successful classes in England, northern Europe, and the United States read that old word, “dominion,” and ran with it.

     So there are days when I believe, in addition to the social and scientific reorientation so clearly discussed, that we of the “successful” Protestant Church have some atonement to do, as well.  Our theology was too willingly co-opted to support poor (to downright dangerous) environmental practices, and it is necessary for us to repent and refocus and return to a right and sustainable stewardship or management of the planet God has placed us upon.  It’s not just a matter of marching, not just a matter of engineering, but a matter of spirituality.

      May God continue to teach us a wiser way!

                                                                        
                                                                            David


Texts For Sunday Worship:
       From the Hebrew Bible      Exodus 17:1-7
       From the Epistle                 Philippians 2:1-13
       From the Gospels               Matthew 21:23-32