Triumph, Turmoil, Transformation

Weekly Word from the Interim Pastor

The bulletin covers for Palm Sunday had three words over the green palms fronds: “Triumph, Turmoil, Transformation.”  While that immediately applied to the events and emotions of Holy Week, it also applies to our lives and to our community life as a people of faith.

The up-down-up of Passion Week fits with a lot of our experiences as we move through life.  We are in a good place, happy, excited, healthy, wealthy, and wise.  Then we get slammed by something, and we are brought low.  We are crushed under the burden of troubles, of hardship, of complications, of Good Friday.  That is when it is so very, very hard to remember that darkness is not the end of the story.  Not that we can ever totally avoid darkness, mind you.  But we do not need to fear it or worry that we will be stuck in turmoil and pain and darkness.  We know-- even as we sit in Good Friday-- that Easter will arrive, that sun will burst through the night of the soul, that the Son will burst from death’s darkness, that love will win.  We know that.  We know that!

A number of years ago a crude bumper sticker was popular, loosely translated for church purposes as “Stuff Happens.”  This is the week when we plaster over it our own version, our version of hope and belief: “Grace Happens, Too!”

The subtlety of Passion Week, psychologically and spiritually, is that we don’t stay at Good Friday.  We know Easter will dawn.  But we can only get to Easter through Good Friday.  There is no other way to the green pastures except through the valley of the shadow.  But we can get to the green pastures on the other side of the valley (whatever valley we are trudging through).  But Easter will always arise to pull us past Good Friday.  We may need to wait it out, but God promises that there will be resurrection on the other side.  We have God’s word on that.

It is the same for a faith community like First Congregational which has been in turmoil.  You have to go through bad stuff sometimes, but the song of Easter is that God will get us through the Good Fridays of church life and brighten them with the sun of hope and love.  Granted, we will be trudging through a bit more of the valley of the shadow as we work through recent experiences here, but I assure you God’s grace is sure and that new life will dawn here in God’s good time.  Good Friday can happen.  But Easter always happens.

Wherever you celebrate it this Sunday, Happy Easter.  Christ is risen indeed!
                                                                                                          
                                                                   In Christ,

                                                                              David


Texts For Sunday Worship:
Hebrew Bible          Isaiah 65:17-25
Epistles                  Acts 10:34-43
*Gospels                John 20:1-18

Note: These texts will be read in the worship service and the one with an asterisk will be used as the focus for the proclamation of the word.

Holy Week

Interim Pastor’s Ponderings
           
           I love Palm Sunday!  There is something about the children leading the procession with “All Glory Laud and Honor,” the majestic hymn and the bopping little ones.

           That odd counterpoint of upbeat and solemn, of kids flailing palm fronds at each other (even some adults!) and the march of the King, the glory and the donkey, is a part of the psychology of Palm Sunday for the church.  We know that after the triumphant entry comes a week of turmoil and fear and discouragement.  Yet we also know that triumph will return with resurrection on Easter.  It’s just the way it is.

           It can be easy to skip from the mountain top experience of Palm Sunday right over Holy Week to the super mountaintop of Easter without moving through the valley of the shadow in between.  This is why many churches and even this one fairly often observes this Sunday as “Passion Sunday” or “Palm and Passion Sunday,” reading the whole Biblical narrative of Jesus’ suffering as part of the liturgy so that everyone feels the emotions.  Still, the best way to experience, really experience the whipsaw of emotions is to attend the worships of Holy Week.

           I encourage you to participate in the whole drama of Holy Week.  We begin with the triumph of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday at morning worship.  We commemorate the Last Supper and hear the scripture of the last words in the darkening sanctuary on Maundy Thursday at 7:30 pm, and the tale of the Passion on Good Friday at 5:30 pm.  Then we gather for the Sunrise Service on Easter morning at 6:30 am at Lakeview, and have the two celebrations of the Resurrection at 9 and 11 am, with time to share fellowship.

          Come share the excitement and spring green of Palm Sunday.  Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.  Blessed are us when we celebrate in the name of Jesus!

                                       In Christ,
                                                  David


Texts For Sunday Worship:
*Luke 19:28-40
Philippians 2:5-11

Note: The texts in bold type will be read in the worship service and the one with an asterisk will be used as the focus for the proclamation of the word.

Interim Pastor’s Ponderings

    This week we observe the last week in the holy season of Lent.  Spiritually and psychologically it is a slow, meditative walk uphill, a time to think thoughts you don’t usually think about, thoughts about your life, your faith, your church, yourself, your self.  It is, historically, a time to change your behavior, to begin or deepen a spiritual discipline, to do something more engaged in serving the community and world, to reflect on what you don’t do so well and resolve to do better.  Lent is thinking and talking and praying about the reason Jesus turns his footsteps to the long walk uphill in Jerusalem: human sin and evil of which we are all part.  It is the last grey days of late winter before spring really arrives.

    So why?  So why “do” Lent?

    To be ready for the next act of the cosmic drama: Holy Week.  Lent is pre-season practice, it is chopping up the vegetables before cooking, it is turning the pieces over before doing the puzzle, it is tuning up or warming up before playing.  It is getting ready for the big thing.
          
    If you don’t “do” Lent, you don’t really appreciate the Biblical story of Holy Week, nor can you really appreciate the psychological and spiritual “mood swings” that accompany our holy journey.  Being inside a dim building (or inside your own head!) and stepping outside makes you blink in the bright sunlight.  That shock of light flooding the world is exactly what Easter is!
          
    So I encourage you to put the worship services here on the calendar on your refrigerator, on your office wall, on your computer, on your phone… on your mind, and participate in the whole drama of Holy Week.  We will begin with the triumph of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday at morning worship.  We commemorate the Last Supper and hear the scripture of the last words in the darkening sanctuary on Maundy Thursday at 7:30 pm, and the tale of the Passion on Good Friday at 5:30 pm.  Then we gather for the Sunrise Service on Easter morning at 6:30 am at Lakeview, and have the two celebrations of the Resurrection at 9 and 11 am, with time to share fellowship.
          
    Why have we “done Lent?” To rejoice in the Easter tidings, “He is risen! he is risen indeed!”  Come join us in the joy of new life in Christ Jesus our Savior!
                                                                                                          
In Christ,
 
David


Texts For Sunday Worship:
Isaiah 43:16-21
Philippians 3:4-14
*Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

Time Change!

One of my very few recurring nightmares comes this time of year when we adjust to Daylight Saving Time.

We've all seen people nonchalantly arrive at church at the end of the service, having forgotten to move their clocks ahead the night before, only to suddenly realize they are an hour late.  Probably more than a few of us have been the person arriving late, which makes us check and re-check the clocks in our house and worry about the one on the car dashboard.

But what makes my nightmare is when I arrive at church just in time for the benediction.... which I am supposed to be pronouncing.  I wake up in a panic that I am the one who is late.  Mercifully, with the cable box and my phone and computer adjusting automatically, time changes are much easier on me now.

Of course, the whole Standard and Daylight Saving thing is a human construct, a human-made way of delineating time.  For eons time was local and solar; the sundial in the town square set noon, and people just worked with when the sun came up or they popped awake and did things until it got dark and they got sleepy.  With the invention of hourglasses you could break the day up into watches or for hours of prayer, and mechanical clocks became useful.  But the town clock was still regulated by when the sun was highest in the sky, keeping the rhythm of nature.  We started imposing human constraints on "God's Time" in the 1840s with British railways, and in the U.S. in the 1870s with standardized time zones.  Changing an hour ahead to use longer summer days began during World War I, and now we have our vast, interconnected, international, atomic clock system.
 

Yet we cannot forget that it is a pretty much artificial system, designed by humans to impose human "control" on the natural progression of life through time.  And the "adjustments" like DST that are necessary to make it all work out only seem to be making the sun conform to our wishes.  We are only inventing ways to get our rigid system to fit better with planetary motion, whether you describe it with astronomical calculations or the stories in Genesis.  We happily like to believe we are in charge of time.  But in our better moments we realize time does its own thing!  It still snows after the groundhogs see their shadows.
 

Something like this happens between called pastors.  We have constructed all sorts of plans and calculations for calling a new pastor, but in reality, many of those are just labels we like to put on the Holy Spirit's true sense of time.  Self-studies and profiles and searches happen "in their own good time," even if we like to solemnly write things solemnly on a church calendar.  That is fine if we remember that, like the flowers coming up in the spring are responding to nature's time, that we are not really "in charge" of this time in between.
 

So we will be doing both, setting our watches and planning dates and times, yet like the ancients, we still need to look at the skies, watch stars, watch the way the wind moves the trees, and wait for the crocus and  daffodil to emerge.  God will look out for our time together.  The whole time!  I trust that.

 

Still......... my first Sunday here at FCCI is, ironically, the day we spring our clocks ahead... hmmm...

Come to worship and see if I make it "on time!"

Peace,

David

 

Texts For Sunday Worship:
Joshua 5:9-12
Psalm 32
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
*Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

Note: The texts in bold type will be read in the worship service and the one with an asterisk will be used as the focus for the proclamation of the word.

Rev. Richard S. Tosh

The Rev. Richard S. Tosh retired from Parish Ministry in June 2005 and from Nursing Home Chaplaincy in May 2007.  He was born in Pittsburgh, educated at Allegany High School (Cumberland MD), Franklin and Marshall Collage (Lancaster PA) and Princeton Theological Seminary.

He has served in ministerial leadership in American Baptist and United Church of Christ congregations in Connecticut, Vermont, North Dakota and New York.  He now lives in Trumansburg, while waiting for his new home to be completed in the third neighborhood at EcoVillage of Ithaca.


Texts For Sunday Worship:
Isaiah 55:1-9
Psalm 63:1-8
1 Cor 10:1-13
*Luke 13:1-9

Rev. Tom Lenhart

Our guest preacher this Sunday, The Reverand Tom Lenhart has been the Senior Minister at the First Congregational Church of Chappaqua, since June 2006. Tom graduated from Columbia University in 1968 with an A.B. In 1972, he graduated from Columbia Law School, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar. Upon graduation he became a Law Clerk to two United States District Judges in New York City. From 1973 through 2002 Tom was an Associate and then a litigation Partner with the law firm of Shaw Pittman (now known as Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, LLP), in its Washington, D.C. office. In the early 1990s he briefly served as an Adjunct Professor at Cornell University Law School.

In 2002 after 30 years in legal practice, he felt a different call and entered Harvard Divinity School, graduating with a Masters in Divinity degree in 2005. Tom was a student minister and then a ministerial member of the staff at North-Prospect UCC in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Since 2004, he has been on the Board of the "Outdoor Church"– an ecumenical church to the homeless in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is also President of the Chappaqua Interfaith Council and member of the Ordination and Standing Committee of the Metro Association of the UCC’s New York Conference.
Tom's wife Lynn has been a Christian Educator for 18 years, and currently serves First Church Congregational in Fairfield, Connecticut. They have three adult children, Amanda, James "JJ", and Abigail.

Texts For Sunday Worship:
Micah 6:1-8                               
*Luke 9:18-26

Rev. Barbara Blom

Our guest preacher this Sunday will be the Reverend Barbara E. Blom. She is a long time resident of Ithaca along with her two sons and two dogs. She is an avid skier, having taught skiing for 30 years and now serves as Pastor and Teacher at St Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church of America in Spencer, New York.

Texts For Sunday Worship:
Deuteronomy 26:1-11
Psalm 27
Romans 10:8b-13
*Luke 4:1-13