Welcome

      Jesus said: “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous; and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple — truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward (Matthew 10:40-42).”     

      Outside a little white Presbyterian Church between the lakes not far from here is a sign: “Visitors Welcome… and Expected!”  I love that sign, since it goes an extra step from the polite, socially-correct “Visitors welcome.”  With just a twist of a phrase to catch drivers’ attention, it reminds the folks who walk through the doors every Sunday that they have an active role in preparing for and anticipating new attenders.  After all, everyone has a first Sunday at a church!  And there is more than just having the door open when a newcomer yanks on the handle: there is genuine commitment to make a person feel part of the family of faith, to be one of us.

      Jesus this week adds another level beyond just saying, “Hi!  Welcome to First Church, Anywhere.  Here’s a bulletin.”  We share figuratively and perhaps literally a cup of cold water with the souls thirsting for God’s presence.  Perhaps we long in a church forget how soul-parched one can feel out there in the beating sun of life; perhaps we need to remember that finding the water of life is like downing a cold cup or bottle of water on a hot summer afternoon after working or weariness.  When we do, we are like the volunteers reaching the water out to the runners at the marathon, giving them something to gulp or pour over their faces.  Walking into a church should be like that.
    
      It is common now in certain circles to press church behavior from “welcoming” to “inviting.”  Welcoming is sort of passive; it unlocks the church door and waits for someone to walk in.  Inviting begins outside the door, beckoning folks in, mentioning that your church is a place of refuge or of spiritual growth or a place from which to launch mission and ministry.  Inviting happens Monday through Saturday; it happens at work, around the dinner table at home or in a restaurant.  It walks around the mall or coffee shop.  Inviting gets out there.  It is often used in conjunction with people disaffected by conventional religion or simply unaware of religion’s benefits in “ordinary” life and interactions.  Lots of those folks wouldn’t walk through a church door unless someone walked in with them as a friend.

      But an invitational, expecting stance is also part of the UCC’s various affirmations about our generous, extravagant welcome as a denomination and as local congregations.  Over the years the UCC has opened our door to… and welcomed… and invited… those from multiracial and multicultural backgrounds, tried to be accessible to all, open and affirming, peace with justice church.  Anyone who needs cool water from Christ!

       From my first interview here as a potential interim pastor, the non-passive, active, invitational, encouraging nature of this church was stressed to me, a point of great significance I feel and try to project each Sunday at the start of worship: “No matter who you are or where you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here.”  This Sunday (and every Sunday of the summer, and every Sunday after that) invite someone you know to experience that invitation!

                                                                          In Christ,
                                                                        
                                                                            David


Many thanks to the children and youth and their families for presenting me with Letters to Children by C.S. Lewis and What Are People For? by Wendell Berry.



Texts For Sunday Worship:
      From the Hebrew Bible       Genesis 22:1-14
      From the Epistles               Romans 6:12-23
      From the Gospels               Matthew 10:40-42

School’s Out for Summer *

      But not church!!!

      Honestly, I have a festival of ambivalence in my soul this time of year.  I kinda like shifting into summer gear, having things slow down, having a chance to rest up and recover.  As the spouse of a public school employee, the end of the school year is really welcome.  So I like “summer break.”
Having served churches in two communities known as recreational destinations, Watkins Glen and Penn Yan, summer is the busy season.  Traffic increases tenfold in those towns, maybe a hundredfold on NASCAR weekend, and the places are crawling with people enjoying the lakes and the scenery.  Downside: most of the residents (and churchgoers!) are so busy they work Sunday mornings, which means attendance drops somewhat despite the hordes of people.  But it’s exciting over the summer there.

      Two other jobs were in cities from which many of those summer folks came, Elmira and Corning.  After the huge influx and high energy of the lake communities in summer, I was actually sorta surprised at how things just dropped off the scale as people left town… and church.  One elder in Elmira asked (I think jokingly), “aren’t we excused over the summer?”  And you could watch the plastic bags blowing down the city street in silence after school ended.  I felt lonely, and the sanctuary was nearly as vacant.  Things are dull over the summer there.  So that part is not so great to me!

      Many ministers and church newsletters have, about this week of the year, a reminder (or plea maybe) that “God doesn’t take the summer off,” hinting that we shouldn’t either.  Count this as my reminder (or plea maybe) that the life of faith doesn’t end on the last day of school.  But I’m practical as well, and instead of whining about everyone going to church here all summer, I’ll just point out that most places you might travel in the next couple of months do, in fact, have worshipping communities you could pop into.  Staying current with your giving (or daresay, paying ahead?!?) will soothe the finance committee’s minds.  In any case, I hope you open Highland Highlights every week to keep up with our ongoing life as a congregation.  We also have the full audio of the service posted on fccithaca.org so you can hear the service and the assorted guest musicians even if you are elsewhere or otherwise busy.  A quick look at a Bible or a devotional booklet every day might be good for your spirit.  And I highly recommend some of the online devotionals like the UCC’s Still Speaking series for a little refresher for your soul during a long hot summer.

      So I wish you a recreational and re-creational time, balancing it with spiritual well-being, no matter where you may be any given Sunday, but remember we’re still a full service congregation open all year round.  Maybe we’ll see you!


                                                                          In Christ,
                                                                        
                                                                            David


*With apologies to Alice Cooper
And I love to see bulletins from your travels if you save them.


 Texts For Sunday Worship:
       From the Hebrew Bible       Genesis 21:8-21
       From the Epistles               Romans 6:1-11
      From the Gospels                Matthew 10:24-39

It’s Trinity Sunday! Remember to wear triangles!

      After all the celebration of Pentecost and our children and youth ministries last week and all the bright colors and cool images of flames and wind and all, the week after Pentecost is a bit of a bringdown.  I admit it: Trinity Sunday is not very exciting.

      We go from one of the most positively emotional and fun days on the church calendar to perhaps the most theological and cerebral concepts in the history of Christendom.  Easter is a high point, Christmas a high point, Palm Sunday is a high point, Pentecost is a high point.  Trinity? Not so much.

       But it is, in fact, the crucial affirmation of orthodox Christianity, the central doctrine that distinguishes us from other world religions, especially the other Abrahmic religions, Islam and Judaism.

      The doctrine of the Trinity, that God is one being in three persons, arose from experience of God in three kinda different ways.  From our perspective centuries later, it is an experience of history, too, as we see the millennia described by the Hebrew Scripture and running from the nomadic clan of Abraham in the desert through the Exodus and settlement of the trans-Jordan to become Israel through the great kingdoms of David and Solomon to the divided Israel and Judea through the occupation by Rome.  Then we experience the life and ministry and life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, very clearly a person in a clear historical context, described and interpreted by the Gospel writers and approached by people of piety as God.  Then, following the tale of Acts 2 about Pentecost, the long historical season of the early church through until today.  Some like to identify the persons of the Trinity as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, other as Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, and a whole slew of variations.  You just have to read hymn titles and books of human composure to see the range of ways humans appreciate God’s presence in our lives.

       The trick, for the early church, was to take those experiences of God in God’s mysterious differences and uphold the belief that God is One and Only.  The discussion (sometimes rancorous and schismatic and tinged with heresy) ended up in the Nicene Creed as the doctrine of the Trinity.  God is One.  God is Three.  There are thousands of illustrations of how that can be described, but no theologian actually claims it can be “explained.”

       So we live with a delicious tension that the One God is apprehended in Three Persons, that Three Persons are One Being, all a mystery.  So we speak and sing and draw and paint pictures of the Trinity or symbols of it, and we love and are loved by the Triune God, whose presence we know even if we cannot fully explain it.

      This week, wear triangles to celebrate the Trinity! Actually, Celtic triquetras are a lot more decorative than plain old triangles, if you have ’em.

       So I invite you Sunday to worship “God in Three Persons, Blessed Trinity!”

                                                                                    In Christ,
                                                                                 
                                                                                         David

And, yes, I messed up adding in prayers for Father’s Day last Sunday! For the record, on my drive over I saw a firehouse with a “Father’s Day Breakfast” on their signboard, and a lot of cars (probably totally unrelated in retrospect) and kinda sorta panicked and added them in.  Incorrectly, it turned out, as a large number of people reminded me at refreshment time.  Mercifully, most of the reminders were sweet, although a couple of people were startled and panicked in their turn.  A couple of you made good fun of my mistake.  But to be sure, Sunday June 15 is, truly, actually, really Father’s Day.  I’ll try to check my calendar next year…!

Texts For Sunday Worship:     
     From the Hebrew Bible       Genesis 1:1-2:4 (selected verses)
     From the Epistles               2 Corinthians 13:11-13
     From the Gospels               Matthew 28:16-20

It’s Pentecost! Remember to wear red!

      Pentecost is a wonderful, multilayered celebration for the Christian Church.  It marks the day when the Holy Spirit descended on the disciples, giving them the wherewithal and energy to spread the Good News of Christ into the whole known world. It is, in that way, the “birthday of the Church.”

      The richness of the story continues with imagery of the dancing tongues of fire upon the disciples, the rush of a mighty wind (that great Hebrew and Greek pun that the same word means spirit, wind, and breath), the speaking in different languages, and the sharing of the Gospel in words and shortly in deeds.  So the Church has picked up the themes of celebration, birthday, wearing bright reds to worship, moving air, and flames.  Congregations have waved pom-poms, decorated birthday cakes for the Church, floated helium balloons, whirled pinwheels, jingled wind chimes, tossed red paper airplanes, fired up big fans, tweeted those little party favors, thrown streamers, and danced in the aisle, all to get into the “spirit” of Pentecost.

      It makes for a delightful, enthusiastic celebration, a bit different from most congregations’ rather staid typical Sunday worship.  And when you add in our congregation’s tradition of Celebration Sunday led by the Children and Youth Ministry Team, it will be a wonderful week for us.  I hope you can make it to the party!
 
      Preachers, theologians, commentators, and such have for a long time reminded us that we followers of Christ are “Easter People,” people of resurrection and hope and confidence in God’s love.  A few years ago I found my spirit stirred by someone saying that even more, we Christians are a “Pentecost people.”  It adds a sense of moving outwards in the world, of spreading the Good News more and more widely, of being empowered and emboldened to make a difference, of celebration and power and joy.  (And, frankly red flames are just cooler to me than white Easter lilies!)  It is that outward impulse, into the world, that I most resonate with as a Pentecost person.

      With a combination like the children doing a skit about Pentecost, celebrating the Sunday School and youth group year, having our children and youth sharing their music, the stirring story of Pentecost, a birthday cake for the church, and general flame-bedecked festivities, I hope you can pull out some red clothes (or at least a red scarf or tie or bright red shoes) and get into the Spirit of Pentecost this Sunday.

      Have a wild and wonderful Pentecost!

                                                                   In Christ,
                                                             
                                                                    David


Texts For Sunday Worship:

From the New Testament      Acts 2:1-21
From the Gospels                 John 20:19-23