Blog Archives

PREACHING IN ISOLATION, WEEK #2

3/29/2020

A NOTE FROM PASTOR CHERIE ~

The reading for today is Matthew 8:6-13 (although I recommend you read the whole chapter just for context)

After the Sermon on the Mount, when Jesus came down from the mountain he set out on a teaching and healing tour of the area around Galilee. The next several chapters share many stories of healings — this is one of them.

This is the story of the Roman centurion, an army officer, who one day stopped Jesus and asked him to heal his young servant who was at home, too weak to come to Jesus. Jesus offered to go to him right away, but the officer said that would be unnecessary. He himself, as a centurion, gave orders to those under his authority and he fully expected those orders to be obeyed. He recognized that Jesus had similar authority over illness, and so he knew his orders would be obeyed. All Jesus had to do was speak.

Jesus exclaimed that he had never seen this level of faith anywhere, from anyone — (and yet it came from someone in the hated Roman army, a point not to be overlooked, by the way.) He then told the officer to go on home because his servant was already healed.

I chose this reading for us right now because it is a clear example to us that distance doesn’t matter to Jesus. Jesus did not need to be in the same room as the young servant; he didn't need to physically touch him in order to bring him healing. Jesus knew his need -- Jesus knew him -- near or far.

This is a worrisome time we are in right now. We worry about our own health. We worry about our friends and families. But one thing we do not need to worry about is whether we can or cannot meet together for church in our regular meeting place. All the earth belongs to God and God is everywhere we are. Jesus’ words go out to wherever God’s people are.

In God’s love, we are one — and we are together -- now, yesterday, next week -- and forever. God bless us all.

0 Comments

HARDLY A SERMON -- JUST SOME THOUGHTS

3/22/2020

0 Comments

John 9:1-25 (abridged)

As Jesus walked along, he saw a man blind from birth.....Jesus spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man's eyes, saying to him, "Go, wash in the pool of Siloam" (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see.....

People kept asking him, "How were your eyes opened?"

He answered, "The man Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, 'Go to Siloam and wash.' Then I went and washed and received my sight." They said to him, "Where is he?" He said, "I do not know.....One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see. "

Some Thoughts on the Reading...

Here the writer John is using “seeing” as a metaphor for “believing.” Those who are so very sure they believe properly turn out to be the ones who are truly blind to the work of God that has happened right in front of them.

The man who had been blind all his life is the one who sees the truth and sees it clearly.
He admits he doesn’t know how Jesus did what he did. He just knows that “once I was blind and now I can see.”

He sees, physically, the world around him, and also sees spiritually, the truth of what God has done for him through Jesus.

Stay well. I love you, Cherie

0 Comments

A NOTE FROM PASTOR CHERIE

3/16/2020

0 Comments

Yesterday morning in church we decided we would keep meeting for now, observing “social distancing” and free use of hand sanitizer. since we are few and there is (as yet) no COVID-19 in Mendocino Co.

I arrived back home to the news of Governor Newsom’s announcement that ALL group meetings should be canceled and ALL people over 60, especially those with health issues, should self-quarantine (basically, “stay home.”)

Because of this I am making a command decision that we are canceling in-person church services for the duration. As I understand it, this is a preventative measure, in that the fewer people who are out and about to be exposed, the fewer cases there will be in the long run.

This may feel like an over-reaction, but if it results in fewer deaths or serious illnesses, it seems like a worthy enough inconvenience. There is a meme going around facebook that says something like: In the 1940’s our parents were called to go to war to fight a crisis. This time we’re being asked to stay home and sit on the couch. We can do this!”

Yesterday I mentioned a back-up plan for a weekly newsletter to help us stay connected if it came to this. Expect a phone call from me toward the end of the week to check-in. In the meantime, stay in touch with others, don’t panic, and remember you are a child of God’s enduring love.

I’ll miss seeing each of you, but we will get through this. Please stay home and stay well and pray for each other.

I love you, Cherie

0 Comments

FROM THIS TIME ON AND FOREVERMORE

3/8/2020

0 Comments

Psalm 121
I lift up my eyes to the hills
from where will my help come?
My help comes from God,
   who made heaven and earth.
God will not let your foot be moved;
God who keeps you will not slumber.
God who keeps Israel
   will neither slumber nor sleep.
God is your keeper;
   God is your shade at your side.
The sun shall not strike you by day,
nor the moon by night.
God will keep you from all evil;
God will keep your life.
God will keep your going out
   and your coming in
from this time on and forevermore.

This past Sunday we met and we prayed together, but we did not have a Pastor's Message as usual. Instead, we simply talked.

We talked about the coronavirus and what it meant for each of us as individuals and as a worshiping community. We shared our worries and our fears and we shared what (sometimes) conflicting information we had.

At the end of it all we decided that, at this point at least, we will continue to meet together on Sunday morning. This doesn't mean that we discount the warnings but we feel that we are few enough and educated enough in care and prevention to continue to meet without being a threat to each other. This may change as the pandemic spreads, but right now, this is our choice.

We will continue to hold our community and each other in our prayers.

0 Comments

I FEEL FOR THEM ... WHY DON'T YOU?

3/1/2020

0 Comments

Jonah 3:10; 4:1-4, 11

God saw what the Ninevites did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.....

but to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord, “Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.”

But the Lord replied, “Is it right for you to be angry?”.....

Should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?”

I love preaching from the Book of Jonah, and I love stubborn old Jonah. I feel a kinship, having myself many times indulged in sulking because I didn’t want to do what God told me to do.

Jonah is one of the shortest books in the Bible, being only four chapters in length. It’s a shame that it is most often shrugged off as a children’s story, what with the whale and all, when it is really one of the most powerful teachings on God’s love and mercy.

Trying to establish the where and the when of a story like this one is much more complicated than you’d think it would be with its short length. The story never states where Jonah is actually living when God calls him to prophesy to the Ninevites, but I suspect it was somewhere in the northern kingdom of Israel, based on the journey he took that ended up with him inside a whale.

Nineveh itself was for a time the lush and amazing capital of the Assyrian Empire under the great kings Sargon II and Sennacherib. The remaining ruins of Nineveh lie today across the Tigris River from modern day Mosul, in northern Iraq – a long, long way from Israel, making it even more unusual that Jonah was called in the first place.

Trying to keep countries straight in biblical times is difficult because names changed due to the language of each particular writer. A city or geographic area could, over the course of several centuries, be called by four or five different names. Even when we read from the three brief years of Jesus’ public ministry, the same place may turn up under several different names, so we can see how confusing it can be when we speak of centuries. It requires a dedicated biblical historian – which I’m not -- to keep it all straight. So I’m just trying to give you just enough information to understand how Jonah and Nineveh ended up in the same story.

Assyria was one of the first of the massive, spreading empires of the Old Testament. It had its time being the biggest and the baddest before it, in turn, was swallowed up by the bigger and badder Babylonian Empire.

In one of their expansionist periods the Assyrians attempted to annex Judah and it’s capital Jerusalem. They were actually turned away by forces under the Jewish king Hezekiah, although they did succeed in conquering the northern kingdom, Israel, and deporting hundreds of its citizens. This was the first of the historical exiles we read of in the Old Testament.

So – all of that leads us to understand why Jonah was so set against God’s idea of trying to save the Ninevites. He may have had personal reasons, like family that had been among those deported, or just nationalistic pride. However it came about, Jonah didn’t see any reason to save them – they should be punished, instead. The Ninevites were terrible people who had done terrible things to Jonah’s people, so punish them!

Today, we, as a people, are still much more willing to call for punishment rather than forgiveness – unless, of course, it is ourselves who need to be forgiven. We are told, quite plainly and bluntly to pray for those who hurt us – to pray for our enemies – and yet, how well do we do with that?

Last Friday’s devotional was written by professor and parish minister Mary Luti, who is far and away one of my favorite writers. She wrote from the story of Jonah. Now, we all know this story of Jonah and the whale. And we know that after that gross bit in the whale, Jonah did give in and go to Nineveh and warn the people and they did repent and they were saved.

You’d think that Jonah might feel a little proud that he had done this for God, but, no – now he’s even more angry – angry that it worked! -- so angry that he marches out of the city into the desert and sits down, telling God to just kill him, just get it over with.

Jonah had gone out and sat down at a place east of the city. There he made himself a shelter, sat in its shade and waited to see what would happen to the city. Then the Lord God provided a leafy plant and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort, and Jonah was very happy about the plant. But at dawn the next day God provided a worm, which chewed the plant so that it withered. When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah’s head so that he grew faint. He wanted to die, and said, “It would be better for me to die than to live.”

God answered Jonah - “You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. And yet, should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?”

Here, in Friday’s devotional, Luti does the best job I’ve ever seen – in one short page – of explaining why we should be busy praying for those who have hurt us or threatened us in any way. As she has God say it: Look, Jonah, those pathetic schmucks can’t tell left from right. Why shouldn’t I feel for them? ..... oh ... and tell me, why don’t you?

We should be praying for the healing of those who hurt us or offend us rather than their punishment because GOD LOVES THEM. God recognizes their ineptness and their failures and God wants to fix them, rather than punish them. God feels for them. God doesn’t just care for the “perfect ones” like (ahem) us. God only loves even the mix-up and clueless, and so should we.

God loves us all and, being God, sees our brokenness and our dim-wittedness quite clearly and still feels for us and wants us all to be healed – not punished.
So the question still lingers today – actually I think I hear it several times a week – when I look at or read about the people who claim that those children deserve to be locked in concentration camps because their parents did something bad (which they didn’t); or the people who deny all scientific reality; or the thugs roaming the streets right now beating up old Chinese men because they personally are somehow responsible for the coronavirus (which they, again, are not) – all the people who, in their own brokenness, do hateful things aimed at hurting others. And still God says:

Why shouldn’t I feel for them? ..... and tell me, why don’t you?

This is why I need to read Jonah’s story -- often. I read it and I laugh at Jonah’s stubbornness and think about my own occasional ridiculous refusals to go where God says go and do what God says do. But I mostly don’t read it all the way to the ending because I’m afraid I might hear God asking: “Is it right for you to be angry?”

Why shouldn’t I feel for them? ..... and tell me, why don’t you?

0 Comments

PREACHING IN ISOLATION, WEEK #2

HARDLY A SERMON -- JUST SOME THOUGHTS

A NOTE FROM PASTOR CHERIE

FROM THIS TIME ON AND FOREVERMORE

I FEEL FOR THEM ... WHY DON'T YOU?

Rev. Cherie Marckx

Archives