Church of the Open Door:  First Christian Church, Ukiah
like us on facebook!
  • Home
  • Who We Are
  • News
  • Out Reach
  • Pastor's Blog
  • Church History

LUKE, Pt 2:  AND IT CAME TO PASS...

9/11/2016

0 Comments

 
Luke 2:1-7
About that time Caesar Augustus ordered a census to be taken throughout the Empire. This was the first census when Quirinius was governor of Syria. Everyone had to travel to his own ancestral hometown to be accounted for. So Joseph went from the Galilean town of Nazareth up to Bethlehem in Judah, David’s town, for the census. As a descendant of David, he had to go there. He went with Mary, his fiancée, who was pregnant.
While they were there, the time came for her to give birth. She gave birth to a son, her firstborn. She wrapped him in a blanket and laid him in a manger, because there was no room in the inn.
​
This is our second week looking into the Gospel according to Luke.  One of the major – and unique -- themes of Luke’s gospel account starts out right at the beginning – and the way it begins happens twice.  An angel, who identifies himself as “Gabriel who stands in the presence of God” appears - twice - and announces an impending birth – actually, two impending births.  One son each to mothers who should not have been mother material.  Elizabeth was barren and Mary was an unmarriwed virgin but such things matter little to angels carrying messages from God.

Elizabeth would give birth to John, the one we call the Baptist, and Mary, of course, would be the mother of Jesus.  One son’s role in life would be to prepare the way for the other – to announce his arrival in the world of humankind.

This is a birth narrative much different from the one we read in Matthew’s gospel.  In that one John the Baptist isn’t mentioned at all until he appears as an adult, preaching in the desert, and Mary and Jesus himself are almost footnotes to the story. 

Matthew’s version of the story, written nearer the actual time of Jesus’ life, it written for a specific community of people in a specific time and place.  It has one purpose, and one only, to “prove” Jesus’ Davidic descent, and legitimize him in the eyes of the traditional Jewish community and set him up in their minds as the “new Moses”. Matthew's only agenda is to convince "the Jews" that far from being a heretic leading people away from true Judaism, Jesus is instead the culmination of all those centuries of prophesying and waiting.  Luke ignores this aspect almost entirely, except for one brief sentence explaining that the couple had to go to Bethlehem, the city of David, for the census because Joseph was descended from the house and family of David.

Luke’s story is written for a much broader audience inhabiting a more cosmopolitan world.  Written farther in time from Jesus’ actual life this account attempts to relate the story of a Jesus that farther-flung peoples, often from other cultures, can find palatable. This gospel also shows the effect that time has had on the mythologizing of Jesus.  Jesus has become, not just a local Jewish boy from a good family, but a “hero” figure, and especially in the near-eastern/Mediterranean world of this time the birth of the "hero" was always attended by lots of supernatural trappings.  Most cultures had at least one story of a god impregnating a human woman, with strange unnatural events surrounding the birth of the half-human/half-divine child.  By the time that Luke is written, Jesus’ story has attained exactly this status.  Luke's version of Jesus' birth would feel comfortable to his hearers. 

Mary is by far the star player in Luke’s story, with her conversation with an angel, her visit to see her cousin Elizabeth, and our deeply ingrained image of the young mother, tenderly holding her child and “treasuring all this and holding it in her heart,” and especially for her beautiful Magnificat, her hymn of praise to God for blessing her so.  We’ll look at this piece more closely in a moment.

But the biggest difference between the two versions lies in the casts of supporting characters.  In Matthew, the main person other than the family itself is the wicked King Herod, followed by three more kings, as we have come to call them even though they were most likely astrologer-priests.  Whoever they were, they were important people, come from far nations to acknowledge the superior claim of this newborn Jewish king. 

In contrast, Luke’s bit players are as common as dirt:  an inn-keeper, a slew of shepherds, one old man who is described as “holy” but of no particular rank when the baby is presented in the Temple, and an old woman, likewise in the Temple and likewise of no particular rank.  Of course, there are choirs of angels but their presence merely contrasts with and points out the ordinary humbleness of the rest of the story.

And do not overlook that because it is precisely all this ordinariness that matters most.  The fact is that what was, in truth, a monumental divine act (hence the angels) – took place among the most ordinary of mortals.  Jesus was born, not in a palace in Jerusalem, but in a stable in Bethlehem, the smallest of back-country towns.  The only attendants were shepherds who had likely been out for weeks with no one around but their sheep – not your most elegant of guests.

Luke will make the point, over and over in this gospel, that those ordinary people are precisely the ones for whom Jesus came – the ones God favors.  This is made clear right at the start in Mary’s reply to Gabriel, her Magnificat:
My soul magnifies the Lord,
    and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.
    Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
    and holy is his name.
…..
He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
    and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
   and sent the rich away empty.
Those are, in truth, radical words.  They are revolutionary words.  Luke’s passion for justice for the poor, the overlooked and voiceless is apparent all throughout this gospel.  When we first meet John the Baptist as a preacher in the desert he is calling the people to repentance, reminding them that it isn’t enough to be a practicing Jew, a son of Abraham, because God can call up children of Abraham from the very rocks around them if he should want.  And when they ask just what they must do then, John answers in unmistakable social-justice language: “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.”

For anyone who reads this gospel with an open mind, as free as possible from past teaching and indoctrination (and admittedly, this is not an easy task) the primary message of social justice calls out loudly and clearly.  It is in this gospel account that Jesus begins his public ministry teaching in the local synagogue in Nazareth and quoting Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.”

This social-justice agenda will be reinforced even more when we read Luke’s version of the Beatitudes, comparing them with Matthew’s version from the Sermon on the Mount, but that is going to take more time than we have today so we will start with that next week as we continue our way through Luke.
0 Comments

INTRO TO LUKE:  BEYOND THE SHADOW OF A DOUBT

8/28/2016

0 Comments

 
Luke 1:1-4
So many others have tried their hand at putting together a story of the wonderful harvest of Scripture and history that took place among us, using reports handed down by the original eyewitnesses who served this Word with their very lives.  Since I have investigated all the reports in close detail, starting from the story’s beginning, I decided to write it all out for you, most honorable Theophilus, so you can know beyond the shadow of a doubt the reliability of what you were taught.
​
Today we finally come to the last of the four canonical Gospels – that is the four that are fairly universally accepted as being true gospel format and being legitimate revelations from God.  While many other gospels do exist --  apocryphal gospels, non-canonical gospels, Jewish-Christian gospels, gnostic gospels – the early church fathers deemed these four – Mark, Matthew, John and Luke – to be authoritative accounts of the life of Jesus.  In a more credulous, unquestioning age these four were accepted as presenting an accurate history of Jesus.  This view is still held by biblical literalists but questioned by the majority of modern scholars – based on too many reasons to go into here and now.

As with the other three gospels, we don’t really know who Luke might have been.  The name “Luke” was assigned to this gospel sometime in the 2nd century.   There may have been some communal memory linking this to someone named Luke, or it may have been connected to the Luke mentioned often in Acts.  As with so much of scripture, we simply don’t know.  Today it is no longer commonly accepted that the writer was the Luke who traveled with Paul.

Whoever Luke may have been, this author is generally accepted to have also written the Book of Acts.  The two books appear to have been only separated by the early church’s determination to clump the gospels together at the beginning of the New Testament.  They are a single work written in two volumes and there is an interesting reason for that.  In that ancient world when things were written in scrolls, rather than books as we do today, the maximum length for a scroll was about 30 feet.  Anything longer would simply be too heavy and bulky to use.  Luke’s writings came to two scrolls (our current word, volume, comes from the Latin word for scroll).  So Luke and Acts are volumes (or scrolls) One and Two of a single writing.

For some time it has been thought that Luke was written somewhere in the 90’s of the first century, but more recently many scholars are leaning toward an even later date sometime in the early years of the second century, 70 to 80 years after the death of Jesus.
 
In the earliest years of Christianity there was a brief period of détente between the new Jesus followers and traditional Jews.  Back in Matthew’s gospel, as we have seen, that amicability was starting to come unraveled, with strong tensions brewing between the two groups.  By the time we read Acts it is clear that a split has already occurred and that period of détente is over. 

Whenever a point of controversy occurs between the two groups anywhere in Luke’s writings, there are always threats or even actual acts of violence by the Jews against the new Christians.  Even when Luke re-tells an incident that was previously reported in Mark or Matthew, it comes out with much more anger being shown against Jesus and the Christians by the authorities or even the Jews in general.  It’s clear that attitudes have changed in the time since the earlier gospels were written.  Sides have been chosen and lines have been drawn.  All these push a probable date for the writing of Luke into the 2nd century.
​
Whoever ‘Luke’ may have been we don’t seem to know where he was from.  He is a Greek-speaking Jewish Christian.  Luke is a Greek name, for whatever that might mean.  He appears to be comfortable writing about Jesus’ movements throughout Galilee and Jerusalem, but he is equally comfortable describing the Mediterranean world of Paul’s missionary journeys.  It appears he is an educated, cosmopolitan man – but even the “man” part has been seriously contested by some who have suggested that the writer of Luke/Acts might have been a woman.  I will continue to use the masculine pronoun just because history always has done so and he/she is too clunky.
Whoever the writer may have been, they start out from the very beginning, stating their beliefs and their intentions in writing this account:
Since I have investigated all the reports in close detail, starting from the story’s beginning, I decided to write it all out for you, most honorable Theophilus, so you can know beyond the shadow of a doubt the reliability of what you were taught.
Theophilus, by the way, might be one man’s proper name (it means lover of God) or it might refer to a group of people – an early church community for instance.  Whomever this is addressed to Luke is writing a history he has culled from the memories and stories he believes are handed down by the original eyewitnesses.  We here today have no way of knowing how these ‘original eyewitness’ accounts may have been embroidered and added onto.  Luke accepted them without question.  We are probably more skeptical.

Luke’s is the third of the synoptic gospels.  Like Matthew, Luke uses Mark as a resource, but Luke lifts maybe 65% of Mark into his gospel rather than the almost 90% used by Matthew.  Where Matthew basically copied and pasted from Mark with little editing, when Luke copies from Mark he adds in details he apparently found from other, uniquely Lukan, sources.

There are several pieces in Luke that are unique to this gospel – not found in any other account.  These include most of the nativity story, and parables like the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, the Woman and the Lost Coin, and others we’ll look at as we go along.  Luke even manages to tell some of the Easter story differently from Matthew.

But the first and primary difference that exists in Luke’s version is its deep commitment to social justice.  We will find as we go through this gospel that Luke’s stories consistently lift up the oppressed – the poor, the overlooked – emphasizing Jesus’ insistence that “blessed are the poor, the hungry, the grieving, for of such is the kingdom of God.”  

Where Mark and Matthew emphasize Jesus’ link to the long-awaited messiah and Old Testament promises, and John focuses on the divinity of Jesus, Luke will take us back to Jesus and his own teachings on the “reign of God” and our expected response to it – all that is contained in a phrase which came out of Latin American Liberation Theology is the last century – a “preferential option for the poor.”  (This empathy for justice for the powerless is actually one of the reasons given for the possibility that the writer of Luke was a woman.)

Throughout the gospel and the Acts Luke reminds us that for Jesus, the poor and powerless are not only our concern but God’s dearly beloved ones.

We’ll start off next week with the long nativity story.
0 Comments

WHAT MY FATHER TOLD ME, I TELL YOU

8/21/2016

0 Comments

 

John 12:44-50
    Jesus summed it all up:  “Whoever believes in me, believes not just in me but in the One who sent me.  Whoever looks at me is looking, in fact, at the One who sent me.  I am Light that has come into the world so that all who believe in me won’t have to stay any longer in the dark.
    
    “If anyone hears what I am saying and doesn’t take it seriously, I don’t reject them.  I didn’t come to reject the world; I came to save the world.  But you need to know that whoever puts me off, refusing to take in what I’m saying, is willfully choosing rejection.  The Word, the Word-made-flesh that I have spoken and that I am, that Word and no other is the last word.  I’m not making any of this up on my own.  The One who sent me gave me orders, told me what to say and how to say it.  And I know exactly what this command produces: real and eternal life.  That’s all I have to say.  What my Father told me, I tell you.”
​
Last week I talked mostly about some of the things that the writer of John does differently from the other gospel writers – primarily that John is less concerned with historical fact than spiritual truth.  This gospel account is less about a long string of “happenings” – healings, exorcisms, and such - and more about how each recited event goes about directing our paths and expanding our spiritual growth into the beings we were created to be.

Although every one of the gospels exists to show that Jesus is/was the Christ, John’s gospel is often considered the most overtly Christological of the four.  Christology is the study of the Christ-hood of Jesus.  This is one of those theological terms which is very slippery because it all too often means whatever it means to the one speaking. Generally speaking, in extremely broad terms, a high Christology is one which holds that Jesus is God - the second person of the Trinity - who took on human form and lived among us for awhile.  A low Christology is one which sees Jesus as a man  – one called by God into a very special service role – one who took on aspects of divinity as he grew and matured in his ministry.  Most of us, if we are honest, bounce around back and forth within these parameters.

The synoptics generally start from a lower Christological point of view.  Only at the end of Jesus’ life, as the disciples’ understanding grows, do they venture into a higher Christology.  John, starts out right at the top with the prologue, which we looked at our first day in John – 
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.
​
In all four of the gospels John the Baptist tells his followers that one is coming who is more powerful than he, but only in the Gospel of John does the writer expand this by saying that the one to come pre-existed the Baptist - this one who was since the beginning.

In this gospel, Jesus is seen as God’s divinity enfleshed, not as a human man raised to messiah-status.  We’ve talked before about how confusing the term messiah can be and that it has held so many different layers of meaning throughout Old Testament history.  When theologians equate the Hebrew Messiah with the Greek Christos they create a new layer of confusion because the two words are not entirely the same. Both refer to one who is anointed but that just adds to the muddle because anointing is used for so very many purposes, in both of these cultures - some higher, some lower.

And then we read John and John throws in the concept of Logos, or the Word – that Greek ordering principle that organizes all that is into Being and Non-Being.  And then, to go even further, Logos is associated with Sophia, or Wisdom – carrying us back to the wisdom traditions and writings of the Old Testament and linking Wisdom with the Holy Spirit, who is often conflated with Sophia.  That’s a whole other sermon - actually it's a series of sermons and we simply don't have time here right now.

epending then on what you have read, what you have been taught, what you choose to believe – Jesus is some -- or all – or even none – of these things.  The simple truth is that Jesus sometimes appears to us in each of these guises, and like Godself, is complicated far beyond our human comprehension.

I said last week that this week we would look into Jesus’ ultimate sermon at the Last Supper but we are running out of time and it will have to be a quick run-by.  There is too much to say in this short time.  One of the key differences in John’s story of the Last Supper is that Jesus never says words of institution – this is my body, this is my blood.  In fact, the meal itself plays no role here except as the setting for all that is spoken.  The only time bread is even mentioned is when Jesus break a bit of bread off and gives it to Judas with the announcement that the one to whom I give this is the one who will betray me.

After Judas’ departure from the table, Jesus tries to tell those remaining what is coming.  He predicts Peter’s betrayal, in spite of Peter’s vehement denials.  He promises that where he is going, the disciples will go too, and promises to send them the Holy Spirit in his place - to not leave them orphaned when he is gone.

He explains that he himself is the vine and we grow outward from him only if we remain rooted in him, and he leaves us the command to love one another as the Father loves him and he loves us.  He tries to tell the disciples that soon they will see him no longer, and there will be sorrow for a time but that it will eventually turn to joy.

And then he prays a lengthy prayer, putting his followers into God’s care and asking his Father to protect them when he is no longer here with them to protect them himself.  He reminds the disciples that nothing he has done or said originates from him.  He emphasizes that everything he has taught them is what the One who sent him told him to say.  He, like the prophets of old, has not spoken for himself but simply passed on what God was saying.

Following all this he them leads them out into a nearby garden where he is arrested, then taken to be tried, and the next day, executed.  John’s gospel has one of the fullest post-Easter stories of any of the gospels.  It’s words are very familiar to us because it is most often the designated reading for Easter morning.  First the risen Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene and then the disciples, then the disciples again - this time with Thomas, the skeptic.  A few days later he appears again to several of the disciples who are out trying to fish through their grief, commanding Peter three times to “feed my sheep.”

There is so much richness to be found in John that we could spend several more weeks here.  I would love to spend that time because somehow, to me at least, the Jesus of John’s gospel seems more “real,” more someone I want to be like, than the Jesus of the other gospels.  Because of the richness of John’s symbolic, archetypal  language this Jesus touches my heart more deeply.

This is the Jesus who washed the feet of his disciples and told them the servant must always be ready to serve.  This is the Jesus who wept at the death of a friend and the suffering of the dead man’s sisters.  This is the Jesus of the seashore, waiting with a fire and with breakfast when the numb and grieving disciples came in from a fruitless night of fishing.
 
This is the Jesus who warned Peter that he would betray him and then freely and lovingly forgive him after the fact – not only forgave him but gave him the care of his beloved sheep, with those three-times-repeated directions to “feed them.”
​
As I said, we could spend weeks yet here, but Luke is waiting – the fourth and last of the canonical gospels to be put into writing – and there’s a lot of richness there, too. This is supposed to be a Summer Series and summer is winding down and soon it will be time to return to the regular lectionary calendar.

So - we will start our look into Luke next Sunday.
0 Comments

JOHN, Part 3:  "THE ROOT COMMAND"

8/14/2016

0 Comments

 

John 15: 5-17

    “I am the Vine, you are the branches. When you’re joined with me and I with you, the relation intimate and organic, the harvest is sure to be abundant. Separated, you can’t produce a thing. Anyone who separates from me is deadwood, gathered up and thrown on the bonfire. But if you make yourselves at home with me and my words are at home in you, you can be sure that whatever you ask will be listened to and acted upon. This is how my Father shows who he is—when you produce grapes, when you mature as my disciples.

    “I’ve loved you the way my Father has loved me. Make yourselves at home in my love. If you keep my commands, you’ll remain intimately at home in my love. That’s what I’ve done—kept my Father’s commands and made myself at home in his love.

    “I’ve told you these things for a purpose: that my joy might be your joy, and your joy wholly mature. This is my command: Love one another the way I loved you. This is the very best way to love. Put your life on the line for your friends. You are my friends when you do the things I command you. I’m no longer calling you servants because servants don’t understand what their master is thinking and planning. No, I’ve named you friends because I’ve let you in on everything I’ve heard from the Father.

    “You didn’t choose me, remember; I chose you, and put you in the world to bear fruit, fruit that won’t spoil. As fruit bearers, whatever you ask the Father in relation to me, he gives you.
​
    “But remember the root command: Love one another.
​
This is our third week looking into the Gospel of John – the “different” gospel.  I spend so much time emphasizing those differences that I thought I’d throw in a brief list of the things that John does the same, roughly, as the synoptics.

•    the story of Jesus’ adult life start with his interaction with John the Baptist
•    his public life begins in Galilee
•    all 4 tell the story of the storm at sea and Jesus walking on water
•    the multiplication of the loaves and fishes to feed the multitude is all all four gospels
•    Jesus gives sight to a blind man
•    and he heals a paralytic

But, even when John recounts the same stories, he usually tells them very differently. Remember, this account was written 60 to 70 years after the life of Jesus – and John is, apparently, not pulling from the same sources as the other gospel writers do.  In fact, New Testament scholars don’t seem to have any clear idea of whether or not John had direct access to the previously written down Mark or Matthew or any of the same sources they used.  We simply don’t know where John comes from, aside from the supposition that he is a Hellenized Jew.

Anyone reading John looking for a straight-line historical account of the life of Jesus is going to be befuddled.  Even when John tells the same stories as the synoptics, he places them differently in the timeline.  For instance, here Jesus’ very first public act comes at the wedding at Cana - turning water into wine - a story told only in John, by the way.  He does have disciples, at this point, but not because he called them to him - they’re there because John the Baptist pointed him out to them and said, “there, that’s the one you’re looking for.”  At Cana he isn’t out preaching or teaching, already in the public eye – in fact, he appears to be distinctly annoyed with his mother for forcing him to act at all out in public.

And the very next story recounted by John – in chapter 2 – is that of the cleansing of the Temple.  This story is told in the synoptics, but it is always placed into the last week of Jesus’ life - at the end of his ministry instead of as only the 2nd public thing Jesus does.  And in the synoptics it is presented as the “last straw,” the thing that Jesus does that forces the authorities to act publically against him – the act that convinces them that he needs to be shut down.  In John, it becomes more Jesus’ “Here I am, world” statement – an opening move rather than a move to force an ending.

In all my years of preaching I have emphasized the vast difference between “Truth” and “Fact” when dealing with the life of Jesus.  “History” is, theoretically at least, “facts” -- recorded and dated and verifiable from outside sources, taken from eyewitness or at least trustworthy witness accounts.  History is also, we must never forget, always written by the victor – and “facts” can easily be added or omitted and arranged by the victor into something unrecognizable as the actually “truth” of an event.

Although John tells a story of Jesus that is in many ways similar to the stories told by Matthew, Mark and, later, Luke, John appears to be less interested in an historical accounting of a certain period of time and one man’s life – than in the “truth” of what that man’s life meant in the world – both then and now.  As Marc Borg puts it: “John is a remarkable testimony to what Jesus had become in the early Christian milieu in which the gospel was written.”  Not just who and what Jesus was but what he had become to the people impacted in some way by his life and his story.

If John tells different stories than those in the synoptics, he tells the same type of story – stories of healing and exhortations to grow and be better.  The Jesus we meet in John is entirely familiar to us – just a lot wordy-er.

I took my title for this particular message from the last line of today’s scripture reading: “But remember the root command: Love one another."  Throughout John’s account Jesus’ message is that we were brought into being for one purpose – to love.  To love God, to love Jesus, and to love one another.  We have no other reason for existence.  In what is probably the best known bible verse in the world, John 3:16, Jesus tries to show us this loving God:  “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”  Somewhere along the way this statement became, in our minds, all about reward and punishment – believe in Jesus and you’ll be rewarded, don’t believe and you will be punished.  

But if we hear these words without the centuries of cultural expectation it’s had layered on it is possible to hear something very different.  Jesus exists to tell us all about God’s love for us.  Those who hear Jesus will receive the message and know God’s love.  Those who do not recognize or understand Jesus will not hear that message and will never know how very much they are loved.  They will live and die without ever knowing that they are cherished.  No threat - just a statement of what is.

The phrase “eternal life” as John uses it does not mean “life after death.”  The original Greek phrase that we translate as “eternal life” is actually better translated as the “life of the age to come” or “the kingdom of God.”  To know God as Jesus knew him is to enter into the kingdom of God - here and now – in this world, in this life.  To miss knowing God as Jesus knows God is to live unaware of the joy offered to us.  It doesn’t take away the love or the offer of joy - it simply means we remain deaf and blind and unaware.  We remain - in the words of an old song - standing knee deep in a river and dying of thirst.*  And there’s absolutely nothing here that says the offer is only made once in our lifetime.

Jesus tells us we are told all these things in order that “my joy might be your joy, and your joy wholly mature. This is my command: Love one another the way I loved you. This is the very best way to love.”  Love as God loves – not as humans love, with conditions stuck on all over the place and threats - real or implied - to enforce them. Just love.

We’ll take one more week with John next week and look at the "last discourse," as it it is known – Jesus’ long last teaching at the Last Supper.

****************************
*Standing Knee Deep in a River (Dying of Thirst) - written by Bob McDill, Dickey Lee and Bucky Jones, 1993
0 Comments

John, Part 2:  "I AM ..."

8/7/2016

0 Comments

 
John 8:12-16
    
    Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.”  Then the Pharisees said to him, “You are testifying on your own behalf; your testimony is not valid.”  Jesus answered, “Even if I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is valid because I know where I have come from and where I am going, but you do not know where I come from or where I am going.  You judge by human standards; I judge no one.  Yet even if I do judge, my judgment is valid; for it is not I alone who judge, but I and the Father who sent me.
​
Last week we began with a general introduction to the Gospel according to John – the third gospel to appear in written form and the one “oddball” among the four gospel accounts.  Before we move along I feel the need to insert an editorial reminder that most of the information I’m passing along in this series comes from Marcus Borg and especially his book Evolution of the Word.  While I am using other sources, the bulk of this series comes from Marc Borg.

Last week I introduced the idea that John – whoever he might have been – was a diaspora Jew living in a Greek-influenced time and place, and we talked about the difference Greek language and thought made in John’s imagery and metaphors.

This is strongly apparent in the series of teachings we call the “I Am” stories, which are found only in this particular gospel.  One of the most noticeable of the differences in John’s writing is the use of archetypal imagery.  Jewish writers used archetypes, as well, but with much less frequency and perhaps with less awareness.  The first image in the bible - the chaos that was before creation - is an ancient archetype signifying dissolution or un-being.  Being comes with order and stability – without order and stability there is only death and Un-Being.  We all, at some level of awareness, recognize and respond to this truth.

Because that’s what archetypes are - universal symbols that call up something deep and often unconscious from us humans - and this happens across cultures and times.  Take for instance a circle.  In almost every culture throughout time the circle form has signified eternity.  Our wedding rings are, supposedly, our eternal promise.  Evergreen wreaths at Christmas time symbolize God’s eternal, unending presence with us.  

The ouroboros, which you may have seen somewhere but not known what it was you saw, is a symbol of a snake devouring its own tail, curled around into a circle to do so. It is an ancient symbol for infinity - a circle with no beginning and no ending.  We may not 'get' why we are looking at a snake devouring itself, but we do somehow get that this is a depiction of eternity - no end, no beginning.  This is one of those symbols that speaks to us across cultures whether we are aware of it or not.

The “I Am” stories are each based on a different archetypal image.  The reading we began with today may be the most common archetype - Light vs. Darkness.  Again, Jewish writers used this – think of the great promises out of Isaiah that we read at Advent time: the people that walked in darkness have seen a great light, or the star in the sky that guided the Magi.  In Matthew, Jesus tells his followers that they are the light of the world.  

But only in John does Jesus announce that he is the light.  “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.”  And again, in the next chapter, after Jesus cures the man born blind he tells the people “As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”  Without what Jesus offers us we are lost and blind.  With him, we see – with the eyes of the body and the eyes of the spirit.

“I am the bread of life,” again uses another archetypal image, that of bread as those things that feed us, whether our hunger is spiritual or physical.  Jesus offers himself to feed us whatever we lack.

“I am the good shepherd” who leads his sheep to safety and plenty, Jesus tells us, but also “I am the gate” by which they may safely enter the sheepfold.  Gates and doorways are strong archetypal images having to do with crossing over from one plane of existence into another – liminal places where, once having crossed, we are never the same.  

Coming of age ceremonies in many cultures employ the crossing of an actual threshold to illustrate the young person’s change in status even if it is only a stick on the ground.  In England many older churches had a lychgate - a covered platform outside the church grounds where the deceased’s body rested until it was carried into the church for the ceremony that would send the recently dead into their new eternal life, with the blessing of the church.  Jesus, John claims, is not only the shepherd who guides us to the gate, he is the gateway himself.

“I am the way, the truth, and the life.”  This is one of the trickier “I am” sayings because it has been read, all too often through the years, to mean “I am the ONLY way,” and used to state that those who come to God by any other means are not truly “saved.”  Jesus does not say "the only way" and I don’t believe that this is what Jesus ever meant because nothing else we ever hear from Jesus is used to exclude and shut-out. 

In John’s gospel, God’s self – the Word – is enfleshed in Jesus.  For us to believe that what we humans are capable of understanding of Jesus is all there is to see is pure arrogance to my thinking.  God's love is so  much greater than our understanding. Jesus is all about invitation – in the synoptics and in John.  Jesus offers himself as the way - and God’s Way is far greater than our limited capacity to take it in.  I don’t think it behooves us to try to place limits on God’s way, and Jesus does not demand that this form is the only way possible.

And finally, Jesus is “the life.”  And what is the opposite of life but death?  Death is that which is sealed in a tomb and decays.  Death is un-being.  The life that is Jesus is the polar opposite – life in all it’s fullness.  Be-ing.  Be-ing with God, and in God, and for God, and by God's desire.  Be-ing greater than we can comprehend.

These archetypal images are powerful and they touch something deep inside of us. They are part of why John’s gospel speaks to us so powerfully.  People have been captivated by the richness and beauty of John’s language for centuries.  This gospel is less a historical narrative and more an evocation of the richness and majesty – the depth and the glory – that is Jesus and God’s love for the world.
​
We’ll come back to John again next week because there is still a great deal for us to uncover.
0 Comments

IN THE BEGINNING ...

7/31/2016

0 Comments

 
John 1:1-14
    
    In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.  All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

    There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.  He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.  He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.  The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.  
 
    He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him.  He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.  But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.
​
    And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

Today we begin our look into the Gospel according to John, the third of the gospel accounts to be written and the one that is so very “different” from the other three.  We will probably spend a few weeks here simply because John’s gospel has such a different agenda and needs more explaining to completely understand it.  Although other opinions do certainly exist, the most generally accepted dating puts John as having been written somewhere in the 90's – as much as seventy years after the death of Jesus.

Down through the centuries this gospel was uncritically accepted as written by the disciple John.  This is no longer believed by most, but the question of just who this “John” was still remains a puzzlement.  Among the many theories the most commonly accepted, in our time, seems to be that this account was written by a diaspora Jew whose milieu was a Hellenized Judaism.

Just a brief explanation of some of those terms if you’re not familiar with them.  For centuries the Hebrew people had kept to themselves.  They started out as nomads but once they reached the Promised Land they stayed there, circling around Jerusalem, surrounded by their own kind. 

They didn’t colonize other locations and they were hugely suspicious of outsiders coming within their ranks.  They lived this way for hundreds of years until the waves of conquering armies began to overtake them.  Every time a new people defeated and overtook their country, the Jewish inhabitants were forcibly split up – to prevent insurrections – and scattered around the near eastern world.  Thus the Jewish people were forced to leave their insular lives and branch out into the wider world.  These are the diaspora Jews – the ones who settled into the new lives and to some greater or lesser extent accepted the ways of their new neighbors - some clinging strongly to their Jewish ways, others, not so much, people being as they are.

The word “hellenized” means influenced by Greeks thoughts and actions.  In Jesus’ time and later years, for instance, Koine Greek was the lingua franca of the middle east – the language everyone spoke to some degree so people could converse with others from outside their realm – much as English can be spoken today by most people, even if they still use their own language among their own kind.

Starting in the hundred years before Jesus, Jewish thought was heavily influenced by Greek philosophy brought in by Greek invaders – a manner of thinking and making-meaning that was quite different from traditional Jewish thinking.  Greek thinking was rational and logical.  There were myths and stories, all right, but under these was a layer of rational thought subject to study and proof, whereas Jewish thought was based on revelation and a relationship - a relationship between the People and the One God who chose them.  But when the faith of the Jesus followers began to expand out into the world it was into a world ruled by this Greek way of thinking.  Over time, both Mediterranean and Jewish-Christian thought would by changed by their coming together.

Old Testament Jews, for instance, had no concept of an afterlife – that concept entered by way of the Greeks and by Jesus’ time it had become altered and fairly commonly accepted into Jewish thought.  The Pharisees of Jesus’ time accepted the concept of life after death, while the more conservative Saducees did not.

I’ve taken time to go into all this because these historical facts of an insular, segregated people being forced out of their limited world into a broader world they did not particularly want to interact with all play into how and why the various gospels were written as they were.  Greek thought will play a large role in John’s gospel and we’re going to keep running into it.  It is in many cases markedly different from Jewish thought and explains some of the vast difference between John and the other three gospels.  While the thought of the writer of John largely remains Jewish, the style becomes an international Greek.

In the Synoptic gospels, Jesus teaches in parables – in short, easily remembered sound-bites.  In John we’ll find that Jesus speaks in long, extended discourses  – sounding much more like the style Greek philosophers used when they taught in the marketplace - expounding at some length on their topics.
​
In a gospel account full of differences and usages that are unique to John, possibly the greatest difference lies in the opening paragraph – the Prologue.  Where Mark first introduces Jesus as a fully grown adult, and Matthew and Luke both begin their accounts with Jesus’ birth, John starts his story of Jesus with creation itself, referring us back to the opening words of the Bible in Genesis.  Before anything else was called into being, the essence of Jesus was.
​In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.  All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.
The Greek word we translate into English as Word – (capitalized) – is Logos.  Logos is the rational principle that orders and governs the universe.  This is such a Greek concept – we have not – and will not – hear anything like this from any writer writing from a strictly Jewish point of view.

John is not saying here that Jesus is the Word – Jesus was not present at the creation.  John is saying that centuries later that divine ordering principle – that Logos – would become enfleshed in the person of Jesus.

That’s enough John-thinking for today.  Next week we will attempt to enlarge on this concept, as well as take a look at the “I AM” statements that are only found in John’s gospel.
0 Comments

SIGNS OF THE TIMES & A MESSAGE OF HOPE

7/24/2016

0 Comments

 
This past Sunday our Summer Series once again got "bumped" in favor of an ad hoc commentary on current events.  

​Having recently endured the Republican National Convention and all the anger and vitriol spewed forth there I found myself last week in desperate need of some hope and grace --for myself, my church and our faith, and I set aside my prepared Summer Sermon Series message in favor of talking about what was truly on my heart that day.

I have a file in my computer I call my “come back to later file” where I toss things I want to investigate eventually but don’t always have time right at that moment.  These “orphan” notes often turn out to be just the thing I need weeks or months down the line.
And sure enough, there was the trigger that set off a long chain of thoughts and associations in my mind.

In the days just prior to the Democratic National Convention this week the news cycle was buzzing with Hillary Clinton’s choice for running mate, Tim Kaine.  Like most Americans, I suspect, I didn’t know a whole bunch about this man, but one quote from his introductory speech in Florida stuck in my mind:  “Do all the good you can.”  Turns out that phrase is attributed to John Wesley (although even that seems to be challenged now). The longer version reads: “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.”

I like this saying.  I like it a lot.

And that saying sent me to my “come back to later” file for this quote from Daniel Berrigan, Jesuit priest and anti-war activist: "The good is to be done because it is good, not because it is going somewhere. I believe if it is done in that spirit, it will go somewhere, but I don't know where.... I have never been seriously interested in the outcome." 

The good is to be done because it is good ... We don’t need any reason other than that to do all the good we can, by all the means we can ... as long as ever we can.  Period.

And then I came across another quote that had been sitting in that file for awhile, waiting for its moment to emerge.  This one is from Writer/Speaker Karen Armstrong, who points out that: Jesus did not spend a great deal of time discoursing about the trinity or original sin or the incarnation, which have preoccupied later Christians. He went around doing good and being compassionate.  I wish more people remembered this.

And then as if to confirm that this was to be my theme for this week, a new piece from Singer/Songwriter Carrie Newcomer popped up on my facebook feed, and this is what she had to say:
A Speed of Soul Thought
Let us remember that the best of humanity is still at work in the world. Remember that the commercial news we are getting is tilted and weighted toward fear and division. Think about it...how many people do you personally know that have reached across some kind of line or another- for family, for friendship, for work, for community, for the food bank...for love of some kind?

I would venture to say that most everyone reading this post can name many people (including themselves) who endeavor to speak and act with kindness and dignity, who were raised to value honest but respectful conversation, who do not believe that callous ridicule or bullying deserves to be lifted up.

Let us speak up and speak out in a way that balances the news of the world with the news of the heart. And remind one another of what is decent and whole and absolutely accessible to us. Let us counteract the first violence [the act itself] and the second violence [when we react with violence] with thoughtful, deliberate connection, open hearted truth and well placed trust.

                              https://www.facebook.com/CarrieNewcomer/

These are my thoughts this week - so freely gathered from a world of wonderful thinkers and speakers and writers.

Rage and hatred and violence make all the noise and gather all the notice, but I believe, and will continue to believe, to the end of  my days and beyond, that goodness and grace reign.  In spite of the worst the news can do, I will hold fast to the belief that this world has many, many more good people than broken, hateful people - they are all around us if we just pay attention. Recognize them, greet them, acknowledge them.

​This was the message I shared with my church this week .  I offer it to you.  Bless you all.
0 Comments

MATTHEW THREE: AND JESUS TAUGHT THEM

7/17/2016

0 Comments

 
Matthew 4:23-25
    Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people.  So his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought to him all the sick, those who were afflicted with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics, and paralytics, and he cured them.  And great crowds followed him from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and from beyond the Jordan
Our study of the Chronological New Testament has been a little broken up this summer with illnesses and journeys out of town but, hopefully, we will keep going in a straight line for awhile here.  We have looked at Mark’s gospel, and we have put two weeks so far into the main points of Matthew’s gospel.   We still have some loose ends to tie up in Matthew today, which we’ll try to do today, and then we will move on next week to the seen-with-other-eyes gospel – John.

The primary thing to be found in reading Matthew, we discovered, is his almost exclusive focus on his own Jewish people.  The point of all this story for Matthew is that Jesus was the one promised down through the centuries by all the prophets – the one for whom the Jewish people have waited all these long years – and when he arrived they refused him.

In reading the infancy narrative from Matthew, the baby and his mother are almost afterthoughts.  The important issue for Matthew is proving Jesus’ legal Davidic lineage – the messiah, it was known, would come from the Davidic line.  Here the works and teachings of the adult Jesus are all to prove that he is the “new Moses” – the fulfillment of all the Jewish messianic promises.

Today we are going to touch briefly on the Beatitudes, even though the Sermon on the Mount may be one of the most important of Jesus’ teachings.  

The sermon on the Mount takes place very early in Jesus’ ministry, but even so, people are turning out in droves to follow wherever he goes and to listen and bring their sick to him for healing.  This story is often pictured with Jesus seated on a slight rise and speaking to a vast crowd of people below him, teaching them all ... but when we read what Matthew actually says instead of the pictures in our minds, this is how it goes:  When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak...  The word disciples sometimes signifies only the twelve and sometimes is used to mean all followers of Jesus.  Since, in Matthew’s story, Jesus has only just finished calling the twelve it is most likely that they are the one spoken of here.

But again, this is Matthew, and there are other signals we shouldn’t miss here.  First, it’s placement as the very first of Jesus’ teachings show us that this is one of the most important teachings in the gospels.  The physical setting plays a large part in here.  First, Jesus goes up the mountain and then teaches his followers how things are.  It is no coincidence that this is reminiscent of Moses going up Sinai and returning with The Law.  Second, Jesus seats himself at the physical high point of the story and the disciples then approach him from below to be taught.  It is a royal position.  Here, Jesus is a king seated on his throne with the others approaching him to receive his favors and wisdom.  This is not a power trip on Jesus’ part but another reminder from Matthew of that Davidic lineage.

The first words from his mouth are those we know as The Beatitudes from the opening words: Blessed are....  In Matthew there are eleven of them, all following the same pattern: Blessed are...for they shall... .  The Beatitudes are also found in Luke’s gospel where there are four of them following the blessed are... pattern, followed by four known as the Woe’s – Woe to you who are rich for you have already received your consolation: and so on.  So four Blessed’s and four Woe’s.  We’ll go into that more when we get to  Luke’s gospel.

Where Matthew emphasizes the importance of this teaching by placing it as the first that Jesus offers at the very beginning of his ministry, Luke places it later, just one teaching among many.  Both Matthew and Luke give us the Our Father prayer – in slightly different versions.  Again, we’ll go into this more in Luke.

Matthew’s gospel is a mixture of pieces taken directly from Mark, as well as parts that are shared with Luke, but not Mark - from the presumed Q Source, and the scattering of stories that are unique to Matthew, appearing in neither Mark nor Luke.  From this latter list, we have already read the begats from the infancy story and the flight into Egypt and back.
 
In addition some of the familiar pieces of the gospel story that we take for granted as being in all the gospels, but aren’t, are the story of Jesus calling Peter out to walk on the water; Jesus admonishing his listeners not to cast their pearls before swine; forgiving an enemy seventy-times-seven times; the foolish bridesmaids who ran out of oil for their lamps; the laborers in the vineyard who all receive the same wage; and the servant who, refusing to be merciful himself, found he would receive no mercy in turn.  And there are many others, ending with the Great Commission to go out into the world and make disciples of all peoples. 

We’ve now covered two of the four gospels.  We’re in the late eighties/early nineties of the first century, around 60 years after the crucifixion of Jesus.  We possess a large chunk of the complete Gospel that we have available to us today, but there is still a lot that is not yet written down.

Next week we will begin John’s gospel.  Matthew. Mark and Luke are known as the synoptics – those seen with one eye or written from related sources and holding pretty much the same point of view.  John’s is the different one, the one with a different agenda.  John’s gospel will make for interesting reading.
0 Comments

MATTHEW TWO:  PROPHECIES FULFILLED

7/3/2016

0 Comments

 
​​Matthew 2:19-23
​
    After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who were trying to take the child’s life are dead.”
​
    So he got up, took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel.  But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning in Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. Having been warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee, and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets, that he would be called a Nazarene.
​We started this study of the written gospels in chronological order by attempting to wrap our twenty-first century awareness around the first few decades of the Christian Era when there was little or no written gospel to be found.  Even with the writing down of Mark’s account sometime in the fifth decade after the death of Jesus, there were still large gaps in comparison to what we have today.

Last time we began looking into Matthew’s gospel - written somewhere ten to twenty years after Mark’s – which would place it as many as sixty years after Jesus.  We ran through some general introductory information on Matthew’s gospel but focused on his Judeo-centric purpose in writing his account.  Matthew was a Jew writing for Jews.  He had little or no interest in evangelizing the gentile world.  He looked at the entire Jesus story through the lens of someone who believed fervently that Jesus was indeed the fulfillment of all the Old Testament messianic prophecies.  Matthew wanted to show his Jewish compatriots – God’s original Chosen People – what they were rejecting when they rejected Jesus.

We closed last time by saying that we were going to look this week at some of the things that are unique to Matthew – and we will get to that – but there are a couple of areas I want to go into first.  I don’t know how long each will take – but we’ll take as long as we need.

The first thing is Matthew’s story of the birth of Jesus and the events surrounding it.  Remember, only two of the four gospels have any birth story at all – Matthew and Luke.  Both Mark and John begin their gospels by introducing John the Baptist and his meeting with a fully adult Jesus.  

Even though Matthew and Luke both have birth narratives, they could not be more different from each other.  We’ll look into Luke’s in some detail when we get there but, in brief, Luke’s version revolves around Mary – the center point of Luke’s narrative -- and on the miraculous nature of the birth - described in great detail with the stable and donkey and shepherds and such.

Matthew, however, focuses almost entirely on Joseph.  In this gospel Mary is relegated to being little more than the necessary womb that bore Jesus.  The actual miraculous birth is given only about one-half of one tossed off line: ...he had no marital relations with her [Mary] until she had born a son.  That’s it’s - half a line with no detail at all.  No angelic announcements, no census, no little town of Bethlehem – no much-of-anything actually.  

What Matthew does give us is a long, long genealogy that precedes the birth, establishing Joseph’s lineage as a bonafide descendant of David – that long reading known as the begats, from the language used in the King James version.  This – to the Jewish community – is going to be what is important.  When Luke gets around to writing his gospel version he’ll include all the “traditional” (to us) Christmas elements because he will be writing to a primarily gentile audience.   We’ll get into why all those things matter to the wider world when we study Luke, but this is Matthew’s gospel and Matthew doesn’t give a hoot for all that.

Matthew gives us one scant paragraph on Joseph and Mary and a child being born and four lengthy paragraphs establishing that child’s lineage.  But then Matthew also gives us something no one else records.  He gives us three Wise Men, come from afar, bringing royal gifts to the child.  And why does Matthew give us this story when he gives us so little else?  Because in the Hebrew writings it was long foretold that when the messiah – the promised savior -- arrived and God’s plan was fulfilled, there would be leaders come from distant nations to pay homage ... “Kings will see you and stand up, princes will see and bow down, because of the Lord, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel.” -- That’s why.  Matthew wants the Jews to know that even “foreigners” acknowledge that Jesus was born to be King of the Jews, just as the prophecies fortold.

But Matthew isn’t through yet – he has one more infancy story that no one else records – and that is the story of the flight to Egypt.  A story that begins with those three wise men and a sneaky King Herod and a plot to kill the infant who is prophesied to be born to be King of the Jews.  Joseph – Joseph again, not Mary – is told in a dream to take his wife and child and flee to Egypt to escape Herod’s terrible action that we call the Slaughter of the Innocents – the wholesale murder of all infant Jewish boys in an attempt to dispose of this possible threat.
​
And what does this story remind us of?  From the first chapter of the Old Testament book of the Exodus:
The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah, “When you are helping the Hebrew women during childbirth on the delivery stool, if you see that the baby is a ​boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live.”   The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live.  Then the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and asked them, “Why have you done this?  Why have you let the boys live?”   The midwives answered Pharaoh, “Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women; they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive.”
​
    So God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more numerous.   And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own.  Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people:  “Every Hebrew boy that is born you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.”
Here, Matthew is once more making an explicit claim that Moses and Jesus are linked – that Jesus is, in fact, the new Moses.
​
Among the things found only in Matthew there is a most interesting section in chapter 5 known as The Antitheses.  These are those verses that begin, “You have heard it said....BUT...” 

​     “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person.  If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.  And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well.

     “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’  But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

    “Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not break your oath, but fulfill to the Lord the vows you have made.’

     “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’  But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,  that you may be children of your Father in heaven.
​
These and a few others all go on in greater detail, creating short pericopes where Jesus does not contradict traditional teachings – Matthew’s Jesus is all about fulfilling the Law, after all, not changing it – but he does definitely amplify them – deepens our understanding of them -- extending the law into much greater detail than any obvious, first-glance understanding.  For Matthew’s Jesus, simply fulfilling the simple  surface appearance of piety is never enough.  “Righteousness” goes much deeper than just surface observation.
​
We’ll come back to finish up with Matthew next week.  I hope these discussions are encouraging you to read the gospels for yourself with a careful, discerning eye and ear – hearing some of what is being said behind the printed words.
0 Comments

JUST A NOTE ...

6/26/2016

0 Comments

 
We had a high absentee rate this Sunday due to illnesses and folks out of town, so we put off the next lesson on Matthew's Gospel for a week.  We'll be back around on our regular schedule next Sunday, I promise!  Meanwhile, those of us who were there shared what was going on in our own lives -- and that was very good, too!  See you next week!
0 Comments
<<Previous
Forward>>
    Picture

    Rev. Cherie Marckx

    Archives

    July 2025
    June 2025
    May 2025
    April 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013

    RSS Feed