June 24, 2018 Final Worship of the Academic Year Featuring Handel’s Solomon The German-born composer George Frideric Handel had been resident in London since 1712 and enjoyed great success as a composer of Italian operas. Soon he began to gain recognition as a composer of English church music, stage works, and operas and eventually abandoned […]
Children’s Sunday June 17, 2018 Worship included presentation of certificates to all of the children in our Sunday School and gifts of appreciation for our teacher and nursery workers. Worship was a multi-media and hands-on experience that can’t be duplicated on a website. We hope you’ll come next year on Father’s Day when we […]
It’s a sad fact of life that sometimes people suffer and then die from their sicknesses. Even Jesus’ friend Lazarus died. And just as sometimes people die from physical illness, so too do people sometimes die from mental illness. Just as modern medicine can’t always cure physical disease, so too it can’t always cure diseases of the mind and spirit. So once again I remind us: never once does Jesus condemn those who are beyond healing in this life to an eternal life of suffering, of being beyond God’s reach.
These are interesting stories, but what do they have to do with us? What are we twenty-first century progressive-leaning Christians to make of the sabbath?
It’s Trinity Sunday, so we might as well begin with ancient church father St. Augustine’s unforgettable echo of the insight of earlier Greek theologians. Si comprehendis, non est Deus: if you have understood, then what you have understood is not God.
From Ashes to Fire Text: Acts 2:1-21 Rev. Heather M. Hinton May 20, 2018 ~ Pentecost (Year B) Here’s a quote I came across this week as I did my research for this sermon: “Christmas without Easter is stupid. Easter without Pentecost is pointless.” [1] Let me explain. A baby was born 2000 years […]
Ascension Day is a festival day in Christian tradition. After all, Jesus has ascended to the Father, where he will rule in grace and truth, and that is good news for us and for the world. But I wonder if the disciples could possibly have felt joy in those moments when he spoke of his final departure, and in those moments when he was lifted up to heaven on a cloud.
This is love: a relationship not of master-servant or teacher-student, but of mutual care and concern: friendship. “I have set you an example,” Jesus says. “Wash one another’s feet.”
And yet Philip, prompted by the Holy Spirit, sits beside this racially and ethnically foreign man, this sexually and therefore religiously unclean, scarred, unworthy man and teaches him about the scriptures, beginning with the passage from Isaiah. He proclaims to him the good news about Jesus. And the Ethiopian eunuch is so moved that he burns with the desire to become a part of this nascent community of Jesus-followers. As soon as he sees some water beside the road he cries, “Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?”
What, indeed?
Earth Day: a time for Gathering ~ Celebrating ~ Lamenting ~ Dreaming ~ Praying ~ Going Forth
