3-14-10
Bulletin

Dear Friends,

Every one of us, I am convinced, keeps a scorebook in our minds, carefully tracking who plays the game of life fairly, and who does not – the winners, and the losers.  Our assumption is that God always sides with those who walk the straight and narrow, who do not stray too far from the fold, who dutifully follow the rules, even when they do not always agree with them.  These, we believe, are the winners.  But for those losers who cannot seem to stay the course, who either drift away and gradually become lost or run away so defiantly that they cannot be stopped – for these, we assume, there will be a reckoning.  What goes around comes around, we say.  Everyone must eventually have to sleep in the bed they have made.  In the end, the winners will prevail.  Or so we think.

The parable of the Prodigal Son, for all its familiarity, never ceases to surprise, shock, and infuriate those of us who think we know a thing or two about God’s justice.   At first glance, it seems like a story about a loser becoming an unlikely winner, and a self-identified winner who learns the hard way that the scorebook he has kept for so long is useless because, by all appearances, everyone wins in the end, regardless of how they have lived their lives, or how much damage they have caused.  

But this summary is not entirely true, because the story is not about winners and losers, but the lost and the found; it’s not about God’s justice, but God’s mercy; it’s not about two sons, but one father, who will do anything and everything necessary to keep his household together, even if means that, in the end, he’s the one who comes off looking like the loser. 

I hope you’ll join us this Sunday as we look once again at this familiar, yet subversive parable.  Wherever you are in your life right now, there’s a place for you in the story, and a place in the household of God.

See you Sunday,

Rev. Mark

3-7-10
Bulletin   Listen

 Dear Friends,

2-28-10
Bulletin Listen Watch Video

Dear Friends,

We’re good at respecting the “individual” in our culture.  We value individual rights, individual options, individual claims, individual freedom.  We boast of our freedom to do just about anything we want to do with our lives, but rarely do we have people in our lives who can help us figure out what in the world might be worth doing. We need mentors, friends, leaders, examples in our lives to show us the way, to show us how to be faithful, to show us what we can be.  But we live in a culture in which people prefer to be admired rather than imitated – do as I say, not as I do, they say. 

That’s what makes Paul such a rare and necessary leader.  “Join in imitating me,” he told the Philippians.  It wasn’t that he thought of himself too highly.  It wasn’t that he thought himself perfect.  Paul simply understood that to be a Christian is to assume that, whether we like it or not, we are always exposed to the imitative stare of those around us.  All of us teach others by the very way we live our lives.   

Who’s watching you today?  Your children, your neighbor, your spouse, your co-worker?  Chances are it’s someone you do not even know is there.  Who will you be?  How will you live?  What will you do?

See you Sunday,

Rev. Mark

02-21-10
Bulletin Listen Watch video

Dear Friends,

The Season of Lent seems to have arrived sooner this year than in years past.  Indeed, just yesterday I saw a brown, forlorn Christmas tree sitting at a neighborhood curbside awaiting pick-up.  Unlike Christmas, which occurs on a fixed date each year, Easter’s arrival is determined by the date of the spring equinox (the first Sunday following the first full moon of spring).  The liturgical season that precedes Easter is called Lent – a forty-day season (excluding Sundays) of “fasting” and “penitence” that ends on the Saturday before Easter.  “Lent” comes from the Old English word, Lenten, which means spring – a reference not only to Mother Nature, but to that season of the soul in which, after deliberate preparation and attention, we blossom in the full light of God’s grace.

With our observance of Ash Wednesday this week, our Lenten journey has begun.  Our gospel story from Luke this Sunday sends us immediately into the wilderness with Jesus where, for forty days and forty nights, we learn to live without the comforts, distractions, and addictions of our everyday lives.  Lent is intended to be very much like a wilderness experience, where we learn what it’s like to live by the grace of God alone and not by what, for better or worse, we can supply for ourselves.

If you haven’t already done so, it’s not too late to “give something up” for Lent.  Nothing is too small to give up.  All you have to do is set it aside and ask yourself, “How does it feel not to have it?  How, by giving it up, might that void become for me an impetus to grow personally – in my relationship with God, in my understanding of myself, in my encounters with strangers, enemies, and those whom I love?”

Join us this Sunday as we head out to the wilderness with Jesus — learning to live without so that we can be sure that we’re indeed even living at all.

See you Sunday,

Rev. Mark

2-14-10
Bulletin Listen Watch video

Dear Friends,  

Every one of us knows what it’s like to take a giant step out on a limb in life, only to experience that lonely feeling of doubt, dread, or regret moments later.  It’s something like “buyer’s remorse” where, after the thrill of the moment is gone, we wonder if we made the right decision.  Why is it that, in the face of some significant decision, we can feel so bold and confident one minute yet tremble with self-doubt the next?  Did I make the right choice?  Can I trust God?  Do I really want to go through with this?  Do I have what it takes? 

According to Luke, there came a time when the disciples experienced that hard moment of self-doubt.  It wasn’t so much that they did not trust Jesus; it all came down to whether or not they could act on that trust.  When Jesus told them that his mission was to suffer, die, and be raised back to life, their entire world was turned upside down.  This was not the kind of mission they had signed up for.  Following Jesus wasn’t supposed to include death and darkness. 

What the disciples couldn’t see was the light at the end of the tunnel – how it was all going to end, the purpose behind this mission with Jesus, the outcomes.  That’s when Jesus gave them a glimpse of the end, a luminous moment in which they could see, however faintly, how the story would play out, and where it all was leading.  When all they could see was the suffering and death part of the story, Jesus showed them the glory that would follow it.  It is called the story of the Transfiguration, when Jesus appeared before a few of his disciples all lit up in his future, resurrected glory.

Such luminous moments may seem rare in our lives, but they do happen.  While there is no way around the death and darkness part of life, Jesus reminds us this Sunday that even the darkness can be transfigured into something far more luminous that we might have imagined.

See you Sunday,

Rev. Mark