One of the most basic principles of United Methodism is connectionalism. This is an expression of the basic Christian doctrine that the church is not each of us individually but all Christians. In the Nicene and Apostle’s creeds we say that we believe in “one holy catholic church.” The word ‘catholic’ with a small ‘c’ means universal (no, we’re not claiming to be part of the “large C” Roman Catholic Church). The church, the Body of Christ, is all Christians.

This idea of connectionalism gets expressed in very concrete ways in the life of the United Methodist Church. We are ‘in connection’ with all other United Methodist churches, boards, agencies and ministries of the United Methodist Church. We support these other ministries just as we support the ministry of our congregation. Part of this support is our apportionments, the financial resources we contribute to the Annual Conference that allow a more efficient and effective collective ministry in those parts of God’s mission we might have difficulty being present in personally (for example, the ongoing earthquake relief in Haiti). Together we are able to do more than we could as individual congregations. When we, as members of this congregation help support our connectional ministry through giving to our special collections for apportionments, we are supporting the very real and grace-filled presence of United Methodists around the world, in our own country and city, in all those places God has called us to minister. We are following Jesus’ call in Luke 4:18-19 to bring good news to the poor, proclaim release to captives, recovery of sight to the blind and the year of God’s favor. Our generosity means real change in the lives of people all over the world.

One form of prayer that is increasingly being practiced within United Methodism is contemplative prayer. Our congregation sponsors a centering prayer group Tuesday evenings at 7 PM in the Hospitality Center; centering prayer is one form of contemplative prayer that can be practiced with no special training or preparation.

Contemplative prayer is based in part on the idea that God is always communicating with us, but that this communication is non-verbal. I think many of us would be frightened if we physically heard God’s voice, although this experience is not rare. In contemplative prayer, God communicates with us at a deeper level than our conscious thought, healing and renewing us in faith. There are many ways to practice contemplative prayer, but one simple one is to sit comfortably and quietly and simply pay attention to the flow of your own breath through your nostrils. Your breath moves in, then out. It is a miracle of everyday existence that we are alive. In your breathing, acknowledge God’s presence, the mystery of our aliveness, and God’s persevering providence that sustains the world moment by moment. Nothing more is needed for your prayer to begin merging your will with the will of God. Sit like this for one minute and then slowly over weeks increase that time to around twenty. God will begin moving in your life in new and unexpected ways.

The Epiphany story is a way of talking about how Christ became known beyond the circle of his immediate family and acquaintances, making him known as the Christ and not just as Jesus the boy down the street.

Christ was made known to us through one or more of his disciples in our lives. Someone either led us directly to an encounter with the Risen Christ or prepared the way for us to understand Christ working in our lives. Epiphany is not a one-time-only event. Understanding Christ at work is something that unfolds over the course of our faith life. While some of us can point to a single converting event that led us to know Christ, to our personal Epiphany, many others were led there gradually through Sunday school, church, the examples of other saints and scripture. Neither type of Epiphany, the sudden or gradual, is better or worse than the other. What matters more is not how we came to Christ but how we become Epiphany for others, how we reveal Christ in our lives. Every interaction we have with another person is an opportunity for Christ to be made more visible in the world. We are the Magi, recognizing the presence of God in Christ and proclaiming it to others.

One of the oldest doctrines of the Christian faith is that God became human, God so identified God’s-self with human existence that God and humanity became inseparable in the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

The doctrine of Incarnation is rooted in the goodness of creation. The prologue to the Gospel of John which we hear today depends on the first chapter of Genesis for its textual shape. Because we are made in the image of God, God could be us in Jesus Christ. This has radical implications in a society based on the diminishment of humanity for commercial gain. Unless we always feel less than complete we aren’t good participants in a consumer culture. If we accept, really accept, that we are made in the image of God and that image is so excellent that God could take that image as God’s own, then affirmation of our worth is no longer an external process. We are no longer subject to those in the world whose advancement requires our diminishment. It has radical implications for how we view each other and all humanity. Spend some time this week thanking God for God’s willingness to enter into human history in the most intimate and profound way, as a helpless baby.

In general, most Protestant churches avoid much mention of Mary except at Christmastime. Partly this stems from a theological difference with the Roman Catholic tradition about the intercession of the saints, but partly from a misapprehension about the role of Mary in the scriptures.

In the Gospels, we see Mary in two primary ways. In the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke), Mary has a prophetic role. She hears and accepts the coming of Jesus. She proclaims God’s justice in Luke 1:46-55. She has the role of a nurturing mother, mirroring God’s nurturing role in many psalms. In the Gospel of John, Mary is portrayed as the first disciple, who recognized Jesus’ power (asking him to turn water into wine) and who is there at his death, witness to God’s power in Jesus and part of the origin of the church (In Jesus’ assigning the beloved disciple to Mary as son). A deeper understanding of Mary in scripture and theology would be empowering for all women, especially young women of faith. There are many ways to approach such study; if you would like to know some of the resources for understanding more about Mary and her importance in the devotional history of the church, please contact me.

 

Today, in our advent wreath reading, we hear about the shepherds. This “kingly” birth story turns the conventional pattern of its time upside down. The first to hear of Jesus’ birth weren’t important people but ordinary, everyday, possibly even slightly marginalized people.

One thing the story of the shepherds tells me is Jesus is found in the midst of ordinary life. The shepherds are at their “workplace.” They are doing the same things they do every day, and suddenly the reality of God’s presence breaks into their life. It is unexpected, new and hopeful. The newness of God is found in the everyday, the routine; Christmas is not the beginning of the church year but embedded in it. God’s presence is a paradox. God enters the world and it is never the same yet it continues in the same ordinariness. Turn around, look: the sheep are milling on the hillside, angels are calling, our feet are sore, a holy child waits for us to run to him.

Thanks to the kind of dubious news sources we find in racks at store checkout lines, the common understanding of ‘prophecy’ is predicting the future. I have one such “newspaper” from several years ago proclaiming “Shocking New Prophecies for 2008”. In Biblical terms, though, prophecy is simply speaking God’s truth to a particular time and place.

Biblical prophecy is deeply rooted in God’s mercy. God redeemed His people repeatedly and this is the message the prophets proclaimed. Often the prophets spoke the difficult truth about how people turn away from God, and what that means in light of God’s mercy as they understood it. Succeeding generations found messages of hope and comfort in these prophetic writings, because they saw how events of their day seemed to be like those the prophets had encountered. The early Christian communities, because of their experience of the risen Christ, pored over prophetic writings and found in them a new understanding of God and themselves in light of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. These writings still speak to us today, calling us to work for God’s mercy in the world and to see Christ present in all those we meet.

When we join the United Methodist church, we pledge to support it by our prayers, our presence, our gifts, our service and our witness. This final section during our stewardship campaign focuses on service and witness as they relate to our financial giving.

Most of us are not able in our busy lives to devote the time we would like to community outreach or service to those in need, whether in our own city, country or across the world. As a connectional church, the United Methodist Church provides us those opportunities through our apportionment giving. These are funds that go directly to local outreach, such as United Methodist Campus Ministry, to conference-wide outreach, and to world-wide mission and service. On our behalf, this portion of our operating budget is distributed to provide service and witness to Jesus Christ, in those places which we personally would be unable to serve. Because of our apportionments supporting agencies that do service and witness, when we give to special offerings 100% of those funds go to the area of giving. Your generous giving to our operating budget allows us to fully fund our share of these costs in the greater church and thus serve and witness to those whom we otherwise would never reach.

When we join the United Methodist church we pledge to support it by our prayers, our presence, our gifts, our service, and our witness. Financial stewardship is one aspect of the stewardship of our gifts. There are many other gifts that we have from God that we can also consider in light of stewardship.

It is easy to think of gifts as simply our finances. In the context of our membership pledge, gifts are the totality of what God has given us: financial resources, abilities and talents, leadership, the ability to inspire others, spiritual discernment, prophetic witness…the list is much too long for this column. One of the difficulties in a consumer society is removing money as the primary element of our concern. If we think of our gifts as the totality of our being, however, financial giving becomes easier. We are responding to God and the needs of the church with the most visible representation of our total work in the world, but not the only representation. Those who volunteer for Sunday school, to bake communion bread, to be ushers and greeters, serve on committees: all of these people are using gifts God gave them in the service of the church. Have you considered what gifts you have beyond money? What is God calling you to give?  

When we join the United Methodist church, we pledge to support it by our prayers, our presence, our gifts, our service, and our witness. As we discuss financial stewardship in worship, I want to examine the stewardship of presence.

Our basic faith about God includes that God is always present to us, as the psalmist says, closer than our own breath. The stewardship of our presence, then, at its most basic, is about being present to God. It’s very easy to become so busy there is no time in our lives to pray, to worship, to do acts of loving-kindness. Being present to God, stewarding our presence, means to be fully ‘there’ to those around us. Prayer is one way of improving our ability to be present. Acts of mercy engage us with the presence of other children of God. Being present in worship engages us in the Body of Christ present together in this place. Stewardship of presence is a commitment to be there, even when we are busy, even when we don’t necessarily feel like it. Through our presence we build up others. As in all stewardship, it is not what we get but what we give. Giving our presence may be the most important gift we have on some days, one that can’t be bought, one that makes God’s love visible.

When we join the United Methodist church, we pledge to support it by our prayers, our presence, our gifts, our service, and our witness. As we enter our financial stewardship season, I want to examine each of these pledges in light of how we are stewards of these areas of our lives as well.

Everyday Faith

Jesus, having a little bit of verbal fun with his listeners, tells us that the single most important commandment(s) are these two things: to love the Lord our God with all our hearts, minds, and beings, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. I think part of how we do this is through a stewardship of our prayers. The word steward implies one who cares for the property or ideas of another. If we are stewarding others through our prayers, we are praying in ways that care for and carry their burdens to God along with ours. We are loving God, and them, with our hearts, hearts open to the brokenness in need of prayer. We are having a conversation with God that is answering God’s Word spoken first to us through Christ, through the love of those we journey with and through the beauty of the world. Stewarding prayer is to be bearers of God’s love, to be open to God moving in our lives. God answers in sunsets and flowers and arms embracing us. Are we listening?

God gives us overflowing grace to the capacity of ourselves as finite human beings to receive it. In other words, everything we have comes from God, and the closer we grow in love to God the more perfect God makes us in our ability to receive what God is giving.

There is no response we can give God for this other than thankfulness. God does not need anything from us. In fact, there is nothing that we can give God; God already is infinite in all things. Our thankfulness, rather, is a response out of our need to acknowledge God as the source of everything we are and have. Modern culture insists we are the source of our own happiness and prosperity. Reversing this view to look at God as the source would relieve a great deal of our anxiety. If God really is the source of all we have, then we can share more freely and with less concern for our own desires. What we discover in this, I think, is that sharing is a need for us as well, mirroring God’s generosity to us. When I am less willing or able to share I feel diminished; I am not responding to God’s love as I would like. Being thankful to God is a habit we can acquire and exercise in daily life, pausing to stop in moments through the day to thank God for what is happening or being given to us. Not every situation may be blessing; God is not the source of evil. But for those times we can thank God, cultivating an attitude of thankfulness will bring us peace beyond material prosperity.

Paul’s letters to the various churches he founded show a robust and lively community of Christian believers two decades after Jesus’ resurrection. The basic unit of this faith was the family, but churches often seem to have consisted of multiple families gathered in one home to worship and practice their faith. The word translated “church” in the New Testament is ekklesia.

In classical Greek ekklesia meant "a group called out (perhaps by the town crier)." It is a specifically legislative term. This is no accident; there are many other words that mean assembly or gathering that could have been used. Ekklesia is a deliberately political word; Jesus was the king and this gathering was his kingdom. This implies two things to me about the church. First, it exists in the world and, like it or not, engages the world. We can pretend this isn’t so and have a policy of non-action, which is in reality an endorsement of the status quo of society. Or we can take what we know of God’s Good News and try to make our lives conform to that, and in so doing, change those with whom we come in contact. Secondly, as a ‘political’ gathering, we must interact with each other as the Kingdom of God dictates. As Paul says in so many ways in different letters, Christians are called to love one another in new ways, modeled on familial relations, yet including all in their family. This is a daily challenge and one that none of us ever perfects. The fact that we never arrive, however, should not prevent us from setting out on the journey… 

In the Gospel of Mark 9:24 a man coming to Jesus for the healing of his son says “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief.”

We often have inherited a faith from our families that tells us doubts are a sign of a weak Christian. In fact, questioning our faith is an inescapable part of maturing in it. My favorite theologian, Kathryn Tanner, begins her essential book Jesus, Humanity, and the Trinity with the statement “In order to witness to and be a disciple of Jesus, every Christian has to figure out for him or herself what Christianity is all about….” As United Methodists we are not asked to simply accept a statement of belief or ‘check our brains at the door.’ Rather, it is our responsibility to think long and thoroughly about the content of our faith. Our intelligence and the ability to reason are part of the gifts God has given each of us. We do this in prayer and meditation, in worship, and more specifically in small groups of fellow Christians gathered to study the Word and our tradition. If you are not already involved in a small-group study, I would urge you to take advantage of the many that are offered through our church. If your schedule prohibits attending at the times these are offered, please contact me and I will help you connect with people in a similar situation online or through e-mail. While a traditional weekly face-to-face gathering has many benefits, online study can be liberating and allow deeper reflection on the subject. Whichever way you choose, Christian study deepens our faith even as it raises sometimes challenging questions and helps us integrate patterns of grace into our Christian lives that extend to those around us. Deepening our relationship with Christ, even through questioning, deepens our relationships with everyone else.

If asked what topic is most common in the New Testament, most people might answer faith or love. However those topics have less than 800 verses each devoted to them; the topic of the right use of our resources, specifically money, takes over 2000 verses. In the Gospels it is the predominant teaching point of Jesus. This makes most of us uncomfortable. In some cultures it is normal to discuss salaries and what we spend on various parts of our life, but in American society this is a cultural taboo. Jesus would be very puzzled at this: “Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much.”

Like political issues, money has been seen as an area the church should pretend doesn’t exist: “That’s my private business, preacher, please don’t tell me what to do with my resources.” Jesus, however, calls us to express with our pocketbooks the values we hold, or say we hold, in our hearts. Admittedly, being fully faithful with our money is difficult. Anyone who has attempted ethical investing knows that today’s world is so complexly intertwined that finding companies whose employment and environmental practices are in accord with the United Methodist social principles is very difficult. Even buying clothes is sometimes fraught: do we buy clothes made in countries where children work long days in factories when we know that those children’s income feeds a good part of their family, despite our abhorrence of child labor? As Christians we are called to educate ourselves about the financial complexities of our world and realize that no financial choice is free of complicity in injustice. This realization can lead us to deep compassion for the poor and prayers for the healing of the world’s economic injustices.

Dr. Roy Heller at Perkins School of Theology tells a story of his first trip to Israel. He was amazed at the depth of religious feeling indicated by the street signs he saw everywhere saying “Repent!.” Unfortunately he soon realized they were traffic signs for U-Turns; the Hebrew word for repentance is the word that means “turning around and going back the way you came.” While the New Testament is of course written in Greek, the concept of repentance as “going back the way you came” would have been what the authors understood when they wrote the Greek word translated as “repent.”

The Bible is clear in its message that God never abandons us; it is we who wander away from God. One of the difficulties this presents for us psychologically is guilt. We know we have wandered from God and often our movement back to God is difficult because we feel guilty for doing those things we know have taken us away from the Christian life in some measure. Yet, God is always following us, as Psalm 23 says, pursuing us with goodness and mercy, and all we have to do is simply stop right where we are, turn around, and God is there, waiting with open arms to welcome us back, rejoicing in our return, rejoicing, as Jesus says, with all the angels in heaven. If you feel you have wandered away from God in some way, right now, this very moment is one in which you can turn back and know with certainty that no matter what direction you were headed, God welcomes you back unconditionally.

Today’s text speaks of God as the potter, reshaping lives which fail to be lived in God’s ways. In the ancient world, knowing God’s will was considered a matter of education. Once we learned God’s principles, we would follow them; that is, if we were good people we would. If we didn’t follow, the prophets warned of the consequences: God would reshape our ‘clay’ completely, and even wipe our shape away and begin anew.

We don’t think of God in such absolute terms today, and while we believe God will judge us, it is always with the mercy that other prophets spoke of when not warning against idolatry and evil. God allows us to choose whether to follow God’s ways. Which brings the question: How do we know what God wants? The discovery of this for our lives is the Christian practice of discernment. Discernment can be done many different ways, but the simplest is to pray repeatedly: Thy will be done. When we allow ourselves to be open to God’s will for our lives, we give God an opening into our hearts that allows God to begin to shape us as a beautiful object of art. We are transformed and God’s hands on us, like those of the potter, make us into something useful and delightful.

For centuries, this week’s text was one of the ones used to maintain a male-dominant social order, to encourage women (and often racial minorities) to accept their ‘natural’ lot as subjugated to the dominant social powers. After all, didn’t Jesus say that was how we should act?

Jesus has no intention, in this teaching, that we should allow ourselves to be oppressed in any way. Rather, he is teaching about true honor: the honor that comes from recognizing that we are all equally worthy. In the context of his culture, based on social status, this teaching was achieved through one of many disconcerting reversals of status in Luke’s Gospel. Our culture still defines status rigidly in many social situations, and we have to be careful to follow Jesus’ teaching here: that all status ultimately derives from our common humanity and thus, human distinctions are false. God has a different standard. At God’s table, the ones with the least will be given more, not because, they deserve more, but because they have always had less as a result of the evil of human social structures. Those with much will be asked to give, not because having much (status or wealth) is intrinsically bad, but because, in God’s kingdom, those who have much are expected to rectify injustice for those who have been denied. In our daily lives, we can perhaps begin to see the world from this vantage; then the Kingdom of God will be ‘near at hand.’

The Gospel of Mark ends with the scene of Jesus’ closest women followers discovering the empty tomb and running away in fear. The Gospel author is telling us, through the contrast of this scene with the reality of the church in the world, that this is not the end of the story. We, the church, continue the story. We tell the world about resurrection in our lives and communities.

Some days it seems like too much effort to keep telling the story. I look around the world and see wars, violence against women and children, hatred, racism. What good is it to be a witness for Jesus Christ? Is anything changing? It is at times like this I have to remember that this is not my story, not the church’s story, but God’s story. The timeline may be too long for me to see even the beginning of the resolution, but because of God’s actions in Jesus Christ, I know God is moving toward a real Kingdom, as real as our current world torn asunder by greed and hatred. We all have our part in this story and God has called each of us with unique gifts to participate in it.

Sometimes in worship we may think that the worship leaders are doing the actions and we as congregation are the spectators. What would happen if instead we understood that in worship we are all “acting” and God is the “audience,” and after each act giving us wild applause, a standing ovation, a ‘well-done?’ Would this not be resurrection, coming out of the tomb of despair for the world into the light of God’s presence, recognizing, the covenant God made in our baptism is about real new life, new life we can begin this moment?

Dr. Allan Cole at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary titled one of his pastoral counseling books “Be Not Anxious.” In the Gospel of Luke, when humans have an encounter with the divine (often an angel) the divine words usually translated as “Be not afraid” could also be rendered “Be not anxious.” God’s message to us is that our anxiety is unnecessary.

Obviously if we could not be anxious, our lives would be immensely better; if you know how to achieve this please let me know! One area of anxiety we could really benefit from releasing is anxiety about the church and the work of the church. If we believe God is in charge, then God will provide what the church needs as well. Not that we don’t have a significant role to play, but allowing our anxiety about the finances, the programs, or the growth of our church to be prominent in our planning and prayer can be just as paralyzing as any kind of anxiety in our lives. A deeper look at the Gospel assurance “Be not anxious” could lead us to realize that God is aware that even in the presence of God we can be anxious. Whether because we hang on to a theology that tells us we are unworthy, or because we forget that God’s judgment is always tempered with infinite mercy, God’s Good News to us is that God comes to us beyond anxiety, beyond any human standards, beyond our understanding.

Paul sometimes preached in public and caused a scene, but as today’s reading shows he more often than not proceeded quietly, as part of everyday life. Just as Jesus both preached publicly to call people to conversion but also simply took anyone in ministry as they happened to come to him, Paul (and by implication, the church) at first had two modes of ministry—the very public and the ministry of everyday life.

Sometimes we (I preach only to myself, of course) forget that each and every daily interaction is ministry. The time we take to thank the harried checkout clerk, the door we open for someone with hands full, falling back to let someone enter the freeway in front of us: all this is living the example of Christ. Bold, public actions are, of course needed, especially confronting systemic injustice; sometimes in our personal or work lives we are called to hold our co-workers or loved ones accountable for less-than-Christian behavior. But I’m convinced the small, ordinary kindnesses of daily life are equally, if not more, important. They cultivate in us generosity and compassion and will, in time, lead us to find the boldness to publicly live the call of the Gospel. This week, try to be conscious of how you are interacting in those situations where you might customarily not really see the other person as part of the Body of Christ. Just realizing we are together in our lives of faith may make all the difference.

 In today’s reading, the makers of idols in Ephesus are angry that Paul is potentially disturbing their livelihood by preaching that idols are not really gods, which they worry will “discredit their trade” and diminish worship, and thus their livelihood. The reading leaves us with the sense that they are more concerned about their economic well-being than worship, that inciting the crowd about neglect of their city goddess is simply a smokescreen for their real worries. Which matters more, faith or money? How often has the church put financial stability before living into trust in the Holy Spirit to lead us into new ministries?

As I wrote last week, we all have idols in our lives. There are many obstacles to removing our worship of power, wealth, and approval. When we change the focus of our attention it most probably will “discredit our trade”, that is, change the things that are priorities in our life. If God, the One God, the Creator of heaven and earth, is first in our life, then the relative priority of everything else shifts. This is bound to have a ripple effect in our families, our workplaces, and our relationships. If we trust God to work for our good, then while those changes might seem uncomfortable at first, we can also trust that God will be at work in the lives of all those we are in relationship with to change their hearts as well. Praying together about your priorities as a family, and including everyone in this family prayer time (children, elderly parents, those whom sometimes we keep out of the “decision loop”) will give God the opening into our hearts collectively to begin those changes. We will be led to trust the Holy Spirit and God’s power to transform our lives.

Today’s reading finds Paul in Athens, where the majority of the population worship idols. We may think our culture is superior in that few, if any, people bow to statues believing in their divine powers, yet American culture is based on the worship of the idols of power, wealth, and approval. All of us are guilty of worshiping at these altars to some extent, even if nothing more than desiring the approval of our friends and families for our work and lives.

We need to remember first that Jesus calls us to worship “in Spirit and in Truth”. This means worshiping only that which is true, and worshiping through the power of the Holy Spirit, not through our own human desires and needs. The surrounding culture is so permeated by the belief that power, wealth, and approval are the true ends of humanity that holding and espousing different values is often seen as “un-American.” This cultural norm makes it very difficult to live differently. If we are going to worship the one true, as our reading puts it, “unknown” God (who really is unknown to many people), then we have to give up our worship of the idols of our culture. The first step in giving up worship of the idols of power, wealth, and approval is to recognize how they manifest in our lives. This week, spend some time in prayer asking God to help you discern in what ways your life’s patterns are really worship of these idols. Then choose one way that you can begin to change your worship away from the ways of the culture and toward the worship of the God whose Truth gives us life.

In worship, we encounter the overflowing hospitality of God. Hospitality in this sense is God welcoming us as one of God’s precious and beloved children. All are welcomed because all are equal in God’s sight. God’s hospitality is not limited because God’s love is not limited. It is this model of abundant hospitality we learn through worship, and through being drawn into an experience of God’s presence. This is the model for hospitality in the rest of our life.

In the ancient Biblical world, hospitality was literally a matter of life and death. Strangers were welcomed because to turn them away might mean they had no food or water. Hospitality was seen as a matter of righteousness, right living before God. Our hospitality in our daily lives is rooted both in this call to just (righteous) living and in our personal experiences of God’s love.

Our hospitality in community is thus more than simply being a friendly and welcoming church. It means listening with our full attention to the cares and concerns of those around us in our families, jobs, and neighborhoods. It means opening ourselves to allowing others to minister to our cares and concerns, something which many of us find more difficult because it requires us to become more vulnerable. We don’t have the infinite compassion and love of God individually and aren’t expected to; what we do have is the knowledge that God will provide for us whatever we need to be in real Christian relationship with all those we meet.

From the earliest days of Christians gathering to worship, they followed what has become known as the "Ordo," which simply means 'order.' The Ordo was first formally recorded in the writings of Justin Martyr (c. 150), but today's scripture from the Book of Acts (at least a generation earlier) includes all the elements. We still follow this pattern of worship, and the bulletin headings today reflect our historic connection to the worship of the early Church. The four parts of the Ordo are:

 

1) Gathering

2) hearing, interpreting (sermon) and responding (prayers and tithes) to God's Word

3) The Lord's Supper

4) Sending into the world.

 

Sometimes we worship without the Lord's Supper, but it has always been an integral part of Christian worship, as today's scripture makes clear. The reasons for not celebrating the Lord’s Supper every Sunday are rooted in the early history of the Methodist movement in this country (and a clergy shortage) which became ‘tradition.’

One thing to think about is that the space between Sending and next week's Gathering is also worship. As the book of Acts describes, the early Church devoted themselves daily to acts of justice, mercy, and worship. How will you worship this week between today's sending and next Sunday's Gathering?

One difficulty of life today is maintaining a consistent prayer life (in case you’re wondering, clergy struggle with this as much as anyone). Yet centuries of our tradition tell us this is vital not only for our personal spiritual growth but that of our community. For most of us, our most immediate community is our family. I realize how difficult it is to find time for sharing anything as a family, even meals. As part of our life together, I would ask that you consider how you could do this. Setting aside even five minutes a day, as an intentional time to gather as a family and share concerns and joys, can lead to deeper faith and strengthened family bonds. As a way of starting this, try using the prayer from today’s bulletin for the Christ candle (“We light a light…”). Find a candle for your family that can be burned for many hours and light it at the beginning of your shared prayer time each day, taking turns reading this prayer.   Like any other spiritual practice, this is not an occasion for self-guilt if you fall away from the practice for a time. Simply pick it back up when you are able. Your spiritual life will be richer as a result.