Grace to you and peace, from God our Creator and the Lord Jesus Christ!  I remember what may have been among the most radical ideas I learned for the first time in seminary.  Prior to taking a course on the Christian liturgical year, I had not consciously thought of the passage of time through any lens but the western calendar, a passing of seconds, minutes, hours, and then elements of that fixed 365 days broken into weeks, months and years.  Decades passed as measurements of life’s passing, in individual or family mortal spans and in wider historical eras.  Among those measurements was the designation of Sunday, a day of Sabbath rest.  Enter the Christian liturgical year.  For such a times as ours, I hope that this particular Sunday’s value will be new.  Its significance to you before now may have been only the marking of mid-winter known by association to Punxatawny Phil the groundhog, but offers more certain hope in our Christian year.  We remember the presentation of Jesus by his parents at the temple in Jerusalem, a day called Candlemas in some Christian traditions.  This moment in the liturgical year falls between Christ’s birth Christmas and the resurrection we celebrate at Easter. 

So, as we gather tomorrow in celebration of the sacrament of Communion, a chief ritual in our religious practice, I invite us all to remember that we live in a time marked by hope, which looks back on God’s prior gifts with gratitude and forward to God’s promises with praise.  I invite us to celebrate that our time is not only marked by lives measured in bodily circumstances, but by deeply spiritual, holy times such as these.  

Blessings and peace, Lisa

Grace to you and peace, from God our Creator and the Lord Jesus Christ!  Pulitzer Prize winning author Annie Dillard wrote in Holy the Firm, “”There is no one but us. There is no one to send, not a clean hand or a pure heart on the face of the earth or in the earth—only us… unfit, not yet ready, having each of us chosen wrongly, made a false start, yielded to impulse and the tangled comfort of pleasures, and grown exhausted, unable to seek the thread, weak, and uninvolved. But there is no one but us. There has never been.”  This idea of our own ability and, perhaps, to do what we are able to do in the face of challenges may be something to hold in the days ahead.  Perhaps a similar feeling is what motivated the apostle Paul and his Messiah, Jesus, as we hear from them this week. 

The story we hear of Jesus’ “inaugural address” to the people of Nazareth recalls to his listeners and to us that God has promised a year of Jubilee, when debts are forgiven and healing promised.  The response of the crowd and the connection to our purposes today may challenge us, and therefore bear reflection.  With Paul’s extended metaphor of the Body of Christ and God’s gifts to empower it, to empower us, we may begin to imagine how to help provide hope in a time of challenge.  

Accompanying our choir this week is George Emlen, who is now a regular part of our musical rotation.  Many thanks to George, and to Tina Dreisbach for coordinating our talented and changing lineup of musicians!

Blessings and peace, Lisa

Grace to you and peace, from God our Creator and the Lord Jesus Christ! Friends, this is a momentous week, as we sit on the brink of a historic inauguration, which falls on the day on which we celebrate a great moral and spiritual leader.  The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a prophet of the finest kind, who listened closely for God’s leading in his life and who spoke truth to power as a result.  He did so at the risk of his life, which indeed ended with a maniac’s vicious choice.  If you are moved to learn more and to be empowered by solidarity with others who yearn for a nation guided by love and compassion and committed to liberty and justice for all, you may like to tune in to the program whose link is attached here. From the publicity materials for this event, we learn that “For Such a Time as This: A Prophetic Response to America’s Defining Moment” will bear witness to this moment and affirm our unwavering commitment to justice, equity, and the dignity of all people. In a time when our nation longs for justice, healing and unity, this event aims to center love and justice while challenging the divisive narratives that too often misrepresent the role of faith in public life.

Our worship service tomorrow will, likewise, honor Dr. King and draw us together as we meet this time with hope and with unwavering faith in God, who loves us all and who has taught us what we need to be for others.  With our instrumental consort and chimes choir leading us in inspirational songs of resistance and hope, our worship should send us into the week, strenghthened for the journey.

Blessings and peace, Lisa

Grace to you and peace, from God our Creator and the Lord Jesus Christ!  As we settle in with our new music director, Tina Dreisbach, and continue to flesh out the ways we will provide worship music, we welcome Clair Maxwell back to the organ today and also look forward to hearing from our choir.  Our thanks to Tina and to her husband Paul for their contributions to our Sunday worship!  

Our Gospel reading today does not follow the lectionary, which would have us reading about Jesus’ baptism.  Rather, it continues the story that follows his birth and the adoration of the Magi.  In the few verses that attend to the family’s departure from Bethlehem, we hear a familiar story, though perhaps more recent than we may have thought.  As we worship together this week, we are reminded to keep close in our hearts those who are forced to leave their homes and what is our faithful responsibility to them.  

Before then, I look forward to seeing many of you at my home this evening for fun, food, and total frivolity with our potluck and yankee swap!  See you soon!  

Blessings and peace, Lisa

Grace to you and peace, from God our Creator and the Lord Jesus Christ!  Beginning a new year together in worship is a delightful way to look back at what is good and to plan for a glorious future.  We do that in our celebration of Communion tomorrow morning, with thanks to our deacons and worship team helpers, and I invite those of you at home to prepare your own bread and cup in order to partake with us.  Our scripture lessons ask us to remember those who sought a new king in an era of disillusionment and fear, and also invite us to consider where we might go to seek a better way and to know assurance.  In the story of the wise seekers from the East who honored an infant child and his mother and who chose to disobey an immoral ruler, Herod, we know the lengths to which the faithful will go in response to God’s call in their lives.  As we start the new year together, may we be strengthened in our own faithful living. 

Blessings and peace, Lisa

Grace to you and peace, from God our Creator and the Lord Jesus Christ!  In the warm days that follow Christmas (warm hearts, anyway!), I am very often moved to remember the beautiful poem of Howard Thurman, “The Work of Christmas.”  As we look toward our worship together tomorrow, which will include a carol sing in response to scripture, we may also consider his words. 

Blessings and peace, Lisa

     “The Work of Christmas,” by Howard Thurman (renowned Baptist minister, theologian and Civil Rights activist)

When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among others,
To make music in the heart.