Intersections

  I trust that everyone had a good Christmas. It seems strange that we are back here again so quickly, but I hear preachers only work on Sundays. Thank you for being here. I know the week after Christmas is considered a “low Sunday” whether that’s attendance, or maybe my preparation, so thanks for joining me.  You may have seen that our topic today is Lost at Home, which I understand can be kind of confusing. As we’ve travelled through Advent, we’ve been on our journey to discover where our homes are, the places we can be ourselves, no matter who we are around or what’s going on. The places where we can let our guard down and just… be real.  I hope over the last month or so you’ve never felt lost, but Advent is a season where we can easily lose ourselves in busy-ness, lose ourselves in decorations and preparations for parties, lose ourselves in trivial things that now that the holiday is over, you may feel a little more empty.  I get that. We had such a high a f...

  Welcome all from near and far! Now, I know you really want to get back to the singing, and we'll do that, but I need to say a few words tonight. The story as you know, kind of sells itself, it's not like I have to get that deep into it. Everyone knows it, and we'll get back to the singing in just a few minutes.  But let me challenge that expectation of the story that is so often repeated. The story begins, like many in our series, with a world not that different from ours: times for censuses, taxes, royal orders and decrees. The power structure is in place as it has been for generations. Even the beginning is kind of tired..."In THOSE days"... like days that are not like ours?  Something happens and the angels declare that "on THIS day" good news has arrived. It is a division of time and space, when the holy and secular have collided. It is not in our chronological time, per se, but more - this time that God has declared. Angels have infiltrated ou...

  The blessing of home. We've been looking at home through different lenses the last four weeks, and Christmas is so close, I think most of us can even taste it now. What are your favorite flavors of the Christmas season? Mine are of pie - my grandma was a world-class baker. Every holiday - not just Christmas - there would always be four or five pies made, with the flavors rotating, depending on the time of year. Christmas would be apple, pecan (my grandpa's favorite), pumpkin, and mincemeat. As a kid, you hear mincemeat, and you kind of turn up your nose. I don't think I ever tried it while I had it available. It just... doesn't sound appealing. But your nose knows when there is a blessing of home.  The scripture today turns back the clock a little bit - we are reading now out of Luke, chapter 1. Our last couple of weeks we've been focusing on John the Baptist, and this week is no exception, but he's only a side character in our narrative today, since he...

How should we live? You don't ask yourself that question, right? Oh, you don't? I guess I'm the weirdo here then. There are so many shoulds in our lives, especially now during Advent. Should we send Christmas cards, should we visit our estranged extended families? We should be living with joy. The candle that was lit this morning is a representation of that joy. Although it doesn’t come across as such, this scripture is about joy. Last week, we began this set of scripture with John the Baptist, and he was brought to focus on the Messiah - whose time has not come yet. He was sent to prepare the world for the arrival. Screaming at the crowds who come to you, doesn’t seem like the right vibe? Let’s go through the text slowly to set the scene…  Luke sets up John like this… the crowds came to him to be baptized. Again - still in the wilderness, so these are wanderers, sojourners, disconnected people who wanted to belong. They were looking for something, even something that co...

  Here we are, one week closer to Christmas. Hope you are starting your preparations well. Who is done with their shopping? For the first time in a long time, I think we are done, if not very close to being totally done with our preparations in our own home. Our tree is up, and decorated, even if our cat likes to nibble at the branches at the bottom. The outside lights are up, and we even have a spotlight for our garage that has various snowflake shapes in it. We were gifted it from my mother-in-law last year, and it ended up in the garage, but somehow got moved (let’s be honest, I was probably the culprit of that) and so it fell BEHIND some of the shelving, and behind a piece of plywood on the floor. Thankfully, Tadjena is amazingly thorough and relentless, so she was able to find it after looking for what feels like two weeks. So - yeah - we’ve gone through our to do list, and making sure it’s getting done, and with that comes a sense of peace. Are you one who really likes being ...

 From the Pastor’s Desk:  Happy New Year! Well - that does sound kind of weird, but it’s the beginning of the church year, starting at Advent. I follow the Revised Common Lectionary - which is simply a rotating list of bible verses to preach on that covers about 75% of the Bible over three years (A, B & C). We are beginning year C, which means that it focuses the Gospel readings from the book of Luke. Now, Luke loves people, not only those who were in his community, but many in the margins of “acceptable” society. Luke highlights that no matter who we are or what we have done, there is a place for us in the Kingdom of God.  The focus this month is on “Coming Home for Christmas”. That can mean so many things to each of you. We all have our favorite places we consider to be home. I hope you feel as though Bethany is a place you can call home.  But, maybe we are lucky enough to have more than one place that feels as comforting as home.  When I was growing up, m...

  How is everyone feeling? I know today’s topic is Coming Home, and we are right after Thanksgiving, so how many went home for it (or welcomed travelers from out of town) - traveled more than two hours for their celebration? Four hours?  For those who did not travel or to spend time with extended family - how were you feeling? Were you relieved? Anxious? Hopeful? Ambivalent?  Time to Go Home needs thoughtful preparation, but no matter where home is hope lives. You have freedom to be who God created you to be.  There are preparations to do, whether traveling or receiving guests. Now, when preparing for either hosting or traveling, it would be helpful to have a plan to make sure everything gets done before you leave, and then another method while you’re on the road - mapping out the route to your destination. I spent many hours on highways between here and southern Wisconsin, where my extended family lives. This was in the days before personal electronics, so there was...

  What is truth? That is Pilate’s next sentence after the reading today. Pilate wasn’t the first to ask it, and we’ve been asking ever since. The essence of truth is such a vague question that it wields a complete spectrum of answers. Is the Bible true? Is Jesus true? How do we know? I know these are pretty fundamental questions of faith, but sometimes we need to start at the beginning to build that foundation on which the rest of our beliefs rely. This reading is only four verses, but there’s so much here to unpack, so let’s go.  Today is the Reign of Christ Sunday. It is the last Sunday of the year before Advent. For a bit of history, Pope Pius XI created the feast day in 1925. He did it to curb the smoking kindling that was starting to burn through Europe. This year is the same time in the United States that Calvin Coolidge is president; the middle of the so-called “Roaring Twenties” was happening, the split right between the Prohibition years, when alcohol was illegal. Mar...