Intersections

      I know we’ve been in dealing with the Corinthian church for the last month or so, and there was a possibility of continuing that through Paul’s second letter, but… given that we are pushing into Lent later this week, maybe it’s time to get back to the gospels. I set the theme of “Love Never Ends” and this is the last week for that series, and it may seem that this is a strange scripture to end on, but hopefully I can tie it up nicely. The theme throughout our scriptures in the series has been about how community matters - people matter - and that we individuals are part of a whole. Even last week with Willie preaching, his focus was on how the scouts (Boy, Girl & Cub) were another venue, like church, for teaching our young ones how to live in a community, and what kind of rules we should follow. It might even be fitting that the last sermon in our series would be something about how love is consistent and unchanging; that God’s love is the same yesterday, t...

  As much as I've enjoyed the winter weather... I can't help but to look ahead to when it's a little warmer outside. I know it's a little before the season, but does anyone enjoy garage sales? I mean, it's a great way to clear out stuff from your house you've accumulated, and if you're lucky, then you can get some cash out of it to do whatever you want with, whether it's to trade it for more stuff or not!   Anyway - about five years ago, at our old house, we tried to have a garage sale. We got all our stuff around, put on a half dozen tables, labeled & priced everything to move. It was part of a whole neighborhood two-day sale; we thought - how can we not get rid of this stuff?? We opened the garage on the first morning, hoping there'd be a line down our street. There was no one. We said, maybe it's just early - the people will come later.  At the end of the first day, we had no customers. What we didn't realize is that as much as w...

  Ah... the good old days... back when everything was more simple, am I right? I’m sure each of you has a story or two about “back in my day...” that you could tell me about. It may even involve being thrown in a snowbank (my uncle’s favorite threat), or walking to school, uphill both ways in waist-high snow, barefoot. We have gained so much in the 60-odd years since this church was built, yet I believe its best days are still in front of us. Technologies have changed, improved, and re-evaluated modern life, but not everything can be the way it was when we began.  In 1959, when this church was started, a few other things were: the middle of the Cold War - that probably wasn’t difficult for anyone... Vice President Nixon met on LIVE TELEVISION with the Russian President and debated on the merits of each of their systems. Could you imagine something like that today? The Pioneer 4 unmanned spacecraft was supposed to do a fly-by of the Moon and photograph it. It failed to take any...

  Happy February everyone! This month is special to me because I’m a big fan of Valentine’s Day. I know, it seems to be a holiday made up by the greeting card companies & chocolate makers to be advantageous to them and their profits. But no - there was a real Saint Valentine, much like Saint Nicholas and Saint Patrick. I understand that the United Methodist Church doesn’t subscribe to the idea of sainthood, but connecting to larger church history may be at very least interesting. The truth is, that historians aren’t sure if St. Valentine was one or more people? The legend goes, he was a real person, who was martyred in 270 A.D., and the story beyond that is inconsistent at best. One account says that St. Valentine was a priest who was beheaded by the Roman emperor Claudius II because he would help Christian couples wed during a time when it was outlawed. A different account says that he was a bishop, but with many of the same details. Regardless, it’s interesting that the t...

  Love - I know it may feel like a couple weeks early, but love is in the air today. Our passage is one of the most well-known excerpts from the New Testament and Paul’s writing. If you’ve been to a wedding, most likely you’ve heard some bit of this. It’s hard to dismiss love at a wedding, right? I’m not sure Paul would agree using this text at a wedding ceremony is appropriate, but we’ll get into that later. I’m sure I could make a whole series of this one chapter, but I promise to get you out of here in a reasonable amount of time for lunch, if you’re worried about that. Who thinks there should be more love in the world today? Show of hands…. Don’t be shy. Many, if not all of you… right? We look around at our world, and we don’t see that there’s enough love, that people aren’t acting with love. Is love an action? Or is it just a feeling? We have countless bits of movies and television showing what love is from just about every possible angle. But what’s the most truest love? We g...

  You ARE the Body... YOU are the body... you are the BODY... this sentence can be read in many different ways and mean other things. Some of my initial thoughts about this reading today sent me to a place I hadn't thought of in a long time - One of my guilty pleasures in my early twenties during college was watching Maury Povich. He was a talk show host whose topics were typically around family dysfunction running the whole spectrum. My favorite type of show was around contested paternity... and the guests would agree to paternity tests, and the results would be released live on television. This was NOT my finest hour of television. ANYWAY - Maury, the host, when reading the results, always said... "You ARE the father" or "You are NOT the father!!" depending on the situation. Don't get me wrong - it makes for theatrical television, but this is not something I should be watching these days. Although, given my former employment in family court, it reveals a...

       Good morning again, We are only three weeks into our new year here, and it's dark and cold out. I thank each and every one of you for coming out this morning.  Today we will be continuing our series on “Love Never Ends: Being the Body of Christ.” Over the next few weeks, we will be taking a deep dive into the book of First Corinthians, chapters 12-15. Let’s take a step back, though, and talk about this book in the larger scheme of the Bible.  This book was written by the apostle Paul, writing many New Testament letters. Paul’s story is also written in Acts, chapter 18; Paul has traveled to a city in south-central Greece called Corinth. It was established before 3000 BC, and amazingly, it still exists today - although it’s not quite the same city it once was.  Ancient Corinth was a major city in Greece - with a population of 90,000 some four hundred years before the time of Christ. Unfortunately, in 1858, a major earthquake destroyed the ruin...

  Good morning again - last week, we talked through the first chapter of the Book of John, how the light of Christmas was lit and that lighthouses can help guide those in danger away from it.  This week, we’ve looped back around a couple of weeks because we are back talking about John the Baptist, continuing the story from… three weeks ago, I think? Hopefully, you’re not sick of John yet, although this is the last week we will be in the gospels for a while. Anyway - as you can see outside, the seasons are changing. Winter is here! Oh… no … not those seasons. Our season of Christmas has finished, and now we are in the season after Epiphany. We are back to those so-called “ordinary weeks” or numbered weeks because since we’ve celebrated Christmas and Epiphany, these are kind of the meat and bones weeks for Jesus’ actual ministry. Today we’ll be starting with his baptism, and over the next couple of months, we’ll be discovering being the body of Christ: how we can show that LOVE...