“The Great Jungle Journey” Our July/August newsletter described what the theme of our cooperative Vacation Bible School in July was going to be, and what the lesson the Presbyterians would teach was going to be about. Now we can tell you how it went and share a few photos: 47 children enjoyed games, crafts, [...]
Our Gospel passage today is not an especially famous one, but as we shall see, it is a key passage for Luke, in the development of his account of Jesus’ life. We’ll look at the passage in three parts this morning, and you may want to keep it in front of you; we won’t be going, however, exactly in the order of the verses. The first of the three sections is a short one, consisting only of the first verse: “When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.” The phrase “set his face” attracts our attention, as it is not one we usually use in our everyday speech. Set the table, yes; set your hair, maybe; “set the stage” – but not “set his face.” Yet it is a phrase that makes sense, once we visualize it. To “set” is to place or put; to set one’s face, then, would be to place it pointed toward a certain direction. To set one’s face to go to Jerusalem, then, would mean to face Jerusalem, to look toward the destination of Jerusalem. Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem: he faced the direction he had decided to go next. […]
As our Stewardship Committee has presented to you in the past, we have become convinced of the wisdom of a “year-round stewardship program,” as opposed to one or two Sundays in the Fall, talking about only pledge cards. Stewardship, of course, is about much more than pledge cards; it incorporates use of our talents, our time, our church building and other resources, care of creation . . . And we want to use all those responsibly throughout the year – so we don’t think about “stewardship,” here, only on each second Sunday of November. Our stewardship theme for this year, as readers of our church newsletter know, thanks to Steve Blair, is “Living Generously Begins with Trust”- yes, same as today’s sermon title. And the foundational Bible verse for this year is Second Corinthians 8:7: “But just as you excel in everything . . . in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in complete earnestness and in your love for us . . . see that you also excel in this grace of giving.” […]
Ahhh, another Fall Campaign: so exciting! Actually, I really like the theme the Stewardship Committee has presented throughout 2018 at various times and in a variety of ways. “Where Is Your Heart?” comes from our Matthew, chapter 6, passage and is focused on verse 21: “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Notice that it doesn’t say that the treasure follows the heart, but that the heart follows the treasure. It points to what is central in our lives, whatever our most important treasure is: is it money?; is it family?; is it cars?; is it God and the will of God? […]
One recent Sunday, we began the sermon by discussing the old tradition in the Presbyterian Church of preaching straight through, in a series of sermons, a book of the Bible. And we decided that while we really weren’t anxious to commit to thirty weeks in a row on a long book like Romans or Revelation, as has been done, we would try a series of four worship services, going through the relatively short letter to the Ephesians, which is one set of readings the Lectionary recommends to us, for July and August. So we started with chapter one of this Pauline letter to the young Christian Church Paul had started in the city of Ephesus a few years before. […]