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For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become enslaved to one another. (Galatians 5:13)

One of the most important and quintessential human rights is freedom. The ability to determine one’s own destiny and to have full control over one’s bodily autonomy. These may sound like foregone conclusions, however, we know that they are not since chattel slavery has been a major part of our history.

Earlier in this passage from Galatians, Paul reminds his church to never again submit to the yoke of slavery. This can be interpreted in many different ways, to be sure. Yet, we know that Christ himself would have included literal slavery on the list. As well as any time when a person’s ability to self-determine was taken away. 

This most basic human right – to be free and to be able to have a say in what happens to us – is at the heart of the national holiday we will celebrate this weekend. It is not something that every human within our borders has had throughout our history. Nevertheless it is something that many have fought and bled and died to ensure. Sometimes fighting in battles and sometimes fighting with nonviolence and simply a willingness to stand up and refuse to be moved because we too are full humans, fearfully and wonderfully created by God, and deserving of full rights.

Freedom cost blood and sacrifice – something Christ paid two thousand years ago. Not so that we could lord it over one another and select some as better than others, but in order that we would become just as willing to give of ourselves in sacrificial love until all our fellow humans are free. 

Strive for the freedom that Christ died for – one that is for all of God’s children. The one we are meant to seek every day. And light up the sky with that brilliance and beauty for all the world to see.

Blessings, Pastor Janie

This weekend we will be diving into our third fruit of the Spirit: patience.

Now, this is a well-known and often espoused virtue. We all have said it to adults and children alike whenever someone seems to be chomping at the bit. And Lord knows that we live in a culture of instant gratification – where we can have almost any need cared for in a matter of moments.

Learning to wait is a hard task for all of us. A necessary one, too. For there will be times in life when there will be absolutely no other way.

Test results. A response to a difficult question. An answer that may never come.

We all remember what it was like to wait for a time when it was safe to move freely again while scientists and doctors worked franticly on vaccines. Trying to keep our neighbors safe. Trying times to be sure.

Waiting is simply a fact of life. Patience is a necessity.

However, there are times when patience has been abused. When people have been told to wait for things that should have been theirs to begin with: Freedom. Basic human rights. Self-determination. Equality. Equity.

When these most simple facets of life are denied and righteous outrage is met with the response of “have patience,” something is very wrong. And God is not pleased. There are countless stories in the Biblical witness to back this up.

So come to worship this weekend as we look together at what God designed patience for and when God desires that we should no longer have it.

Blessings, Pastor Janie

Back in the day, when I became a solo pastor, my late husband made a suggestion that changed the way I preach forever. He said, why not take your summers and use them to explore all of those lists that everyone thinks they know. Thus far, we have looked at the Beatitudes, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Decalogue (the Ten Commandments).

This year, we are diving into the Fruit of the Spirit. And when I mentioned this to one of our Elders recently, he surprised himself by immediately shouting out the verse – Galatians 5:22-23. We both laughed out loud.

As the letter reads: the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

We will begin this summer with joy and go from there, spending most of the next three months.

This weekend is also Trinity Sunday.

The Trinity is by far one of my favorite theological concepts, even while it sends most people running for the hills. It is a holy mystery, I get it. A bit over a lot of heads. But to me, for some reason, it makes perfect sense.

Our God is perfect community. Communion. Relationship. Three persons all with distinct roles. But sharing equality. Power. Eternity. And yet, our God is also the God of the in-between. As one of my colleagues put it recently, of sunrises and sunsets and all those spaces and places that are occupied by creative combinations that are not distinctively one or the other. Our God is a joyful dance always playfully creating. The God of more. Because love will make expansive room to be inclusive every time, just like Jesus did during his lifetime.

So, come to worship this weekend as we celebrate our Triune God and the gift of joy in our lives that no one can take away.

Blessings, Pastor Janie

_{Artwork by Ying Hui Tan, from What Is God Like? by Rachel Held Evans & Matthew Paul Turner}

Summer is here, with all the heat to prove it! 

And this year we are ushering in the high temperatures with a blazing fire on Pentecost Sunday, June 5th. 

Remember that Pentecost began originally as a Jewish holy day, Shavuot, when the children of Israel would commemorate God’s gift of the law on Mount Sinai. Which is why pilgrims from around the known world were gathered in Jerusalem that day when the Holy Spirit came down from above, appearing as tongues of flaming fire. The fire allowed the people to speak and understand in all the wondrous variety of languages from the earth so that they could hear the good news of God’s love made manifest in Jesus Christ. 

Sure, the naysayers thought they were drunk. But for those who saw and believed that day, what a wonder to behold.

That gift is the reason we call it the birthday of the church. It was after Christ had ascended into heaven and that major promise we have been hearing about throughout this past month in Jesus’s final sermon – that the Holy Spirit would indeed arrive – that moment we see the promise getting fulfilled. So now the work truly begins. 

Which also makes it the perfect day for us to celebrate all the wondrous variety of gifts that we have at work within our own church family. That’s right: this year we are making Pentecost a double celebration by having our annual Recognition Sunday (the way we used to). So, if you are a Sunday School teacher, a Choir, Band, or Handbell member, a committee member or chair, an officer, or better yet, a graduating Senior from High School, we look forward to honoring all the amazing ways that God’s fire is shining through your life. 

And for everyone, we are going to take this Pentecost as an opportunity to remember the power that words have. As Albus Dumbledore once said, “Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic. Capable of both inflicting injury, and remedying it.” God knows the power of words, too: since all the creative activity God has ever accomplished happened through the eternal Word, who one day became flesh in Jesus. Think of all the incredible things that Word did.

So, this Pentecost, we will be giving you each a flame with a word on it. They will be words to perhaps refresh your spirit. Or maybe to offer a remedy for a healing hurt. Maybe they will be the Holy Spirit’s push that you need to spread your fire into the world. Only God knows which word will be the right one for you. But we encourage you to take one and let it encourage you in the year ahead – for as this school year draws to a close, a new world is opening to us in the summer and everything beyond.

Blessings, Pastor Janie

This weekend marks the end of our mini-sermon series on the Farewell Discourse and the final Sunday in the Season of Eastertide. It is also the end of May, which means that summer is just around the corner.

In our passage, Jesus is drawing his sermon to a close. Trying to assist his followers in understanding. To get them ready. To help them in these final moments before the storm is about to break.

By contrast, the world around us is in full turmoil. As I remarked to one of our committees last night, I think our entire nation is just exhausted. Overwhelmed. Hurting. Desperately afraid for some of the most vulnerable members of our community.

Goodness knows wherever we all may fall upon a myriad of issues, our hearts are aching for our children, our teachers, our parents, our school administrators and staffs, and our first responders, among so many more. The sheer enormity of the grief and devastation surrounding the events of the last few days, not to mention the past week and a half are beyond staggering. There is a reason the psalmist wrote of sighs that are too deep for words.

What Christ offered his followers in those final hours before he was taken (gave himself over) was the promise of presence. It is the abiding promise that comes through the entirety of Scripture: God will be with us. Wherever we are. Whatever we are going through. God is there.

No, it is not a magic cure-all or fix-it. Even the Israelites had to walk through the desert to flee from slavery. And there was no way to the empty tomb but through Golgotha. Unfortunately, God doesn’t promise that the bad things won’t happen – it would be awesome if God did. But sadly, that’s a much bigger question for a different day.

What God has always done, however, is to be there with us through whatever comes. Walking right alongside us. Carrying us at times. Probably just holding us through others. God is a shelter from the storm and a promise that the dawn will break again. Even with the work and the hard stuff ahead.

So hold each other close and hold tight.

Blessings, Pastor Janie

There is this common misconception that when we follow Christ, our life is supposed to be 100% hunky dory and easy peasy. That God will make everything smooth sailing from here on out. That if we are doing our faith “right,” we will be living the good life. Right?

Yeah… the Bible never said that.

In fact, we’re coming to a passage this weekend when Jesus is actually going to say the exact opposite of that. In essence, he reminds us that the world will likely hate us, because it hated him first. He uses the word persecution (although we should all remember what Ralph Waldo Emerson said about confusing persecution with merely having someone disagree with us – it is a vulgar mistake to make). Jesus even says the world will kick us out of our faith communities for actually daring to really follow him.

Shocking as this might be to some, the seeming faithful have been known to forget to follow God on occasion. In fact, that’s what a major chunk of scripture covers. John the Baptist calls them a “brood of vipers” for a reason. People of faith have often thought they understood what God meant so well that they took their understanding and ran with it. Then they get very upset when someone comes in and upsets the applecart by sharing a fresh understanding – like Jesus did.

And like other prophets have and continue to do in each successive generation. Because the Spirit still speaks. And we are the church always reforming, according to that Living Word, Jesus Christ.

So, come this weekend and hear more about how the Spirit will continue to guide us even when the world throws the book at us. It should be a fascinating subject.

Blessings, Pastor Janie

When I was younger, my family spent a lot of time near a very large vineyard. There is really nothing quite like the look of the row after row of all of the vines piled up upon one another. They are beautiful. Yet they also hold a much deeper truth.

Vines are ridiculously strong. True, you can get to the fruit, the leaves, and even some twigs quite easily. And yes, branches can be removed when they need to be. But the roots, they go deep. Even more impressively, they can travel. The vine-root for the vineyard I grew up looking at was from Central Europe and dated back hundreds of years, possibly even further.

A vine is one of the images that Jesus uses in the passage we will be considering together this weekend as we continue on in our mini sermon series.

I am the vine, you are the branches. Connected to the deepest taproot of all we hold one another up and are able to bear the fruits that God desires of us. Yet Christ also reminds us that we will be able to tell how our connection to God is doing by that very fruit. And offers a careful nudge to those who may be neglecting the connection.

He then says some of the most important words he ever uttered.

Really, it all comes down to this: how is love growing in our lives?

That is central the central piece of Jesus’s mission just as our passage is the centerpiece of Christ’s final earthly sermon.

We’ll see you Sunday morning!

Blessings, Pastor Janie

Last weekend we began a special sermon series on Jesus’s final sermon in the gospel of John.

We started by remembering that Christ is God’s Word from eternity made flesh, who reveals God’s own self to us. Jesus then flipped the ancient understanding of how we access God on its head – rather than through the law, as Moses had taught, now Christ himself is the way we get to God. The lens through which we see the world. And if we have seen God and have access to God through Jesus, then we are meant to live as Jesus did: in that same mode of radical and reckless love.

This week, we will really get into the thick of it. Jesus turns to how they will survive once he is gone. How they will continue. How they will be guided.

Key piece here: they will not be alone.

Jesus reminds them that he is not leaving them orphaned. He will be with them through God’s Spirit – the One who walks alongside.

In other words, there is still more ahead of them.

Which begs the question: can we trust that there is still more ahead of us?

Blessings, Pastor Janie

It’s finally spring (or at least we can pray the weather will hold… again). A season of rebirth, we can enjoy the wonders of the sunshine and the great outdoors at long last. 

At church it is Eastertide – those fifty days between Easter morning and Pentecost when we celebrate Christ’s resurrection and ascension. It is the season of rebirth, as it were. Of renewal. Of new beginnings. 

Even as our school year draws to a close, we know that students completing one stage will move on to the next in the Fall. Or, for our graduates, we know that they are entering a completely new stage of life. 

As our song on Easter morning sang, In our end is our beginning…

Entering into spring, and the summer that will come swiftly after, we have the opportunity to look for the ways that God’s new life is emerging all around us. Not only in nature, but also in one another. In ourselves.

Where is God bringing something new? Are you ready to welcome it with open arms?

New life is all around us. It’s there to revel in if you are ready.

Blessings, Pastor Janie

Holy Week has begun in earnest and we are in the thick of it.

Tonight we will gather as the disciples did two thousand years ago on the last night of Jesus’s earthly life. They did not know it was the last time. But he did and he knew that he must get at least some things through to them in those final hours before everything fell apart.

Tonight we will follow after Supper as Jesus is arrested and tried and lead away. It will not be easy. It will not be fun. Yet it is one of the two most important days of our year. It is a twin of sorts – a necessary piece of the heart of God’s love for us. Arms stretched open wide to show us just how deep that love really goes. Willing to take all that pain, all that torture, all that degradation for us. And we will shroud ourselves in shadows, letting the light diminish until…

Tomorrow we will gather again with our neighbors in Christ at the moment when Jesus was crucified to hear what words he said from the cross. We will listen and sing and hear poetic reflections. It is a pause as we remember when even Creation itself broke open as Christ drew his final breath.

And then we wait.

Yes. There will be a wonderful celebration to come on Sunday, with trumpets and bells, and children, and Communion, and organ, and hymns of praise! It will be a brilliant resurrection day. The other twin – a bright and shinning light in the heart of God’s love for us. A power, Love stronger than death itself.

Still, we must not forget that the weekend is a passage. Meant to be together. A path to walk that we might know God more. And, just as importantly, grow in our family of faith’s bond, as well – as Christ always wanted.

See you soon.

Blessings, Pastor Janie