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QUEST, Part 2: THE ENCOUNTER

John 4: 7-40 Many years ago, my mother-in-law was active in the American Baptist Church Global Mission Board. This gave her opportunities to travel. At one point she was offered a chance to go to Burma, which we now know as Myanmar. She was so excited about it, and I couldn’t help wondering why. What on earth was in Burma that she cared about? Well, actually, I should have known at the time. The reason she wanted to go there, or anywhere, was because there would be new encounters. Conversations to be had, people to meet, places to see, things to learn. This is the kind of person Claire is. Every stranger is a potential friend. How you approach the encounter makes all the difference. Burma was a very unlikely place for Claire to travel, but a journey to an unlikely place can hold surprising gifts. This is the case […]

QUEST, Part 1: Leaving Home

Exodus 13: 17-21 Ann Tyler wrote a book called The Accidental Tourist. It is a story about a man who has made a successful career of writing travel books for people who hate travel. His audience is primarily businessmen, for whom travel is a necessary evil in their lives. The books presume that the reader hates leaving the comforts of home just as much as the author does. So he fills the pages with tips on where to find Kentucky Fried Chicken in Stockholm, Taco Bell in Mexico City, and other absurdities. He writes travel guides that let travelers pretend they never left home. The character, Macon Leary, is quirky and endearing, sort of typical for Ann Tyler’s stories. To say that he is set in his routines is an understatement. He is a man of systems, which he has devised to guard against anything unfamiliar happening to him. He […]

RE-INTEGRATE

1 Corinthians 12:12-19 Some years ago my sister gave me a gift of a beautiful hand-made clay pot. It has gingko leaves decorating the surface of it. I loved it immediately. But I didn’t know, immediately, what to do with it. So I set it on the kitchen counter. I spend a lot of time in the kitchen, so I looked at it many times every day. I moved it around as needed while I worked. I wrote my sister a note to thank her for the gift. In the note I told her I was waiting for it to show me how it wants to be used. And eventually it did. It makes a wonderful napkin holder. To this day it remains in the kitchen (having lived in several kitchens by now), on a shelf, holding the napkins. It is beautiful. I get to look at it every day. […]

LISTEN

Acts 16:6-15 There is a picture, some abstract shapes all in black and white, with four tiny dots in the middle. And if you focus on the four dots for 30 seconds and then close your eyes, you will see Jesus. That’s what the instructions said, so I did it. And, sure enough, that is what happened. When I closed my eyes an image that I recognized as Jesus appeared before me. It’s an optical illusion. These are fun things to play around with. There are some that have two different images in them – like the one with an old witch and a young woman, or the one with the musician and the girl’s face. Usually you see one of them to start with, but to see the other image it is like your brain has to switch tracks to get a different perspective. I find that I need […]

RISK

Matthew 25:14-30 There is an argument in the church that is probably as old as the church. It is an argument about grace and works. We say that we are saved by the grace of God. And we say that faith in this grace is all we need. We don’t have to do anything to deserve God’s love and God’s saving grace. But, on the other hand, we have a lot of rules, a lot of expectations about how we should live and be in the world. We say that when we are living a life of faith we will receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit and we will begin to see the fruits of the Spirit in our lives. We say that God’s grace enables us to live such lives and bear such fruit. To become the kind of person about whom the master might say, “Well done, good […]

HOVER

Luke 4:1-13 So … what was going on right before Jesus began his public ministry? roaming through the countryside visiting the synagogues and proclaiming that he was the fulfillment of the good news? He was forty days in the wilderness, fasting. With the devil breathing down his neck. But why, though? He went into the wilderness directly after his baptism in the Jordan River – you remember, that moment when the heavens opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him like a dove. And, then, full of the Spirit, he was led into the wilderness. Alone. It is a surprising turn of events, really, because after he was baptized, and the Holy Spirit appeared and the voice from heaven spoke, you would expect some kind of action. Clearly, he was well-equipped to do something magnificent. The people who witnessed his baptism might have waited with expectation for what would happen […]

DREAMS

Luke 4:13-21 Note: This is part 1 of a six-week series using the movements of creativity from Troy Bronsink’s book Drawn In: A Creative Process for Artists, Activists, and Jesus Followers. In some Bibles, the words that Jesus said are printed in red to set them apart, to make them stand out. I don’t have a Bible like that. But, this past week, on a whim, I highlighted the words in quotation marks and changed them to red. Because what he said here was pretty huge. Of course, he didn’t make it up. He was reading from the prophet Isaiah, Chapter 61: The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the […]

Who Can Withhold? Break Forth!

May 10, 2021
by Maggie Gillespie

John 15:9,11-15 Acts 10: 44-48 What do you call a coincidence that is not really a coincidence? The writer Squire Rushnell likes to say that is God winking at you. You know, trying to get your attention, trying to get a special message to you; trying to let you know that there is something going on here that might not be readily apparent. Sometimes God has to wink really hard. Or repeatedly. As if God is working at getting a message across that we are just not understanding, and it just seems like God has this weird tic. And you look at God and say, “What is the matter with you?” Are you okay?” When my daughter Willa was about three years old, she said to me, “Sometimes I can wink really good, like this,” and she winked. “But sometimes I just lose my mind, like this,” and then she sort […]

From You Comes My Praise: Guide My Steps

May 5, 2021
by Maggie Gillespie

Psalm 22:25-31 Acts 8:26-39 We shared a humorous moment at a session meeting recently when one of our elders looked a little panicked. He thought he was being asked to preach on an upcoming Sunday. It was a misunderstanding that was cleared up quickly, to his great relief. This is an elder with a lot of wonderful gifts, but I guess he does not consider preaching to be one of his gifts. Although, it certainly could be. I have to admit that I think it is interesting to put the question to a person sometimes and just see how they react. Would you like to preach? If their reaction is the expression of a person facing a firing squad, then they probably won’t take me up on the offer. But sometimes a person says, “yes.” I saw that once when I was a campus minister. My students were preparing to […]

By This We Will Know: The Dance of Love

John 10:11-17 ; 1 John 3:16-18,23-24 Here’s a question for you: Would anyone notice if our church disappeared? I remember the first time I heard someone ask that question. It was something I had never thought of before, because church has been a central part of my life for my whole life. Every time I have moved to a new place, finding a church was always on the A-list of things I needed to get done. I had never even given a thought to the possibility of church disappearing. So I was intrigued by the question. But I have to admit, my first thought on hearing it was quite literal. The church we were talking about takes up almost an entire block of Market Street. If it was suddenly one day gone, leaving behind a big vacant lot, people would notice. Of course, people would notice. It might even warrant a […]

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