Blog: Random Thoughts on Sunday's Sermon

Below are some random thoughts on this coming Sunday's message. We hope they create a little time in your day to reflect on the journey of faith and life. If they spur any thoughts, quotes, or experiences, please share them. God moves among us as we share with each other.

Service that Changes Lives

“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

When I was in grade school my mom would make my sack lunch. While the meal itself was delicious my favorite things were the notes she would write to me and tuck in the sandwich bag. They were short notes that usually expressed her love, prayers, and encouragement for the day. One thing was always consistent about her note: at the bottom of each paper she wrote “J.O.Y.”

J.O.Y. was more than a three letter word in our family. It meant that we served Jesus first, Others second, and Yourself third and in doing that you would find joy in you life. There is something beautifully simple about this acronym because it calls us to think about life as service to others rather than simply self-serving.

Sometimes the service we offer is demanding, like when the youth group helped build a house in the Appalachian Mountains last summer. Sometimes the service we offer is thoughtfully small, like writing a note to our loved ones and tucking it in their bag for them to discover later in the day.

There are many different ways we can commitment to service that changes lives. That’s part of what it means to be Christian, we commit to serve those around us, both friend and stranger, and in doing so we find joy!

Posted by Rev. Jes Kast-Keat, Thursday, January 31, 2013

Roots and Wings

Two great things you can give yor children: one is roots, the other is wings. -Hodding Carter

As a parent, I live in this tension of roots and wings.

Run, but don’t fall!
Wear whatever you want, but take your coat!
You can accomplish anything, but go to college first!

We want our children to feel free to flourish into the fullness of their personalities, gifts and talents. We also want our children to be safe, practical, and grounded. Fear can be both our ally and our enemy as we navigate parenthood and every stage of development. Fear is helpful when I am chopping up bites for my 18-month-old to eat. Fear is not so helpful when I am chopping up bites for my 18-year-old.

In the realm of faith and doubt, parents can be very afraid. We bring our children to the house of worship, hoping to instill an inner faith that will remain with our children through adulthood. Or perhaps we hope that our children will learn ethics, a standard of right and wrong. Or perhaps we hope that our children will embrace an ancient tradition of sacrament, regardless of what they believe about God.

For whatever reasons that you bring your children to church, there is the nagging question, what if it doesn’t work?

I long for my children to grow as followers of Christ, led by the Holy Spirit to find their callings in life. But I cannot control that. I remember a beautiful parable told in Matthew 13 about a farmer who scatters seed along the path, the rocky soil, among weeds, and finally in rich, healthy soil. The ground represents the condition of the hearer when he or she hears the good news.

This is a great parallel for families, but only if we make one distinction. Although we desire to share God’s story and God’s love with our children, we are not the sower. Jesus explains that He is the sower. He does the work. His spirit speaks to our souls. Our job as parents and adult influences is not necessarily to provide all the answers. Our role is to help our children cultivate fertile ground for hearing the good news. We tell the stories, we demonstrate love and grace and forgiveness, and we follow Christ in our everyday lives. And we hope that as our children become lovers of truth, good, and beauty, they will be inexplicably drawn to Christ, the sower.

So, if the soil looks rocky, or the path looks barren or the message just doesn’t seem to be sticking these days, don’t panic. The sower never grows weary.

Posted by Mandy Meisenheimer, Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Our Shadow Side

This past Sunday Peter Rollins spoke at West End (check out the podcast!). He raised the bright and cheery topic of our shadow side. His point was this: we can’t experience the depth of God’s love unless we extend the grace to one another to share all of who we are—even our brokenness. When we do, the journey of healing and hope begins.

I might put it another way. Denial may be a great short-term strategy to temporarily forget, but it does not permit healing and learning from what we have experienced. If we allow each wound, each negative experience, each difficulty to close off a portion of ourselves, we are giving ourselves over to pain and brokenness. Though we may pretend it isn’t there, it occupies important real estate in our lives.

Herein lies the beauty of being in a community of faith. Instead of facing it alone, we walk together through the pain of our pasts so that we may live in a new way today. This is the basis of true hope. Being a hopeful people does not mean we pretend that past hurts do not reside within us. True hope arises when the Spirit of God touches the reality of our lives. So let’s be real with one another so that we open ourselves to the healing presence of the Spirit and to the hope God offers.

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15:13).

Posted by Rev Michael Bos, Tuesday, January 29, 2013

To The Unknown God

This week we are deviating from the traditional lectionary as we welcome Dr. Peter Rollins to the pulpit. Dr. Rollins is a provacative Irish theologian who has chosen a reading from Acts - the story of Saul - for inspiration this Sunday.

The choir will sing two anthems that we hope will come close to resonating with this text and Dr. Rollins courageous and inspiring writings: The Road Not Taken (audio clip) by Randall Thompson on the well-known poem by Robert Frost, and a setting by Gustav Holst adapted from his "Hymns from The Rig Veda" called To The Unknown God:

"God, the Primal One, begetter of the universe, begotten in mystery, Lord of created things, Lord of heav'n and earth. Who is God? How shall we name Him when we offer sacrifice? God, through whom are the primeval waters which were before aught else. From the depths arose fire, the source of Life. God, upholder of earth and sea, of snow-clad heights, encompassing the wide regions of air, ruling the sky and realms of light. God, whose word is eternal; giver of breath and life and power. Sole ruler of the universe, dwelling alone in grandeur, to whom the gods bow. Lord of love, whose path is life immortal! Thou alone can’st fathom Thy mystery: there is none beside Thee."

'Hope to see you there this Sunday to experience this great music and Peter Rollins

Posted by Cynthia Powell, Friday, January 25, 2013

Community That Cares

Prayer roots me; it anchors me deep in the sands of God’s love. Prayer helps me understand the bigger picture. In order to be the type of community that cares I think it is important that we develop a robust prayer life. Prayer helps us grow in our attentiveness to the community. Consider praying this prayer written by St. Francis of Assisi as a way to orient you to the rhythms of the community. For the musically inclined among us, you may find the musical rendition of this prayer to be very helpful. God bless you and God bless me as we seek to be the type of community that cares for ourselves and others.

    Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
    Where there is hatred, let me sow love.
    Where there is injury, pardon.
    Where there is doubt, faith.
    Where there is despair, hope.
    Where there is darkness, light.
    Where there is sadness, joy.

    O Divine Master,
    grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;
    to be understood, as to understand;
    to be loved, as to love.
    For it is in giving that we receive.
    It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
    and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

Amen.

Posted by Rev. Jes Kast-Keat, Thursday, January 24, 2013

When the Shepherds Grow Up

Last month the children and youth of West End Collegiate Church presented the Christmas pageant, complete with shepherds, magi, Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus. Although the story is retold year after year, the children breathe fresh life into the birth narrative as they take on the challenge of new roles. The angels grow up to be shepherds who grow up to be magi who grow up to be prophets. Everyone graduates with all of the lines memorized, tucked away into their hearts to be relived every Advent season.

This week at West End we are talking about a Community that Cares, which reminds me of one moment of the pageant that seemed particularly beautiful to me. We did not have enough shepherds this year and two brave young men returned from college to reprise their roles as shepherds in the fields, keeping watch by night. This was a highpoint, not only because they were hilarious (“And they were filled with fear!”), but also because these two young men reflected what we hope for all of our brothers and sisters in Christ. They know they are welcome, loved, and needed here. We are all family, even after graduation. My hope is that our children and youth ministries create lifelong attachments to a spiritual family that will always keep the doors open for our loved ones.

Posted by Mandy Meisenheimer, Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Listen to the beat

We are all the time moving to a beat. We breathe to a beat, we walk with a beat, blood courses through our bodies to a beat. The music our species has created over the ages is time/beat determined - an externalization of that inner rhythm.

I love music, but I also love silence. I have to wonder - why does it seem like everyone is walking around with earbuds? Is it our way to order time, to have control? Is it escapism? Is it an anesthetic? Or does it just plain make us happy? What would it sound like to hook up to our interior beat? Thoreau wrote: “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”

Wherever we are on the sound spectrum, this church is a place where we can step to our own beat, and enjoy the freedom to think, doubt, believe and grow accordingly. Keeping our theme this month, take some quiet time, slow down and check out your spiritual gauges. Listen to your own beat. And trust that in the process, you are loved and accepted just as you are.

Posted by Cynthia Powell, Friday, January 18, 2013

Community that Cares – Koinonia

Last Sunday we talked about a faith that flourishes. West End Collegiate Church is a house of worship that desires each person to have a vibrant faith. As we look toward this Sunday we lean into the second gauge of our mission statement, which is WECC is a community that cares.

When I think of a community that cares I look to the beautiful Greek word, koinonia, for guidance. Koinonia means participation, communion, and fellowship. This word first appears in Acts 2:42-47 when the new Christian community is beginning to form. In this passage we see the first Christians devoting themselves to the teachings of the apostles and praying together. They ate together and shared what they had in common. If there was a need, the community helped supply that need. Koinonia is an essential word for Christians because it’s how we live out our faith – in community.

I do not believe we can have a faith that flourishes alone. We need the community to care about us and we need to care about the community. In community we mutually care for each other. We have different gifts and we participate in different ways. We commit not only to care about our personal faith but the faith of the community. Koinonia reminds us that we are part of something bigger than ourselves. That’s beautiful to me!

Posted by Rev. Jes Kast-Keat, Thursday, January 17, 2013

Faith and the Four-year-olds

Have you visited our Children & Worship program for three through six-year-olds?

The more I learn about this program, the more I wonder whether this beautiful worship experience that is designed for little ones isn’t just the perfect way to experience church in general. The children follow a deeply-centered and simple liturgy and learn Bible stories that have been stripped to the barest essentials. Faceless wooden figures represent the key players in each story. They might as well be you or me. The liturgist encourages the children to wonder about how it must have felt to live each story. I wonder what the waves felt like. I wonder how the disciples felt, in the middle of that storm. I wonder what Jesus was thinking when he told the waves to be still.

If you sit in the silence of twelve small children who are fixated on a wondrous, miraculous story, you begin to wonder to yourself. I wonder what this means for me today. I wonder if it is easier for these children to believe this story. I wonder what would happen if Jesus calmed a storm in my life.

As we focus on the core vision of our church community, we can find each element in the lives of our children. In the mystic hush that Priscilla or Andrea or Richard create when they tell a Children & Worship story, we find faith—faith in the otherworldly. Faith in something outside ourselves.

Posted by Mandy Meisenheimer, Wednesday, January 16, 2013

A Two-sided Faith

In Christian circles we almost exclusively speak of the object of faith as God. But what if we too are the object of faith? What if not only can we have faith in God, but also God has faith in us?

Faith is not one-sided. Having faith in God opens us to see the faith God has in us. God is the cosmic parent looking upon us, God’s children, as those who possess great potential. As the Psalmist writes, “what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor” (8:4&5).

I can think of many times as a child that when I was afraid of doing something, I would draw upon the faith my parents had in me. Many times they had more faith in me than I had in myself, but that was enough for me to overcome my fear and risk trying new things. We too can draw strength from God’s unwavering faith in us. It gives us the courage to live and love, to attempt new things, to risk failure. And it’s all because we know that there is One who has faith in us even when we lack faith in ourselves.

Today, whatever you may face, know that God has faith in you!

Posted by Rev Michael Bos, Tuesday, January 15, 2013