Christmas Eve Services at 7:30pm

You are invited to join us to worship on Christmas Eve at 7:30 pm.  We have the joy of returning to the Sanctuary to celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus.  The story of the birth of Jesus will be shared as a pageant during the service.  Kids who would like to participate are still able to join us, please come at 6:30pm.  I would like to thank Restoration One and Rizzo and Sons for their hard work on getting the Sanctuary prepared.  Special thanks to Restoration One for the painting they did  in the Narthex and in the Parlor.  


Special thanks to Lynn and Audrey Takach, the Presbyterian Women, and the Edison High School Choir Parents Organization for making provision for the poinsettias in the Sanctuary.  Not knowing our final disposition for worship until this week, we were not able to put an order in as years gone by as we have been sharing the space in Westminster Hall.


May the Lord bless our church family throughout this holiday season and give us a wonderful and renewed New Year.

Pastor Peter

Remembering Thanksgiving

We are in the Season.  Thanksgiving has come and gone, I hope and pray that it was a time of meaningful gathering of family and friends.  The power of this holiday is that it crosses the divide of faith and nation.  As a national holiday, we look to all that we have as Americans, to remember and to give thanks.  As a religious observance, it looks back to the Pilgrims coming ashore, free to worship in a new land.  One of the great things we, as Christians, have to give thanks for is Christmas.


The Scriptures this week were from Isaiah 2.  Included were the words calling upon the people to beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.  The call was that they learn war no more.  Those words are on a statue that stands in front of the United Nations, a call to the world from our faith as to what humans are seeking after as a race-when we are at our best.


But we are rarely at our best.  We are more often at war with one another, ‘hot wars’ of active violence and combat, ‘cold wars’ of words, of propaganda, of hidden violence and backroom assault, ‘cyber wars’ of computers versus computers.  We are after power, we are after sharing of power, we are after resources, we are after keeping this world of ours able to sustain us, we are after freedom, we are after our own beliefs.  It is like a pendulum that swings back and forth.  In these United States, the war of words, the tightening of positions in the political sphere, the steady drain on our ability to speak openly and debate in healthy discourse frankly sickens me at times.


What Christmas offers is a Season of Peace.  It gives us a few weeks every year to active practice what real peace looks like, through sharing, giving, loving, good wishes offered to all.  As we Christians gather at the manger, we have the opportunity to provide the Presence of Peace to the whole world, as we share the Prince of Peace. 


The wonder of Thanksgiving is how it has risen above being a sacred celebration to becoming a secular cornerstone of our nation’s holiday-making.  What began as a Christian response to God is now so much more.  It is not simply a day for those of us who identify as followers of Jesus Christ, but it is a moment for all God’s Children-for all humans are God’s children-to respond to that which we have been given.


As Christians, we believe the best is yet to come.  We believe in a life of perfection after this one.  But that does not mean this life is then effectively abandoned.  By no means.  It means we take the lessons of Jesus, the lessons of love and peace and joy and wonder, and we share them with the whole world. 


Peace,

Pastor Peter

From the Second Birth to the First Birth...and the End Times...

The passage for this past Sunday is found in Luke 21: 5-19.  It is a difficult passage to read.  It starts off with people admiring the beauty of the worship space that is the Temple in Jerusalem.  Then Jesus prophecies how it will all be knocked down, how there will be false Messiahs, wars and rumors of wars, how they will be given over to the death sentence by relatives, all in all, not such a happy future.  “But not a hair on your head will perish…”  They may die, but not perish, for their souls are secure in the Lord.

We took that into the politics of today and that of the history of the church.  Made an interesting connection between verses 8 and 9.  Jesus says, “Beware that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name and say, “I am he!” and “The time is near!”  Do not go after them. When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be terrified, for these things must take place…”  The connection is between the false messiahs and the wars and rumors of wars.  The people wanted Jesus to be the “War Messiah”, in the mantle of King David, to make war on the Romans.

What if Jesus is warning against that here, not two distinct threats, false Messiahs and wars, but false Messiahs leading to wars?  What if the call to war in the name of God is what Jesus is warning against?  Because that call is repeated throughout history.  From Constantine marching to conquer the empire in the 300’s to America going into wars today, invoking the Almighty is pretty standard.

And if we are to measure the blood shed in the name of Jesus by those in political power who dare to speak in His name, where do we start?

In the life of Jesus, we are two chapters away from his death on the cross, so His spiritual state of being is focused on this event.  There is a frankness in his prediction of the future that is, frankly, depressing.  But that has been the mark of our history.

Our preaching calendar is based on the Common Lectionary.  This is a three-year cycle that draws out Scriptures for each Sunday.  The new lectionary year starts with Advent, which…gulp…starts next week.  Each year walks through one of the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke.  The difficulty is that by the end of the year, approaching Christmas, we are at the ends of the gospels.  The very ends were preached on back around Easter, but now we are at the lead-up to Jesus’ death and resurrection.  Which is why we get this passage the week before Thanksgiving.

So at the beginning of the most…innocent season of the year, we are left with the promise that we may die, but in Christ, we will not perish.  Thus we consider the tension once more of a world with false Messiahs, wars and rumors of wars, disasters and devastating changes, all stacked up against the coming story of the Baby lying in a manger.

And the Baby wins the day.

Pastor peter

Resurrection, The Denial of Death, Dystopia, Politics, and Science Fiction

There is a lot wrapped up in the question of the Resurrection for us as people of faith.  We have only to look around at our present culture to grasp that.  We deny death.  There is a reason why the advertising focuses on a ‘younger’ look.  The older look reminds people of the end of life, despite a subtle change I have noticed.  More mature actresses are now spokes-models for cosmetic and beauty companies.  Helen Mirren represents L’Oreal (or she did).  But the message to me seems to be that we can stay younger even when we get older (I get the message but I don't understand the message).    

We want the Gold standard, not the Old standard.

Thus, when we throw around a technical faith word like ‘resurrection’, eyes glaze over and sleep creeps into the span of attention.  And who can say for sure, maybe we need to get old to ‘get it’.  Maybe the idea of living forever becomes more real when we begin to realize that we are, in fact, mortal, no matter what the commercials tell us. 

Or maybe we have fallen for the dystopian visions of the future where everything is going to end badly.  Pick your poison, zombies, plague, environmental disaster, a revolution in AI technology where the ‘meatware’ of the human being is made obsolete.  I am rather a fan of the alien invasion, although more like ‘War of the Worlds’, not ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’.  I prefer to lose a stand up fight.  Resurrection seems rather mundane in this vision of what is to come.  

Somewhere in the middle of all that Jesus says, “Come to me all who labor and are heavily laden and I will give you rest.” 

Maybe the problem with “resurrection” is not on the positive side, but on the negative one.  Because the Christian message is a two-edged sword.  There is a dualism, living forever in heaven OR in hell.  And a lot of my colleagues of faith spend an awful lot of time emphasizing what happens to somebody who does NOT believe.  Eternal barbecue where we serve as the main course seems to stick better than the idea of eternal love and happiness.  To make things worse, in this highly charged religio-political environment, there are Christians posting comments all over the web that they look forward to seeing unbelievers burn in hell.

In that moment, the resurrection becomes a freak show.  People of faith enjoying the vision of other children of God burning in hell?  I guess I should not be surprised.

On a whim, I googled “Is this all, is there nothing more?”, looking for a source to try and bring some closure to this post.  Turns out there is!!  This is the title of an article by Robert Lanza, looking at “biocentrism”, yet another attempt to explain what happens when we die.  (robertlanzabiocentrism.com).  Apparently, it is a whole book-except salvation and resurrection are integrated into the physical universe, or multiverse and not in Jesus Christ.  I need to read that one, get a handle on the 'opposition'.  LOL

At the end of the day, the Resurrection means this for me:  It means that those people I have known and loved who have already died, I will get to see again.  It means that all those whose Funeral Services I have been privileged to offer, I will get to meet them.  It means that the love of Christ, which I get to see in shining moments of heavenly intervention in this life, will become the norm.  It means that the aches and pains, the sadness and tears, the ‘down’ and ‘dark’ of this life, will be concluded for the promise of something better.  It means that the Children of God will be gathered to our God who loved us so much that God sent Jesus, God’s only Son, to save us.

It reminds me that Jesus, and what He did, is the Reason for the Season as we count down the days to Christmas Madness.

Pastor peter

What Is So Important About the Resurrection?

                There is an expression I have heard in the movies, going after a target “with extreme prejudice”.  It basically means kill them as intensely as possible.  We get a hint of that from Jesus in our passage from Sunday.  He was pretty clear when he talked about “…those who are considered worthy of a place…in the resurrection…” that the Sadducees had some work to do.  The Resurrection is the promise of an afterlife, of an eternal life, of a place of perfect love and fulfillment as Children of God.  To summarize what the Bible has to say about this, consider the Catechism lesson from this past Sunday:

Q. 37. What benefits do believers receive from Christ at death?

A. The souls of believers are at their death made perfect in holiness, and do immediately pass into glory¹; and their bodies, being still united to Christ², do rest in their graves till the resurrection³.

Q. 38. What benefits do believers receive from Christ at the 

resurrection?

A. At the resurrection, believers, being raised up in glory¹, shall be openly acknowledged and acquitted in the Day of Judgment², and made perfectly blessed in the full enjoying of God³ to all eternity⁴.

                Jesus is going to die so that he will rise again.  In his resurrection, these promises will be accomplished.  That task is almost upon him and it looks like he is feeling its weight.  Remember, our best explanation of Jesus is fully God and fully human.  He felt everything, was tempted in every way that a human is tempted.  This includes a desire NOT to end his life this way.

                This is the power of the Book of Confessions, of the Westminster Catechism.  What does the Bible have to tell us about the Resurrection?  Here it is in capsule form.  Where do they get it?  Do we trust the ‘scholars’?  They used the same book we do.  Here are the footnotes:

Q. 37.

1. Luke 23:43; Luke 16:23;

Phil. 1:23; II Cor. 5:6–8.

2. I Thess. 4:14.

3. Rom. 8:23; I Thess. 4:14.

Q. 38.

1. I Cor. 15:42, 43.

2. Matt. 25:33, 34; Matt. 10:32.

3. Ps. 16:11; I Cor. 2:9.

4. I Thess. 4:17. See preceding

context.

                The Resurrection provides us hope in this world and the next.  The Resurrection is the culmination of the Ministry of Christ among us.  The tension of being a Christian is a delightful one.  There is the question of living and loving in Jesus here, and in the hereafter.  Let us thank the Lord for all that Jesus has done for us, in his life and death, and resurrection.

Pastor Peter

Don't Mess With Jesus Where the Resurrection is Concerned

                This past Sunday, 11/10, we looked into Luke 20: 27-38.  We are late in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus is in that part of his ministry that is leading to the cross.  And in this passage, the very heart of Jesus’ work is challenged.  One of the sects of the leadership in the time of the New Testament is identified as the Sadducees.  What marks them is a lack of belief in the resurrection.  Thus, they have come to challenge Jesus. 

                This chapter in Luke has been all about coming at Jesus.  The first part of the chapter has the leadership questioning Jesus’ authority, but he confounds their question and leaves them angry.  After a parable that “when the scribes and chief priests realized that he had told this parable against them, they wanted to lay hands on him at that very hour, but they feared the people.” (vs. 19-bold added)

                So they come at Jesus another way, trying to divide him from the support of the people.  It is the question of taxation.  Should they or should they not pay their taxes?  If Jesus says they should, he is a collaborator with the Romans and a traitor to the people.  If Jesus says they should not, he is preaching sedition and it is grounds for his arrest (which the leadership is seeking).  Jesus stumps them again with “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s”.

                Now the third round, the Sadducees have come to undercut his message.  And they are going to do so with a farce.  There is a provision in the Law of Moses that if the eldest son dies without an heir, his brother should marry the widow to produce a family for him.  This is because the land of Israel was holy to the Lord, and each portion within it.  Every year of Jubilee, there was a reset button.  Every real estate transaction was undone and each family reoccupied that portion of the Land that was given to them by God.  Since the heirship passed through the eldest child, marriage included a huge component of transactional necessity.  It was necessary to have an heir to carry on the family name.  Finding love in marriage, it was not an official part of the work.

                So the farce is this.  We rename the popular musical “One Bride for Seven Brothers”.  The oldest brother marries, dies without an heir, up to bat comes brother two.  Same thing happens.  It is a shut out all the way down the line, seven brothers, seven weddings, no heir, all die, then she dies too.  The direction of the conversation seems to lead into interpreting the Law of Moses concerning the inheritance of the land.  But that is not their intent.  They have come to make fun of Jesus.  “Whose wife is she in the resurrection?”

                Jesus’ response is one of anger and one that raises the stakes of the game considerably.  First he says IF someone is worthy of the resurrection, there is no marriage in heaven.  We are as the angels.  Given the transactional nature of marriage, in which women were basically units of worth, Jesus’ statement is revolutionary.  All are children of God in the resurrection.  All are equal in the resurrection and marriage, a relationship of power, no longer exists.  That is, if they even make it there-and the implication is that the Sadducees will not.  But then Jesus fights Moses with Moses.

                Not going to the section and subsections of the law, Jesus goes to the founding of Moses’ authority, when Moses stood before the Lord at the Burning Bush.  The very dirt he was standing on was made holy and Moses had to take off his sandals.  At that moment God is mentioned as the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, the patriarchs of the Israelites, an even more foundational authority than Moses.  And it is present tense, that they are alive and God is their God, because God is the God of the living. 

                So the Sadducees are pushed completely off their game.  They open the door to Moses as their authority for the farce they hope to perpetuate on the ministry and preaching of Jesus.  Jesus turns things around and slams the door on their lack of belief in the resurrection by the same authority they dared to appeal to.  And while the Gospel does not speak to this explicitly, I believe it is a fair assumption to think that the Sadducees joined the scribes and the high priests in their desire to lay hands on Jesus at that very moment.

Pastor Peter

Presbyterian Women Meet This Sunday: It is an Opportunity to be Together

                What does the church do for the Christian?  What would a congregation have done for Zacchaeus?  That question contains some difficulties as Z. came to Jesus during the time of His ministry.  The church did not officially begin until after the coming of the Holy Spirit, fifty days after his resurrection.  But it seems reasonable to assume that even Zacchaeus found some like-minded followers of Jesus in Jericho to continue and sustain his newly renewed faith.

            If Zacchaeus was coming to our church this Sunday, he would find a couple of things going on.  The first would be the service of worship.  That is the centerpiece of the Christian community of the First Presbyterian Church of Perth Amboy.  What is worship?  It is giving God the glory.  Our Lord is the reason for our lives, for our salvation.  All that we are and all that we have, we owe to our Lord.  So we celebrate our Holy One.

            But fellowship goes on this Sunday as well.  Presbyterian Women meets after service.  Being in Westminster Hall has pressed upon us a tremendous opportunity during these Sundays out of the Sanctuary.  We cannot simply flee with the last ‘Amen’.  We take the time, as a community, to re-form the room from a worship space to a space of fellowship and mission.  We are doing something together.  It is not a complicated mission project, but is our community in support of our mission.

            We say “with you, through all”.  It carries an intensity of being with those going through the most difficult of circumstances.  But on Second Sundays, it is a group of believers taking a moment to work together to allow for the shared ministry spaces of our church to be changed over together.  It is not “your” concern as the worshiping group.  It is not “your” concern as the fellowship group.  It is our concern as one congregation, under God.

Peace,
Pastor Peter

Beyond the Lightning Flash of Faith

November 5, 2019

What happens when we give our lives to Jesus Christ?  When Zacchaeus came out of the tree and ran to the Lord Jesus, what changed in his life?  Trying to put that into words is difficult because how can we begin to fully explain what the Lord does for us with the limits of human language? 

The Westminster Shorter Catechism tries to put it into words.  These are the questions and answers for this week.  They are meant to teach us what happens when Jesus becomes the Lord of our lives.  We are made right with God (made righteous), we are adopted by God (made into renewed children of God), and we are made sacred (sanctified-made holy) by the work of God.  All of this is by God’s free grace, through Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. 

  

Q. 33. What is justification?

A. Justification is an act of God’s free grace, wherein God pardons all our sins, and accepts us as righteous in God’s sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, and received by faith alone.

Q. 34. What is adoption?

A. Adoption is an act of God’s free grace, whereby we are received into the number, and have a right to all privileges, of the children of God.

Q. 35. What is sanctification?

A. Sanctification is the work of God’s free grace, whereby we are renewed in the whole person after the image of God, and are enabled more and more to die unto sin and live unto righteousness.

These questions and answers are a means of instruction in the faith.  If you know Jesus as Lord and Savior, you know justification and adoption and sanctification in your life.  It is how things change because of Jesus.  As a means of teaching us about our own faith, it might be better to ask the question this way, “What is justification FOR ME?”

For our church, these are the marks of change that occur in our lives when we truly accept Jesus.  This is the cosmic change that occurs to the Christian.  To know this, to understand it, it deepens who we are as Christians, and helps us to understand the importance of what it means to share this gift of free grace with the world.

Pastor Peter

Luke 19:1-10 “Zacchaeus and the Call to Faith”

November 4, 2019

Worship was yesterday.  We shared the Lord's Supper.  Took a few minutes after worship to check out the interior of the Sanctuary.  I was in the custom of publishing the sermon on the blog.  The number of hits were...discouraging.  But the message is important.  So, for those who missed Sunday, here is a summary.

The Monday after the Sunday before.

                The Sunday School song I grew up with was “Zacchaeus was a wee little man, a wee little man was he…he climbed up in a sycamore tree, for the Lord he wanted to see…”  He was a little man, but a big deal, the Chief Tax Collector in Jericho, an important city on the Jordan River.  But to the locals, he was a ‘sinner’, maybe better understood as ‘traitor’ and ‘collaborator’.  He aided and abetted the Romans in their policies of taxation and made himself rich off the backs of his fellow citizens.

                He was a Jew. 

If I were to ask someone their faith, their country, and their ethnicity of origin, what would that look like?  For me, I am Christian, of the Presbyterian flavor, I am proudly an American, and I come from Canada but my forebears are from the Netherlands. 

For someone to be a Jew, that implies all this information and perhaps more. 

All of this is in Zacchaeus’ background, living in the identity of Judaism, like Jesus, but it seems to be irrelevant to him.  Rather, he chose riches over his faith, deliberately turning against his faith and upbringing to become a Roman collaborator and traitor in the eyes of his people.  Which is why the people branded him a ‘sinner’ and reacted so badly that Jesus was going to his house to eat.

But it was in Jesus that Zacchaeus found the truth of his faith.  Something drove him to make a fool of himself by climbing a tree to see this Jesus guy.  There was then a lightning flash of understanding as he found forgiveness and truth in Jesus.  There was repentance and there was restitution and his life was changed forever. 

The people didn’t like it, but Jesus told them the hard truth.  This was a Son of Abraham who had gotten lost and been found.

I think we are far more like Zacchaeus than we are willing to admit.  We are Christians, as a nation, still telling the pollsters we are all spiritual and such.  But church…well, Sundays are inconvenient for so many.  I pray for the lightning flash.

I pray that the truth Zacchaeus found in Jesus that renewed his faith will come to us.  I pray that we will wake up and embrace once again the wonder of the truth of our faith that comes in Jesus.  And I pray that we, the church, will be ready to welcome the joyous wonder-struck back into our midst.

Amen and Amen.

What is our Vision? Been awhile since we checked that.

                Our church has a Christian view of the world.  On the one hand is the call “I give my heart eagerly and sincerely to the Lord.”  On the other, we look to our neighbors with the call “With you, through all.”  It is the total commitment to the work of the Lord in this congregation.  These actions define us as “a neighborhood in the Kingdom of God”.  This is who we are in the Lord at the First Presbyterian Church of Perth Amboy.

                I was watching a movie the other night, which, like so many, I have on DVR to complete.  It is called “The Kingdom” with Jamie Foxx.  He plays an FBI agent, part of a US investigative team, that goes to Saudi Arabia to investigate a terrorist attack aimed at a Western community located within the nation.  During the movie, there are cut scenes to the terrorists who have masterminded the attack.  What came across that struck me is the utter passion that such leaders have for their work, a misguided passion to Allah and an impassioned hatred for those they have labeled as their enemies.

                Yes, it was a movie.  But it comes on the heels of the eighteenth anniversary of 9/11, when that thing happened to us, right here, and we could see the columns of smoke rising up over Staten Island.  I arrived here in December of that year.  I did not see the smoke rising at that point, not from here, but I saw the searchlight tribute that was in place for such a long time.

                And I wonder.  I wonder how we even begin to arose the passion in our community for a God of peace.  This God of peace who stands up to the passions for the god of war that terrorists create for themselves.  Because Allah is not that way.  I wonder about the long view.  It is not the short view of making a point by killing another person.  Destruction has always been easier than creation.  I am talking about the long view, of a passion for the peace, love, and forgiveness of Christ that changes the world so there is no more breeding ground for the makers of war. 

                The things that churches say about themselves, they are words on a page or a bulletin or a website.  They usually sound good and, like most clichés, they carry a powerful truth.  But it is the church that lives into that vision, that brings passion to the work of the Lord, it is that church that changes things for the Lord and does not simply float in a happy limbo.  I believe this is who we are called to be.  I invite you to renew your commitment to the Lord and join me.

Peace,
Pastor Peter

How God is “Powered”

These are the Q&A's from this past Sunday.  The decrees of God, in other words, what God has done.  Theologians are like other human beings, they like a little of the technical in their vocabulary.  Certain words have precise meanings, something that everyone 'in the group' is supposed to understand in common.  Such language does not always travel well through time.  Phrases like “God’s decrees” or words like “Providence” are not so widely used in the current vernacular. 

These questions and answers are going through ‘how does God make stuff?'  It is not in the abstract, but it is with holiness and other aspects of who and what God is.  In addition, it is not just parts that God has made, but the whole.  Everything comes from God.  God speaks and the power of creation is unleashed.  Yes, I do not understand the mechanism either, but that is God!

Teaching by catechism is teaching by questions and answers, but it is also the unfolding of knowledge in a directed way.  It started with us, what is our chief end?  Another way to put it might be ‘why are we here?’  Since our purpose is to glorify God, the next piece in the puzzle is to understand who God is.  It is nice to know what we are glorifying, after all.  But it is not that God simply “is”.  God is a creative, interactive, directed Spirit (see Question 4) and this is how God gets things done. 

Remember why this was written.  It was not to put people to sleep.  This was written after the Reformation, when the church was returning to the rule of Scripture.  Literacy was on the rise, reading the Word of God was becoming available to the whole population, not just an educated elite.  It was changing the social and political landscape in Europe and beyond. 

In England, as they struggled with the Word of God recovered, these Westminster “Standards”, the Confession of Faith and the Catechisms, would carry the authority of Acts of Parliament for a time, before the winds of change swept back over the politics of the time.  But they served as the foundation of the Church of Scotland and of the Presbyterian Churches that have grown out of her, here and around the world.

Q. 7. What are the decrees of God?

A. The decrees of God are God’s eternal purpose, according to the counsel of God’s will, whereby, for God’s own glory, God has foreordained whatsoever comes to pass.

Q. 8. How does God execute God’s decrees?

A. God executes God’s decrees in the works of creation and providence.

Q. 9. What is the work of creation?

A. The work of creation is God’s making all things of nothing, by the word of God’s power, in the space of six days, and all very good.

Q. 10. How did God create humanity?

A. God created humanity male and female, after God’s own image, in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, with dominion over the creatures.

Q. 11. What are God’s works of providence?

A. God’s works of providence are God’s most holy, wise, and powerful preserving and governing all God’s creatures, and all their actions.

Boscov’s “Friends Helping Friends Day”

 Save the Date: October 16, 2019   WEDNESDAY

Presbyterian Women are once again selling shopping passes to Boscov’s annual fundraising event.  Available for $5.00 through our Presbyterian Women, each shopping pass earns shoppers 25% off almost all purchases in the store throughout the day.  Store hours are 8am-11pm.  So shop early or shop late or all day if you prefer.  Another way to help is if you are able to sell passes on behalf of PW. 

This has been an amazing fundraiser for the Presbyterian Women over the last few years.  With our 

help, we can make this the best year yet.

A few amazing things happen with this fundraiser:

            -We support the work of Presbyterian Women in this prime fundraiser.

            -We get a tremendous savings to jumpstart Christmas shopping.

-We can coordinate our arrival times at the store to pass along a shopping cart.  

-We can run into church family and friends shopping together in support of our PW.

For more details, please email Marge Miller at mpmiller46@gmail.com or TEXT her at (732) 586-2218.   

And remember, we are the First Presbyterian Church of Perth Amboy.  We offer our hearts eagerly and sincerely to the Lord.  We are here to be with you, with our neighbor, through all.  This is who we are as a neighborhood in the Kingdom of God.

Peace,
Pastor Peter

Good Question…What is God?

Understand that this is a nuanced question.  We are not talking about some abstract transcendence, some Grand Other, it is not something Universal in its conception.  Rather, this is the collected wisdom of Christianity, Presbyterian-style.  It is not about how we, humanity, created a Godly notion in our collective imaginations. 

Our presupposition is that God IS, that God revealed God-self to us, and that God has a plan for us.  Here is the kicker, God is unlimited, we are limited.  God creates, we are created.  How can we even wrap our minds around that?  That is where God gave us a strong hand up.  In our limited capacity, we call it Trinity.

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that is the traditional trilogy of revelation.  It is how we, as limited humans, have come to best understand how God has chosen to self-reveal.  We use gender terms to understand that there is relationship within God.  We can identify how each is revealed to us in Scripture, and what their purpose is in God’s plan.  We use the term “Persons” in distinction to being “Things”, which again reflects the limits of human language. 

In the end, it is about how God has set up a process by which we can begin to comprehend what is incomprehensible.  But God was never about creating a faith where we might simply "comprehend" our God better.  Rather, our faith is about ever deepening our relationship with our God. 

These are the question and answers from Sunday’s portion of the Shorter Westminster Catechism.    

Q. 4. What is God?

A. God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal and unchangeable, in God’s being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.

Q. 5. Are there more Gods than one?

A. There is but one only, the living and true God.

Q. 6. How many Persons are there in the Godhead?

A. There are three Persons in the Godhead: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; and these three are one God, the same in substance, equal in power and glory.

Presbyterian Women's Kick Off Is This Sunday!

This Sunday, September 8, 2019, at 11am, we kick off the 2019-2020 Presbyterian Women program year in the church.  Everyone is invited to join us for coffee and rolls, good company and fellowship.  PW is the longest running ministry of the church.  We have a tremendous legacy in this congregation and our group continues even as many of our sister churches find that their own Presbyterian Women Societies have faded into history.

We are currently sharing space in Westminster so we will need some help Sunday.  Worship will go forward as usual, but then, at its conclusion, we will magically transform the space into an area for PW to carry forward with their meeting and fellowship. 

On the Presbyterian Church USA website, I found this link to PW and to what their purpose is:

“Everything we do as an organization and as a community is guided by our PW Purpose, and that includes ministry, resources and relationships.

Forgiven and freed by God in Jesus Christ, and empowered by the Holy Spirit, we commit ourselves

·         to nurture our faith through prayer and Bible study,

·         to support the mission of the church worldwide,

·         to work for justice and peace, and

·         to build an inclusive, caring community of women that strengthens the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and witnesses to the promise of God’s kingdom.

Anyone who supports the Purpose in any way is participating in Presbyterian Women. So even if you’re just learning about Presbyterian Women, there’s a good chance you’re already supporting Presbyterian Women—in spirit or in action!”

On behalf of the Board and the Membership of the Presbyterian Women of the First Presbyterian Church of Perth Amboy, I invite you to join us in this vibrant community of people doing Jesus’ work in our community.

Peace,
Pastor Peter

Building Update

It seems to be all about the water.  We have been working toward resolution of the problems in church.  The troubles are coming under three broad headings for repair.  And all of them have to do with water. 

The first is the water that resulted from the frozen pipe in the Narthex.  The trouble there is that the pipe froze in a place where we did not see it.  This trouble was magnified by the fact that wherever that water was running off to, it was not visible to us.  But that is what caused the chill in the sanctuary, caused the flooding in the Narthex, the lifting of paint by humidity, the loss of heat from the other zones of the system.  At this point, to fix it is going to require that the carpet be taken up in the Narthex and the floor opened up to the pipes beneath.

The second is the water that leaked in through the roof.  Tarps were put down on the roof in an attempt to stem the flow until this past spring, when it was hoped we could begin repairs.  The weather turned out to be too much.  The trouble was that mold developed in the areas between roof and ceiling, causing the vast mitigation efforts that continue, and our move to Westminster Hall for worship.

The third is the water that washed up over the floor in the Auditorium.  That traces back to the drain being blocked in the alley between the Auditorium and the Scout Room.  What confused us is how water travels.  The drain is between the buildings, the water found its course to enter in on the far side of the Auditorium.  It made us believe that there might be issues with the foundation on the Market Street side of the building. 

All these came together in a storm last winter.  These are the broad strokes of what is going on, to my understanding.  There is a reason we have a public adjuster to help us with this entire process.  I spoke with a representative for the insurance company last week, so now we wait for the next decisions to be made.  May God bless us as we continue down our path of restoration.

And remember, we are the First Presbyterian Church of Perth Amboy.  We offer our hearts eagerly and sincerely to the Lord.  We are here to be with you, with our neighbor, through all.  This is who we are as a neighborhood in the Kingdom of God.

Peace,

Pastor Peter

September Already…Wait…What?

This Sunday marks the first day of September.  We will be celebrating the Lord’s Supper during our 10am worship.  As this concludes the month of August, we have concluded our trial run of the 11am worship service.  Now we are going to take some time to consider the results, to get feedback, and to consider, in the light of the repair work that we pray will soon will begin on the church, when and how we will move forward.

Presbyterian Women will have their first meeting of the Season after 10am worship on Sunday, September 8, 2019.  Please come join us the kickoff to a new year of fellowship and mission. 

Work on the church does not yet have a start date.  As of this moment, there is still work to be done with the insurance company.  There will be a conversation today, August 29, that we hope will be one of the final steps to moving forward.  Our adjuster, Frank Boyle, has been working hard to move this forward.

Until we have some kind of time frame in mind, and a sense of what the work will entail, we are not scheduling a Kick Off Sunday for the Fall.  When we have a better sense of the time of the repair work, we will.  It will be a celebration to get back into the Sanctuary and open that beautiful space back up to the worship of the Lord.  Please pray for us and for our movement toward that date.  It is frustrating to have everything on hold until we can get matters finally settled.

We are the First Presbyterian Church of Perth Amboy.  We offer our hearts eagerly and sincerely to the Lord.  We are here to be with you, through all.  This is who we are as a neighborhood in the Kingdom of God.

Peace,
Pastor Peter

What Do We, As A Church, Say About Our Faith?

Lessons From the Confessions

Short of reading extended sections of the Bible, I fear there is no more effective way of putting people to sleep than by reading sections of the Book of Confessions. 

“Goodness Pastor, that is a very harsh thing to say!”  I have no doubts that would be the reaction of a lot of people reading this statement.  But this is my great fear for the church.

I fear for our willful ignorance of the content of our faith.  We talk about the Bible being the most important resource of our faith.  In the PCUSA, we claim the Book of Confessions as the SECOND most important resource of our faith.  This book gathers the wisdom of the church at various times and in various places of our history, moments when we felt the pressure to sit down and record “This is what we believe.”

So this past Sunday, we went back to Presbyterian basics, the Westminster Shorter Catechism.  This is one of the three pieces that make up the Westminster Standards-which were passed by the English Parliament and were the law of the land, at least for awhile.  The other pieces of the Westminster Standards are the Longer Catechism and the Confession of Faith.  The difference, as I have been taught, is that the Shorter Catechism is designed more as a primer of the faith.  The Longer has more detail and development. 

One of the difficulties of the historic confessions is that they are written with non-inclusive language.  So I am going to be arrogant enough to edit the Catechism for inclusivity and to comment on them for their significance today before posting it on our blog.  In the bulletin, the format is to keep the old language, but in brackets, so people can see the differences.  Please let me know if you are interested in seeing that.

Unlike the Heidelberg Catechism, which is split into Lord’s Days in order to be studied over a calendar year, the Westminster Catechisms are not.  So we shall use manageable pieces each week.

From August 25, 2019:

Q. 1. What is the chief end of humanity?

A. Humanity’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy God forever.

Why are we here?  That is what the writers are asking.  They cut to the heart of our existence.  The answer has two pieces, what is expected of us and what we can expect in return.  We are meant to glorify God and we are meant to enjoy God.  When was the last time that we really considered what it means to even “enjoy” the Almighty?  That should be a thought of great liberation.

Q. 2. What rule has God given to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy God?

A. The Word of God which is contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments is the only rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy God.

This is what the Bible is for.  It is the ONLY rule for glorifying and enjoying God.  It should be read, challenged, questioned, struggled with, enjoyed; it should open our hearts and bend our minds.  It is what we got.

Q. 3. What do the Scriptures principally teach?

A. The Scriptures principally teach what humanity is to believe concerning God, and what duty God requires of humanity.

Here is where it becomes really interesting.  The Bible mainly teaches us what we should believe about God.  But the teaching of Scripture is through the filter of other human beings.  So there is a WHOLE lot of spin that can be put onto the teachings of the Bible.  And because of the authority of the Bible in the laws of the church, how do we know what is truly true?

The keystone however is our knowledge.  Where we need to begin as people of faith is knowing this book OURSELVES, so that we can ask the questions we have, so that we can seek the answers we need, and so that we are not dependent on other people to ask and answer for us.